Making Ireland English: The Irish Aristocracy in the Seventeenth Century 9780300177503

Citation preview

Making Ireland English

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Making Ireland English the irish aristocracy in the s e v e n t e e n t h c e n t u ry

JANE OHLMEYER

YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS

N E W H AV E N A N D L O N D O N

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Copyright © 2012 Jane Ohlmeyer All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press) without written permission from the publishers. For information about this and other Yale University Press publications, please contact: U.S. Office: [email protected]   www.yalebooks.com Europe Office: [email protected]   www.yalebooks.co.uk Set in Adobe Garamond Pro by IDSUK (DataConnection) Ltd Printed in Great Britain by TJ International Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Ohlmeyer, Jane H.   Making Ireland English: the Irish aristocracy in the seventeenth century/Jane Ohlmeyer.   p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978–0–300–11834–6 (cl: alk. paper) 1. Nobility—Ireland—History—17th century. 2. Ireland—Social conditions—17th century. 3. English—Ireland—History—17th century. 4. Ireland—Politics and government—17th century. 5. Social change—Ireland—History—17th century. I. Title. DA940.O43 2012 941.505—dc23 2011033291 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. 10  9  8  7  6  5  4  3  2  1

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For Richard and Jamie

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Contents Acknowledgements List of Illustrations Conventions Glossary Abbreviations Chapter 1: Introduction

Definitions • Making Ireland English • Structure • The Archives • Historiography •

x xiii xvii xviii xxi 1

•

Part I: The Reconstitution of Ireland’s Aristocracy, 1590s–1670s Chapter 2: The Transformation of the Peerage

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Chapter 3: The Transformation of Noble Culture

64

• Tudor

Peerage • Peerage in 1603 • Inflation of Honours • Resident Peerage in 1628 • Resident Peerage in 1641 • Mid-Century Elevations • Mid-Century Creations • Resident Peerage in 1670 and 1685 • Securing the Succession • Conclusion •

Nobles in Irish Society • Honour • Contesting and Defending Honour • Conclusion • •

Chapter 4: Landed Nobility • Titled

Landholders in 1641 and c.1670 • Titled Landholding in County Dublin • Tenure • Plantations • The Munster Plantation • The First Earl of Cork • The Roches and MacCarthys • The Butlers • The Ulster Plantation • The Earls of Antrim • The Informal Plantations • The Formal Plantations • Other Early Stuart Settlements • Conclusion •

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Contents

Chapter 5: Religion

Catholicism and Kingship • The Catholic Church • Lay Patronage of the Catholic Church • Clerical Connections • Presbyterianism and the Peers • The Church of Ireland and the Peers • Personal Piety • Wardships and Conversions • Sincerity of Conversions • Conclusion •

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Chapter 6: Marriage

Women in Stuart Society • Courtship • Frequency of Marriage • Age at Marriage • Geographic Origin of Brides • Mixed Marriages • Social Status of Brides • The Economic Importance of Marriage • Relationships • Conclusion •

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Part II: The Peerage in Politics Chapter 7: Power, Politics and Public Office

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Chapter 8: Early Stuart Parliaments

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Chapter 9: Civil War

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• The

Stuart Court • The Exercise of National and Local Power • Law and Order • Conclusion •

• The

1613–15 Parliament • The Graces • The 1634–5 Parliament • The 1640–1 Parliament • The Opposition Peers • Conclusion •

A Military Caste • War in Scotland and Rebellion in Ireland • The Impact of the 1641 Rebellion • The Baronial Context of the Civil Wars • War and Politics • Confederate Catholics • Baronial Leadership • Conclusion • •

Chapter 10: Survival

Exile • Reprisals • Catholic Survival • Transplantation • The Case of Antrim • Protestant Survivors • Architects of Restoration • Conclusion •

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Chapter 11: The Restoration Land Settlement

A Revolution in Titled Landholding? • The Winners • The Survivors • The Losers • Conclusion •

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Chapter 12: Political Life • The

Irish Parliament, 1661–6 • The Politics behind the Land Settlement • Restoration Dublin • Later Stuart Politics • The Army • James II • Conclusion •

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Contents

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Part III: The Sinews of Power Chapter 13: Income

Levels of Wealth • Landed Entrepreneurs and Improving Landlords • Urbanization and Commercialization • Overseas Expansionism • Conclusion •

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Chapter 14: Expenditure

Levels of Borrowing • Aristocratic Borrowings • Expenditure • Capital Expenditure • Personal and Domestic Expenditure • Legal Expenditure • Conclusion •

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Chapter 15: Lineage and Formation

Kinship and Clientage Networks • Children • Schooling and Education • Grand Tours and the Exercise of Arms • Conclusion •

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Chapter 16: Death and Memory

Preparing for Death • Cause of Death • Funerals • Memorialization and Posterity • Conclusion •

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Chapter 17: Conclusion Notes Appendix I:

Lands held by resident titled nobles in 1641, ranked according to size. Appendix II: Office holding and political activity of resident peers, c.1600–c.1690. Appendix III: Military and political activity of resident peers during the 1640s. Appendix IV: Peers recorded in the 1660 poll tax (the so-called ‘1659 census’). Appendix V: Attendance and activity in the House of Lords, 1661–6. Appendix VI: The land settlement and the process of restoration. Select Bibliography Index

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475 483 572 575 599 606 608 614 617 628

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Acknowledgements This book has been a long time in the writing. I first began working on it

in 1994 when I was teaching at Yale University. I had just published my biography of the marquis of Antrim (1609–1683) and wanted to know how ‘typical’ his experiences were. This book answers that question. A number of reasons explain why it took me so long to finish it. First, as so often happens with academics, I became sidetracked with various administrative duties first at the University of Aberdeen and later at Trinity College Dublin, and the responsibilities associated with being head of school in an era of restructuring left little time for anything else. Second, other projects simply distracted me. That said, some of these – on the early Stuart lawyers and the Dublin court of chancery, on the records of the Irish statute staple and, more recently, on the 1641 depositions – undoubtedly enriched this study. A major grant from the Leverhulme Trust (1999–2001) while I was at the University of Aberdeen allowed me to undertake the research for this book and a period of sabbatical (2008–9, 2010) from Trinity College Dublin gave me the time to write it. I am deeply grateful to the Leverhulme Trust for its financial support and to Aberdeen University and its then principal, Sir Duncan Rice, and Trinity College Dublin, especially the former provost, Dr John Hegarty, and the respective deans for arts and humanities, Iain Torrance and Michael Marsh. I particularly appreciated the support of my colleagues in the history department first at Aberdeen and then at Trinity, who helped to create the space needed to write, and especially my heads of department and my heads of school, Ciaran Brady, David Ditchburn, Roger Stalley and Brian McGing, together with Debra Birch, the administrator for the School of Histories and Humanities. A grant from the Arts and Social Sciences Benefactions Fund for 2008/9 funded the drawing of the maps and I would like to thank Dr Charles Travis, then a fellow in the Trinity Long Room Hub, for undertaking this task with such good grace and patience. Further grants from the Benefactions Fund (2010–11) and the Grace Lawless Lee Fund (2011) allowed for the inclusion

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A c k n ow l e d g e m e n t s

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of so many illustrations. Various grants allowed me to employ a number of gifted graduate research assistants, who have gone on to enjoy their own academic careers: Ali Cathcart, Eamon Darcy, Paul Dover, Éamonn Ó Ciardha and Barry Robertson. The secretarial support provided by Barbara McGillivray, from the history department at Aberdeen, and Judy Lee, from the history department at Trinity, was also greatly appreciated. I would also like to thank the staff of the following libraries for allowing me access to items in their holdings: Aberdeen University Library, the Beinecke Library at Yale, the British Library, the Folger Library in Washington DC, Marsh’s Library in Dublin, the National Library of Ireland, the National Library of Scotland and Trinity College Dublin Library. A number of institutions and individuals have graciously allowed me to reproduce as illustrations items from their holdings: the Castletown Foundation, the Chatsworth Settlement Trustees, the Hunt Museum, Limerick, the National Portrait Gallery, London, the Board of Trinity College, the Board of the National Library of Ireland, the Office of Public Works, Dublin and the Frick Collection in New York. A number of the key ideas in the book have been explored in seminars and at conferences: the Ireland Seminar at Hertford College, Oxford (1996); the Irish Studies in Britain Conference at the University of Stirling (2002); conferences on ‘Communities: Imagined and Actual’ and the British and Irish Legal History in University College, Dublin (2003); the British history research seminar at Merton College, Oxford (2007); the ‘Britain’s Wars Revisited’ symposium at Hull University (2008); the early modern seminars at the University of Bangor and the Erasmus University in Rotterdam (2008); the Irish Studies Seminar, Cambridge University (2009); the Newberry Library Fellows Seminar (2009); conferences on ‘Nobilities in early modern Ireland’ at NUI Galway and on ‘Ireland as a Laboratory of Empire’ at Derry (2009); a seminar on ‘Britain and the Habsburg Territories in Comparison’ at the German Historical Institute, London (2009); the Women’s History Association of Ireland conference on migration (2009); the Princess Grace’s Library seminar in Monaco (2010); the Atlantic History Seminar, New York University (2010); and the D. B. Quinn lecture at the Institute of Irish Studies at the University of Liverpool (2010). I am grateful to the participants at these events for their insightful comments and suggestions for improvement. Over the course of the years I have incurred numerous intellectual debts to colleagues and students, and I would like to take this opportunity to thank them: Robert Armstrong, Ronald Asch, Toby Barnard, Tom Bartlett, Ciaran Brady, Maurice Bric, Keith Brown, Ian Campbell, Nicholas Canny, Aidan Clarke, Tony Claydon, Tom Connors, Eamon Darcy, David Dickson, David Ditchburn, Declan Downey, Dave Edwards, Kevin Forkan, Robert von Friedeburg, Raymond Gillespie, Derek Hirst, Brendan Kane, Connie Kelleher,

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Phil Kilroy, Karen Kupperman, Ned Landsman, Joe Lee, Marion Lyons, Charlene McCoy, Margaret MacCurtain, Hector McDonnell, BrÍd McGrath, James Maguire, Annaleigh Margey, Hiram Morgan, John Morrill, Elaine Murphy, Éamonn Ó Ciardha, Mary O’Dowd, Tadhg Ó hAnnracháin Eleanor O’Keefe, Barry Robertson, Kevin Sharpe, Patricia Stapleton, Maryann Valiulis, Patrick Walsh, Bartolomé Yun-Casalilla and Steve Zwicker. During the course of the academic year 2010–11, I taught an undergraduate seminar on nobilities in early modern Ireland. My students, especially Frank Sanderson, made many perceptive comments on this manuscript. I am grateful to Kevin McKenny for allowing me to use his database on the Books of Survey and Distribution. Brian Mac Cuarta kindly commented on chapter 5 and John Cunningham made his helpful comments on chapters 4, 10 and 11. Rolf Loeber not only read sections of the manuscript but also suggested, with characteristic generosity, a number of the illustrations. I am particularly indebted to Hamish Scott and Micheál Ó Siochrú who read the manuscript in draft and made incredibly helpful suggestions for improving it. Professor Scott introduced me to the nobilities of early modern Europe as an undergraduate at St Andrews and Professor Ó Siochrú, an expert on early modern Ireland, is a colleague and close friend. Their input was above and beyond the call of duty. Robert Baldock from Yale University Press has been a model editor and I am deeply grateful to him for commissioning this book and for his patience as I completed it. I am also indebted to Yale’s anonymous readers for their comments and suggestions, to Rachael Lonsdale and Tami Halliday for their editorial support and to Richard Mason for being such a proficient copy-editor. Writing a big book like this is a solitary exercise and family and friends have helped to sustain me. I greatly appreciated the conviviality I enjoyed with the late Mary Clarke and with Robin Adams, Mary Apied, Trish Callaghan, David Ditchburn, Linda Doyle, Barbara Fennell, Jan and Ian Kerr, Margaret MacCurtain, Finn McMahon, Catherine Morris, John O’Hagan, Emma Stokes, Maryann Valiulis, and Daniel, Eva, Marina and Phoenix Williams. My greatest debts are to those who are closest to me. I am especially grateful to Phil Kilroy for her wisdom and friendship and to Simon Williams for his encouragement, good humour and companionship. My mother, Shirley Ohlmeyer, has been an unstinting supporter and will be relieved that this book is finally finished, as will my sons, Richard and Jamie, who have lived with it their entire lives. Over the years Richard and Jamie have been great sources of joy and of distraction. This book is dedicated to them. Jane Ohlmeyer Cruit Island, County Donegal, and Trinity College Dublin

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Illustrations Plates   1. Portrait of George Fitzgerald, sixteenth earl of Kildare, 1632. Reproduced with the permission of the Castletown Foundation.   2. Arthur Annesley, first earl of Anglesey, after John Michael Wright, 1676. Reproduced with the permission of the National Portrait Gallery, London.   3. Ulick Bourke, first marquis of Clanricarde, by an unknown artist. Reproduced with the permission of the National Portrait Gallery, London.   4. Miniature of Richard Boyle, first earl of Cork, by Isaac Oliver. Reproduced with the permission of the National Portrait Gallery, London.   5. James Butler, first duke of Ormond, after Sir Peter Lely. Reproduced with the permission of the National Portrait Gallery, London.   6. Elizabeth Preston, Lady Ormond, and Thomas Butler, later earl of Ossory, painted c.1637, attributed to David des Granges. Reproduced with the permission of the Office of Public Works, Dublin.   7. Donough MacCarthy, Viscount Muskerry. Reproduced with the permission of the Hunt Museum, Limerick.   8. Anne (Carey), countess of Clanbrassil, by Anthony Van Dyck, c.1636. Reproduced with the permission of the Frick Collection.   9. Lady Arran’s funeral, 1668. Reproduced with the permission of the Board of the National Library of Ireland. 10. Jones funeral monument in St Patrick’s, Dublin. 11. Boyle funeral monument in St Patrick’s, Dublin. 12. James Cranford, The teares of Ireland wherein is lively presented as in a map a list of the unheard off [sic] cruelties and perfidious treacheries of bloodthirsty Jesuits and the popish faction . . . (London, 1642). Reproduced by the courtesy of the Board of Trinity College. 13. Arms of the Butlers of Mountgarret. Reproduced with the permission of the Board of the National Library of Ireland.

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14. Portumna castle, County Galway. Reproduced with the permission of Professor Rolf Loeber. 15. Sir Thomas Philip’s drawing of Carrickfergus. Reproduced with the permission of the Board of the National Library of Ireland. 16. Detailed drawing of Charlemont fort, showing the great mansion built in the early decades of the seventeenth century. Reproduced with the permission of the Board of the National Library of Ireland. 17. Bunratty castle, seat of the O’Briens of Thomond, from the north, drawn in the late seventeenth century. Reproduced with the permission of the Board of the National Library of Ireland. 18. Lismore castle, seat of the Boyles of Cork, in the early seventeenth century. Reproduced with the permission of the Chatsworth Settlement Trustees. 19. Clancarthy house in the later seventeenth century, Dublin. Reproduced with the permission of the Board of the National Library of Ireland. Maps (Based on the Books of Survey and Distribution)   1. Top 20 titled landholders in 1641.   2. Top 20 titled landholders in c.1670.   3. Titled landholding in County Dublin in 1641 (see also William Smyth, Map-making, Landscapes and Memory: A Geography of Colonial and Early Modern Ireland c.1530–1750 [Cork, 2006], pp. 237, 240).   4. Titled landholding in Munster, 1641.   5. Butler landholding in Counties Tipperary and Kilkenny, 1641 (see also William Smyth, Map-Making, Landscapes and Memory: A geography of Colonial and Early Modern Ireland c.1530–1750 [Cork, 2006], pp. 284, 317).   6. Titled landholding in Ulster in 1641 (see also Philip Robinson, The Plantation of Ulster: British Settlement in an Irish Landscape, 1600–1670 [Dublin, 1984]).   7. Catholic titled landholding (top 20 resident peers) in 1641.   8. Catholic titled landholding (top 20 resident peers) in c.1670.   9. Protestant titled landholding (top 20 resident peers) in 1641. 10. Protestant titled landholding (top 20 resident peers) in c.1670.

pages 90 92

96 102

110 115 303 304 306 307

Tables 1. Ethnic breakdown of all peers in 1603, 1628 and 1641. 2. Ethnic composition of the resident peerage in 1603, 1628 and 1641.

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3. Breakdown by rank of resident peerage. 4. Ethnic composition of the resident peerage in 1641, 1670 and 1685. 5. Inheritance amongst resident peers. 6. Size of estates held by resident peers in 1641. 7. Ethnic breakdown of lands held by resident peers in 1641. 8. Titled landholding, c.1670. 9. Geographic extent of titled landholding at provincial and county levels, c.1670. 10. Intensity of titled landholding at the county level, c.1670. 11. Titled noble landholders in County Dublin in 1641 and c.1670 (in plantation acres). 12. Titled landholding in Munster in 1641. 13. Antrim leases (1637): type of lease granted. 14. Religious breakdown of the resident peerage. 15. Marriages of resident peers, c.1600–c.1690. 16. Geographic origin of 421 wives of resident peers (based on wives’ fathers), c.1600–c.1690. 17. Social status of wives of resident peers (based on wives’ fathers), c.1600–c.1690. 18. Succession status of resident peers’ wives, c.1600–c.1690. 19. Peers or close family members awarded lands in Connacht. 20. Length of leases on Lady Ormond’s estates, 1655–60. 21. Titled landholders in c.1670 with estates over 20,000 plantation acres. 22. Winners, c.1670. 23. Survivors, c.1670. 24. Catholic survivors, c.1670. 25. Catholic losers, c.1670. 26. Estimates of landed wealth in c.1635 of titled nobles in east Ulster. 27. Subsidy assessments after the Restoration and landholding in c.1670. 28. The earl of Cork’s income, 1638–44. 29. The earl of Cork’s expenditure, 1637–41. 30. Spread of ages at death of resident peers. 31. Place of burial of resident peers.

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pages 42 48 58 89 89 93 93 94 97 107 121 136 179 184 190 192 289 294 308 312 323 324 332 368 370 377 402 452 462

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Figures   1. The marriages of the Boyles of Cork, 1620–42.   2. Family tree of the Boyles of Orrery.   3. Family tree of the Annesley family.   4. The earl of Cork’s income, 1638–44.   5. Monies borrowed by the duke of Ormond, 1641–50.   6. The occupations of the duke of Ormond’s creditors, 1641–50.   7. The earl of Cork’s expenditure, 1637–41.   8. The monthly balance of account and income on the Boyle estates, 1638–44.   9. House of Ormond, wider lineage. 10. House of Ormond, nuclear family.

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1 This unusual portrait, attributed to the ‘Irish school’, depicts George Fitzgerald, sixteenth earl of Kildare (c.1612–1660), wearing a luxurious fur-lined scarlet robe over a simple linen shirt. The robe is reminiscent of the ‘mantles’ worn by great Gaelic chieftains and serves as a reminder of Kildare’s ancestry and Catholic lineage. Despite his Protestantism and his marriage in 1630 to a daughter of the first earl of Cork, Kildare continued to take seriously the traditional responsibilities associated with lordship.

2 Arthur Annesley, first earl of Anglesey (1614–1686), was the son of a planter and entrepreneur who made good during the early decades of the seventeenth century. Anglesey benefitted hugely from the restoration land settlement and played a key role in later Stuart Ireland and Britain where he served as Lord Privy Seal. Michael Wright, who painted many leading Irish aristocrats in the 1660s and 1670s, depicts Anglesey in this portrait at the height of his power in 1676. Shortly after this he quarrelled publically with Ormond and fell from favour.

3 Ulick Bourke, first marquis of Clanricarde (1604–1658), depicted here in armour was head of one of the great Catholic, Old English dynasties. Clanricarde grew up in England, where he held considerable estates near Tunbridge Wells in Kent and enjoyed many kin links to leading English aristocratic houses. Thanks to his connections with influential figures at the Caroline court he served as an important broker for the Catholic interest at Whitehall in the pre-war years. A staunch supporter of the Stuarts, he spent most of the 1640s on his vast patrimony at Portumna, near Galway.

4 This exquisite miniature of Richard Boyle, the ‘upstart’ earl of Cork (1566– 1643), by Isaac Oliver represented him in the 1610s at the point when his career as a landed entrepreneur was about to take off. The second son of a Kentish squire, Cork arrived in Ireland in 1588 virtually penniless but went on to acquire a vast territorial empire in Munster. By 1641 he was reputed to be the richest man in the Stuart kingdoms. Father to seven sons and eight daughters, Cork consolidated the Boyle network with a series of astute marriages with local settlers and established aristocratic families.

5 James Butler, first duke of Ormonde (1610–1688), was head of Ireland’s premier aristocratic dynasty and the greatest landowner in the country. As lord lieutenant of Ireland and as lord steward of the royal household he was one of the most influential political figures in later Stuart Britain and Ireland. This striking portrait painted during the mid-1660s, at the height of his power, represents Ormond wearing his Order of the Garter robes and holding in his right hand the wand of office of lord steward of the household. The plumed hat to Ormond’s right adds a sense of lustre and opulence.

6 This unusual portrait of Elizabeth Preston, Lady Ormond (1615–1684) and her eldest surviving son, Thomas Butler, later earl of Ossory (1634–1680), was painted in c.1637 and has been attributed to David des Granges. Lady Ormond was the grand daughter of the tenth earl of Ormond and when in 1629 she married her cousin, James, later first duke, the Ormond titles and patrimony were reunited. Their marriage was a happy one that lasted 55 years. Lady Ormond bore the duke two daughters and eight sons, none of whom outlived their father. It was Ossory’s son, James, who succeeded his grandfather as the second duke in 1688 but with the death of his brother in 1758 the line became extinct.

7 Donough MacCarthy, Viscount Muskerry and later earl of Clancarthy (1594–1665), was of Gaelic provenance and one of the great Catholic figures in Stuart Ireland. This portrait, possibly from the studio of Sir Peter Lely or by Garret Morphy, depicts him standing in armour with a curtain halfdrawn behind him and a castle, presumably his seat at Blarney, visible in the distance. He wears a long wig with a lace cravat at his neck and a gold and emerald sash around his waist and carries a walkingstick with a silver-gilt top in his hand. This desire to be represented as warriors, especially on the part of the Catholic peers, highlights the continuing importance of the exercise of arms in noble culture.

8 Sir Anthony Van Dyck’s fine full length portrait of Anne Carey, the eldest daughter of the duke of Monmouth, was painted shortly after her betrothal in 1635 to James Hamilton, second Viscount Claneboye and later earl of Clanbrassil, who had recently arrived in court after completing a continental Grand Tour. James was the son of a successful Scottish planter who had acquired extensive estates in East Ulster but wanted to demonstrate his ‘civility’ by securing an English bride for his heir.

9 Lady Mary Stuart, countess of Arran and Ormond’s teenage daughter-in-law, died of a fever in July 1668 and had an elaborately choreographed funeral the following month. After being embalmed Mary’s body was removed from her residence at Chapelisod to Lord Chancellor Eustace’s grand new house on Dame Street where ‘it lay in Blacks’, encircled by brightly coloured escutcheons and heraldic banners quartered with the arms of the Butlers of Ormond and the Stuarts of Lennox. As the drawing from the funeral entry shows wailing women, who appear to be acting as keeners, remained in constant attendance as ‘Ladies of Quality’ came to pay their respects and ‘multitudes of people…daily resorted thither’. Note the black servant in the bottom right hand corner.

10 This elaborate funeral monument in St. Patrick’s cathedral in Dublin commemorates Thomas Jones, archbishop of Dublin (c.1550–1619), and his son, Roger, Viscount Ranelagh (d. 1644). It shows the archbishop with churchman’s cap and gown. The recumbent figure of Viscount Ranelagh lies below clad in armour, highlighting the importance of military service for the newcomers (in fact Ranelagh died in Oxford and was buried there). He is surrounded by four female figures, presumably his three daughters and wife, while his son, Arthur, later second viscount (1610-1670) who is in civilian dress, kneels in prayer. Monuments such as this celebrated public service, military achievement and private virtue and provided for posterity a powerful visual record of an individual and his lineage.

11 The first earl of Cork combined the visual and the verbal in his family’s funerary monuments to portray his new and composite dynasty as an ‘ancient’ and honourable lineage. This is a photograph of Lady Cork’s tomb in St Patrick’s cathedral in Dublin, which shows her grandfather and parents at the top of the monument. The middle section depicts the countess and her sons and in the bottom tier her daughters kneel in prayer. The coats of arms of the families into whom the Boyles married frame the elaborate tomb and add further colour and splendour. This, like the other Boyle tombs, was a subtle work of propaganda that stressed the virtues of the family and its alliances, its continuities with the past and its potential for the future.

12 With the outbreak of rebellion in 1641 local insurgents seized the town and castle of Monaghan, together with Castle Blayney. They expelled Lord Blayney and took prisoner his wife, seven children and other members of his family and household. James Cranford represented the Blayney family’s incarceration in The teares of Ireland. A crude woodcut, aimed at stirring up anti-Catholic sentiment, depicted Lady Blayney and her children sitting on a pile of straw in front of a man hanging from a gallows. The caption reads: ‘the Lord Blany forced to ride 14 miles without bridle or sadell to save his life: his Lady lodged in strawe beeing allowed 2d a day to releve her & her children, [The insurgents] slew a kindsman of hers and hanged him up before her face [for] 2 dayes telling her she must expect the same to terrifie her the moore’.

13 The Catholic Butlers of Mountgarret, who owned considerable estates to the north of County Kilkenny, was a cadet branch of the house of Ormond. Of noble provenance and connected by marriage to many leading English Catholic families, the Mountgarret viscountcy dated from 1550. Coats of arms such as this, along with genealogies and pedigrees, focused on the nobleness and legitimacy of particular lineages and helped to differentiate them from the ‘upstarts’ who became peers during the early decades of the seventeenth century.

14 In 1618 the fourth earl of Clanricarde built an exquisite, three storey, rectangular mansion house at Portumna near Galway with an impressive entrance over a basement. Distinctive renaissance features, such as the Dutch gables which are clearly visible in this photograph, highlight the importance of continental influences. Above all, Portumna was a grand English house, with its mullioned bay windows, freezes and ornate plasterwork. It was also fortified in that the projecting, angled towers had gun loops that provided flanking fire and inner and outer bawns, albeit ones that took the form of gardens. Portumna cost the fourth earl £10,000 to build and has been recently restored to its seventeenth-century splendour.

15 Sir Thomas Philip’s drawing of Carrickfergus showing, on the left, Carrickfergus castle and, on the right, Joymount, Lord Deputy Chichester’s great mansion. In 1618 Chichester (1563–1625) built Joymount, an elegant English mansion house that also boasted French architectural influences. An English visitor, William Brereton, described Joymount in 1635 as ‘a very stately house, or rather like a prince’s palace, whereunto there belongs a stately gate-house, and graceful terrace and walk before the house … A very fair hall there is, and a stately staircase and fair dining-room carrying the proportion of the hall; fine garden and mighty spacious orchards, and they say they bear good store of fruit.’

16 In 1623 Toby Lord Caulfeild, swordsman and landed entrepreneur, built a castle of lime and stone at Charlemount on a low hill overlooking the Blackwater river. Nicholas Pynnar’s fine coloured drawing of Charlemount depicts a square, four storey stone mansion house with numerous large windows, chimney stacks and an elaborate tower. External, trace italienne fortifications, a drawbridge, a substantial wooden bridge over the river and adjacent houses are also shown. Situated six miles west of Armagh and four miles south of Dungannon, Charlemount occupied a key strategic position in terms of defence of the Pale. Little wonder it was a prime target for the insurgents in October 1641.

17 The O’Briens of Thomond were of Gaelic provenance and amongst the largest landowners in Ireland. By the early seventeenth century earls had converted to Protestantism and thanks to a series of English marriages had become increasingly anglicized. Thomond’s magnificent seat was at Bunratty castle, drawn here by Thomas Dingley during the later seventeenth century, on the banks of the River Shannon in County Clare. An inventory of Bunratty castle, dating from 1639, recorded how the castle was furnished in great splendour and stood at the centre of a vibrant agricultural enterprise.

18 The earl of Cork embarked on an ambitious construction programme during the early decades of the century. His main seat was at Lismore castle in County Waterford, which adjoined the medieval cathedral and boasted one of the finest ‘polite’ gardens in Ireland with its raised walkway and terraces. In neighbouring County Cork he also built Castle Lyons and grand English mansions at Bandon and Youghal. Great houses like these, mushroomed up across Ireland, and facilitated the anglicization of the Irish landscape. They also represented powerful physical manifestations of the crown’s civilizing message.

19 By 1672 Sir William Petty suggested that over one fifth of the country’s big houses were located in Dublin and by the early eighteenth century it has been estimated that twenty-five to thirty peers maintained Dublin residences. Certainly, between 1660 and 1673 the city doubled its acreage. The area near St Stephen’s street and College Green was developed and new properties included a grand house, shown here in a drawing dating from 1683, that the earl of Clancarthy owned.

Conventions Unless indicated otherwise, dates throughout are given according to the Old (Julian) Calendar, which was used in Scotland, Ireland and England but not in most of continental Europe. The beginning of the year is taken, however, as 1 January rather than 25 March. Unless otherwise stated, all monetary values are sterling. Modern spellings have been preferred for proper names (especially people and places).

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Glossary Acre: units of measurement were not standardized; by the mid-seventeenth century the use of the ‘plantation’ or ‘Irish plantation measure’ (the terms are interchangeable) was common. One hundred Irish or plantation acres equalled 162 statute acres and 100 statute acres equalled 40.5 hectares. Thus a plantation acre was equivalent to an Irish acre and larger than a statute (or English) acre by a ratio of 1.62 to 1. Composition: a payment made by Protestant proprietors, during the Commonwealth period, to secure recovery of their sequestered estates from the state. Concealment: the practice of non-disclosure of a land title, to avoid payment of a feudal incident, or because of some defect of title that could lead to a resumption of the land by the Crown. Court baron and court leet: a manor court presided over by the steward of the manor. The function of the court baron was to maintain the records of the manor and settle problems between the landlord and his freehold tenants according to customary law. A jury composed of tenants and presided over by the lord’s factor gave judgements. The factor also played the role of judge in the ‘court leet’ administering, with the authority of the Crown, basic justice in minor criminal cases. Custos rotulurum: the person who had custody of the rolls and other records of the sessions of the peace. Debenture: a charge in writing of specified property with the repayment at a fixed time of the money loaned; the word was used in the Commonwealth period to describe the document that was issued to an ex-soldier stating his arrears of pay and confirming his entitlement to compensation for such arrears by an allocation of lands of equal worth and value out of the confiscated lands in Ireland.

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xix

Dower: the portion of a deceased husband’s estate which the law allows for his widow for her life. Entail: to settle land on a number of persons in succession, so that it cannot be bequeathed at pleasure by any one possessor. After 1660 this became known as the ‘strict settlement’. Fee farm: a fee-farm grant is a conveyance of a fee simple estate subject to the payment by the grantee and his successors in title of a perpetual rent of which there are three main categories: those creating the relationship of lord and tenant under the feudal system of landholding; those creating the modern landlord and tenant relationship; and those creating a rent-charge. Many of the fee-farm grants made in the seventeenth century were of the first kind. Feudal incidents: the incidents of tenure due by a tenant, holding in knight’s service to his lord, whether as tenant in capite or otherwise; the principal of these were as follows: Escheat: the reversion of title to land to the original grantee or lord of the fee by virtue of failure of the heir or attainder; in cases of the latter the forfeiture always went to the Crown. Homage: to render fealty and attend the lord’s court. Marriage: the right of the lord to choose the spouse of any tenant of his lordship, whether male or female. Relief: the payment due to the lord by the heir of full age as the price of his right to succeed as tenant, i.e. to sue out his livery; in the case of tenancies in capite the Crown had the right of primer seizen, i.e. the right to take possession of the land until the appropriate homage and relief had been rendered. Seisin: the act of giving possession of feudal property. Wardship: the right of the lord to manage, for his own profit, the estate of an heir of one of his tenants until he came of age, i.e. attained the age of twenty-one years. Gavelkind: a system of succession, by which land, on the decease of its occupant, was thrown into the common stock and the whole area redivided among the members of the sept; partible inheritance. Heir general: succession to a title through both the male and female lines. Inquisition: an inquest of office or inquiry conducted by an officer of the Crown such as a sheriff or escheator, concerning any matter that entitled the Crown to the possession of lands, tenements, etc. Jointure: the estate settled on a husband and wife before marriage in satisfaction and bar of the woman’s dower.

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G l o s s a ry

Knight’s service: a feudal tenure of land in which a specified quantity of land was described as a knight’s fee; as well as providing military service to the lord, the tenant had other burdens to fulfil, outlined under ‘feudal incidents’ above. Lease: a demise or letting of lands by one person the lessor, to another the lessee, for a term of years or life or at will, usually for a rent reserved. Letters patent: writings on a parchment given by the king and sealed with the great seal; the word patent signified that the writings of the document were open, ready to be shown for confirmation of the authority given by them; this was the usual form of conveying a grant of land by the Crown to an individual in Ireland in the seventeenth century. Mortgage: a conveyance, assignment or demise of real or personal estate as security for the repayment of money borrowed including, in the case of land, where the creditors enter into possession. Plantation acre: see ‘acre’ above. Primogeniture: the right of the eldest legitimate son to succeed to the title and to inherit property, to the exclusion of other claimants. Quit-rent: a fixed rent payable by freeholders; the term was adapted by the Acts of Settlement and Explanation to describe the rent payable by grantees or restored persons to the Crown, in lieu of earlier rents or services due to the Crown in respect of their estates. Sept: a clan or tribe. Socage: a tenure of land of a certain and determinate service. Statute staple: bonds of record entered into under the supervision of the mayor and constable of the staple, in staple towns, enabling recognisances to be entered into, for the lending of money and its subsequent repayment, under penalty of estreat. Tail: tail general is an estate limited to a man and the heirs of his body without restriction; tail female is an estate that limits the succession to females; tail male is a descent limited to a man and the heirs male of his body, and to subsequent generations claiming exclusively through males.

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Abbreviations BL British Library, London BL, Add. MSS   Additional Manuscripts BL, Harl. MSS   Harleian Manuscripts Bodl. Bodleian Library, Oxford Clarendon, Rebellion Edward Hyde, earl of Clarendon, The history of the rebellion and civil wars in England, ed. W. D. Macray (6 vols., Oxford, 1888) Comment. Rinucc. Richard O’Ferrall and Robert O’Connell, Commentarius Rinuccinianus, de sedis apostolicae legatione ad foederatos Hiberniae catholicos per annos 1645–9, ed. Rev. Stanislaus Kavanagh (6 vols., IMC, Dublin, 1932–49) CSPD Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, Second Series (23 vols., London, 1858–97) CSPI Calendar of State Papers relating to Ireland (24 vols., London, 1860–1911) CSPV Calendar of State Papers and Manuscripts relating to English affairs, existing in the archives and collections of Venice and in other libraries of Northern Italy (38 vols., London, 1864–1947) DIB James McGuire, James Quinn (eds.), Dictionary of Irish Biography: From the Earliest Times to the Year 2002 (9 vols., Cambridge, 2009). GEC George E. Cokayne, The Complete Peerage of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain and the United Kingdom: Extant, Extinct or Dormant (13 vols., London, 1910–59)

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A b b r e v i at i o n s

Gilbert (ed.), J. T. Gilbert (ed.), A Contemporary History Contemporary History of Affairs in Ireland, From AD 1641 to 1653 . . . (3 vols., Irish Archaeological Society, Dublin, 1879) Gilbert (ed.), Irish J. T. Gilbert (ed.), History of the Irish Confederation Confederation and the War in Ireland, 1641–3 . . . (7 vols., Dublin, 1882–91) Grosart (ed.), Alexander B. Grosart (ed.), The Lismore Papers. First Lismore Papers [and the second] series . . . Edited with introd. and notes by Alexander B. Grosart from the original MSS. belonging to the Duke of Devonshire preserved in Lismore Castle (10 vols., London, 1886–8) HMC Historical Manuscripts Commission HMC, Ormonde Calendar of the Manuscripts of the marquess of Ormonde, preserved at Kilkenny Castle (Old and New Series, 11 vols., London, 1895–1920) IMC Irish Manuscripts Commission Lodge John Lodge, The peerage of Ireland: or, a genealogical history of the present Nobility of that kingdom. With engravings of their paternal coats of arms … by John Lodge; revised, enlarged and continued to the present time by Mervyn Archdall (7 vols., Dublin, 1789) MS/MSS Manuscript(s) NA The National Archives, Dublin NHI, III T. W. Moody, F. X. Martin and F. J. Byrne (eds.), A New History of Ireland. III: Early Modern Ireland 1534–1691 (Oxford, 1976, reprinted 1978) NLI National Library of Ireland, Dublin NS New series; or, in dating, New Style OS Old series; or, in dating, Old Style PRONI Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, Belfast SCL Sheffield City Library SNA Scottish National Archives TCD Trinity College Dublin TNA The National Archives, London TNA, SP   State Papers

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction In July 1668 the Irish resident peerage gathered to mourn the sudden and

premature death of the seventeen-year-old Mary Stuart, a granddaughter of the infamous first duke of Buckingham, daughter and heir of a great courtier

2

Making Ireland English

Lady Arran’s funeral was a public celebration of the Ormond dynasty and a powerful demonstration of the support the duke could command from amongst his peers and followers, many of whom had lined the route taken by the hearse. The funeral highlighted Butler influence in Ireland, the grandeur, nobleness and munificence of the family, together with its Englishness, especially its alliances with the great British houses of Buckingham and Lennox. The fact that the duke and his eldest sons were conspicuous by their absence at court, the seat of royal power and authority, simply underscored this and their intimate association with the house of Stuart. This book analyzes how the resident peers, many of whom participated in Lady Arran’s funeral, charted their way through a particularly transitional and tumultuous period. An inflation of honours, itself an exercise in social engineering dating from the 1610s and 1620s and often accompanied by significant grants of land, created numerous opportunities for advancement for both natives and newcomers. In 1603 the peers were predominantly of Catholic native Irish and Old English backgrounds. An inflation of honours allowed New English and Scottish lords to join their ranks to the point where the newcomers, many of whom were Protestant, predominated numerically and increasingly socially, economically and politically. During these years the Stuarts allowed a generation of ambitious and avaricious lords, who were determined either to consolidate their patrimonies and political influence or to make their fortunes in Ireland, to secure public reward and social recognition. These ‘new’ lords joined ranks with members of the established peerage. Together these men comprised Ireland’s leading landlords, politicians, military leaders, property developers, entrepreneurs and philanthropists. They exercised power and influence locally, nationally and across the Stuart kingdoms. Land underpinned their status as cultural, economic and political brokers, and provided the wealth needed to sustain their rank. This landed aristocracy helped to shape the face of early modern Ireland. This book examines the resident peerage as an aggregate of 91 families and not simply as individuals, many of whom are worthy of study in their own right. It represents a new departure in a number of ways. First, it charts how a reconstituted composite resident peerage of mixed faith and ethnicity assimilated the established Catholic aristocracy. Second, it offers an overview of 91 titled families, usually over three or four generations. It situates the fortunes of these lords, 311 men, in the social and political contexts in which they operated: as fathers, husbands and landlords in their territorial patrimonies; as power brokers in county and national politics; and as courtiers and influential figures in England.3 Third, by tracing the fortunes of the resident peerage over nearly a century, this book eschews the traditional chronological boundaries that shackle the study of early modern Ireland. This enables change over time to be tracked and the galvanic impact of expropriation, plantation and a decade of

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Introduction

3

civil war during the 1640s to be examined, especially on landholding. Fourth, this book assesses the agency of the peers in and their responses to many of the convulsive processes that gripped early modern Ireland, especially anglicization, Protestantization, commercialization and colonization. What emerges is a series of complex and, at times, contradictory stories of ruthless self-aggrandizement, of pragmatic assimilation and mutation, and of a dogged determination to pursue agendas – in themselves often ambiguous – that preserved or, where possible, enhanced prestige, social standing, material wealth and political power. Families exploited the favourable circumstances created by the wider political situation to consolidate landed power and in the instances of dynasties like the Boyles or Butlers used their family networks to assemble vast territorial empires. Yet even dynasties that prospered often struggled to produce a legitimate male heir and thereby secure the succession.4 The fact that only the resilient and lucky few survived and succeeded should not, however, blind us to the importance of those families who failed in this regard. Definitions For the sake of clarity it is important to define terms, particularly the meanings of ‘peerage’, ‘nobility’, ‘aristocracy’, ‘resident’ and ‘Irish’. In early modern Ireland the peers were a class of nobility who enjoyed a title (as duke, marquis, earl, viscount and baron), awarded to them by the English monarch, and had the privilege of sitting as temporal lords in the House of Lords, alongside the Protestant archbishops and bishops. The greater peers also formed the ruling aristocracy. Traditionally the term ‘aristocracy’ designated ‘rule by the best’. By the early modern period its meaning had begun to change and correspond with the modern sense of the word and to denote ‘the very top layer of the nobility’ rather than a particular system of government.5 In 1603 the aristocracy of Ireland comprised the Butlers of Ormond, Fitzgeralds of Kildare, Bourkes of Clanricarde, O’Briens of Thomond, O’Neills of Tyrone, O’Donnells of Tyrconnell and a handful of lesser lords, such as the Nugents of Delvin (and later Westmeath). The ranks of the aristocracy were neither fixed nor impermeable. Some dynasties, like the O’Donnells and O’Neills, fell from royal favour and were attainted and their lands forfeited. Upward social mobility also occurred as ‘new’ lineages joined the established ones. In the pre-1641 years the Boyles of Cork and MacDonnells of Antrim entered the ranks of the ruling aristocracy, and after 1660 a significant number of new Protestant families, the Annesleys of Anglesey, Aungiers of Longford, Boyles of Orrery and Jones of Ranelagh, together with established ones like the MacCarthys of Clancarthy or the O’Briens of Inchiquin, did likewise. These great aristocratic dynasties, together with the lesser titled houses, comprised the Irish peerage which was closely modelled on the English hereditary peerage.

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Making Ireland English

The nobility was a social order that encompassed the titled peerage, together with baronets, knights and the upper echelons of the gentry. The concept of nobility had its origins in the division of medieval society into three orders, or Estates. The First Estate, the clergy, prayed; the Second Estate, the nobility, fought; and the Third Estate, the rest of society, worked. Traditionally the European nobility, the Second Estate, had comprised mounted knights who in return for military service received lands and social, political and sometimes legal privileges from the king. Birth usually determined noble status, but it was also critical to behave nobly and to maintain a lifestyle that was regarded as being noble. In addition to a military role, which was transformed and strengthened by the tactical, technological and logistical developments associated with the Military Revolution, nobles were regarded as being the king’s natural counsellors and as the essential points of contact with the wider community, ensuring that the king’s writ reached the furthest corners of his kingdom. Government was the king’s business and increasingly nobles also held key offices in the administration and judiciary.6 How large was the nobility in Ireland? Across early modern Europe the nobility constituted between 1 and 1.5 per cent of the general population.7 Calculating with precision the numbers of nobles in seventeenth-century Ireland is impossible, so a guesstimate must suffice. In 1600 the population of Ireland was between approximately 750,000 and 1.4 million people, of whom between 7,500 and 14,000 (1 per cent) might have enjoyed noble status. In neighbouring Scotland, where population size and definitions of nobility were comparable, Keith Brown has estimated that 7,500 people enjoyed noble status and ‘the total size of the landed nobility was at least 1,500 heads of houses’.8 By 1641 the population of Ireland had increased to between 1.5 and 2.1 million people and the number of nobles presumably also rose, even if many of the newcomers were of lowly origins.9 Whatever the precise figure, the 311 peers who lived over the course of the seventeenth century and are the subjects of this book represented a tiny minority of the wider community of nobles. Yet these men quickly established themselves as the dominant social group in Irish society. By 1641 half of the resident peerage was Catholic and half Protestant. The peerage combined distinct ethnic groups: the native or Gaelic-speaking Irish; the Old English, as the descendants of the English-speaking Anglo-Norman invaders were known; the New English, as those who had migrated to Ireland from England since the 1530s were labelled; the Scots and the Welsh. The social background of these men was equally varied with 52 (out of 91) houses of ancient lineage or noble blood, including the Bourkes of Clanricarde, Butlers of Ormond, Fitzgeralds of Kildare, MacDonnells of Antrim and O’Briens of Thomond. The remaining 39 families, like the Boyles, Blayneys, Hamiltons, Sarsfields, Taaffes and Moores, were soldiers or from the gentry or mercantile classes

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Introduction

5

and thus regarded as arrivistes or upstarts.10 Whatever their background, these titled families, especially the ancient houses, held a disproportionately large amount of Irish land, at least 18 per cent in 1641 rising to 26 per cent by c.1670.11 They controlled a significant element of the country’s wealth, and the richest aristocrats in Ireland were on a par with the most prosperous English or Scottish lords.12 Men of money, power, prestige and privilege, the peers lived nobly and conspicuously. They acted as cultural brokers, dressing in the latest London fashions (see plates 4, 5 and 6), speaking English (though a significant number would have been native Irish speakers or bilingual), and living in ‘great houses’.13 The creation of a ‘service nobility’ is a central element of the argument developed throughout this book. The fact that peers were required to take the oath of supremacy before holding office ensured that the service nobility was predominantly Protestant, with only a handful of Catholic aristocrats holding senior legal or administrative positions or enjoying military commands in the Stuart army. Unable to hold office as their forebears had, the only political outlet for many recusant lords was the royal court at Whitehall and the Irish parliament, which only met sporadically, and even there they often opposed government policies. Hardly surprisingly, the fact that Catholics, especially those who had previously formed part of the ruling elite, were excluded from serving the king became a major grievance. The Old English poet and historian, Richard Bellings, justified the reluctant involvement of the Catholic lords in the 1641 rebellion on the grounds that they were denied adequate opportunity to serve: We have considered the condition of all the other kingdomes of Europe, and we are the sole subjects, who, being much the more numerous and powerfull, are made incapable of raysing our fortunes by serving our King in any place of honour, profitt, or trust, in that country wherin we were borne, and which God, of his providence, appointed us as a part of the earth which our ancestors for soe many hundred yeares did inhabit.14

Ironically it was during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, which the 1641 rebellion helped to trigger, or in exile during the 1650s, that many of these lords finally secured an opportunity to serve the Stuarts. With the Restoration after 1660, Charles II endeavoured (not always successfully) to reward those who had stood by him in his darkest hour, but back in Ireland opportunities for service were once again restricted and limited to the Protestant peers. Deprived of opportunities to wield patronage, generate income and secure their noble honour, the continued exclusion of Catholics from holding office and bearing arms undoubtedly contributed to the long-term political and economic demise of Catholic lords, especially the lesser lineages.

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6

Making Ireland English

The term ‘resident’ peers also requires definition. The resident peers were those lords whose principal estates and interests were in Ireland even if, especially after 1660, the lord himself may have spent extended periods at court and acquired English estates. This group, the subject of this book, needs to be distinguished from those, usually Englishmen, who held Irish titles of honour but did not reside in Ireland nor own Irish lands and enjoyed few connections with that country. By 1628 nearly one-third of the seventeenthcentury peerage was non-resident and comprised a curious medley of entrepreneurs, upstarts and social climbers. Invariably these titled absentees were associated with the duke of Buckingham who viewed Irish titles as a resource that could be exploited in the interests of wider Stuart politics. During the late 1610s and 1620s he either sold Irish honours to enrich himself or used them to fob off tedious claimants who had insufficient money or political clout to secure an English peerage. Hardly surprisingly, Buckingham’s creations proved deeply controversial and had wider ramifications for Stuart politics as the sheer scale of the ennoblements alarmed many. The English peers were particularly horrified at the prospect of being outranked by an arriviste with a more senior Irish title.15 The established peers in Ireland were equally appalled and resented the fact that the link between land and title, so carefully nurtured by the Tudors, had been broken. Significant though these non-resident peers with Irish titles may have been, they do not feature in this book aside from a brief mention in chapter 2. The final term that requires definition is ‘Irish’, since ‘Irishness’ meant a variety of things to different people.16 Only the Gaelic-speaking Catholic natives regarded themselves as being truly ‘Irish’. Those of Anglo-Norman ancestry, such as the earls of Clanricarde or the Butlers of Ormond, consistently stressed their ‘Englishness’, often at the expense of their ‘Irishness’.17 Aidan Clarke’s seminal work on the political connections and cultural makeup of this ‘Old English’ community clearly demonstrates that throughout the first half of the seventeenth century they perceived themselves as the Crown’s loyal and devoted servants, and argued that their Catholicism in no way jeopardized their fealty to a Protestant prince nor their ability to serve him as their ancestors had done.18 Studies largely by Gaelic literary scholars, especially Breandán Ó Buachalla, suggest that after the defeat in the Nine Years War (1594–1603) and the ‘Flight of the Earls’ in 1607 the native Irish, while acknowledging the centrality of Catholicism to their identity, increasingly adopted the same conciliatory, politique attitude towards the Crown that had traditionally characterized the Old English.19 Despite prohibitions against extensive intermarriage and cultural crossassimilation, both had occurred between the native Irish and the Old English, with the result that many members of the former had become anglicized and the latter gaelicized. Predictably, this blurred boundaries between ‘Irishness’

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Introduction

7

and ‘Englishness’ and allowed Catholic peers to juggle identities. Some – like the Butlers of Mountgarret or the Barnewalls of Kingsland – touted their ‘Englishness’ when it was politically expedient to do so.20 Though of Scottish provenance and married to a prominent Englishwoman, the marquis of Antrim was born in Ireland, spoke Irish and upheld traditional Gaelic values. He sincerely wanted to succeed in, and be accepted by, very different worlds; to be both lauded by Gaelic bards on either side of the North Channel and painted by Van Dyck.21 A man of all three kingdoms, Antrim nevertheless remained a committed Catholic. For Antrim and so many of the recusant peers, religious belief fundamentally shaped identity. Lords did everything possible to prevent children being schooled by Protestants, and the fact that they sent children to be educated abroad at continental colleges underscored this devotion to Catholicism. The conversion to Protestantism of leading native Irish and Old English lords further complicated matters around identity. Some, such as the O’Briens of Thomond who converted to Protestantism in the late sixteenth century, downplayed their Irish origins and represented themselves as ‘English’. By the 1670s, Henry, the eldest son of the seventh earl of Thomond (and greatgrandson of the distinguished ‘civilizing’ fourth earl), urged his own heir ‘to cherish the English uppon his estate and driue out the Irish, and specially those of them whoe are under the name of gentlemen’.22 One of the best documented Old English families are the Butlers of Ormond, who by 1660 had become Ireland’s premier lineage. Of Anglo-Norman descent and Irish ancestry, the twelfth earl and later first duke of Ormond was born (and died) in England and made much of being English. Did contemporary writers render the Butlers of Ormond as ‘English’ (as they appear to have seen themselves), as ‘Irish’ (by virtue of their ancestry), or as ‘British’ (as they might be termed today)?23 Or were they more concerned with depicting the family’s sense of honour and dignity or, in the case of the Butler women, their virtue? Many contemporary English-speaking poets referred to Butler links with England, ‘our British world’ and the ‘British Empire’, rather than Ireland. However, these allusions were secondary to the poets’ concerns to portray the first duke of Ormond as a loyal servant to the Stuarts, as a premier courtier and as an extraordinary statesman, and his son Thomas, the first earl of Ossory, as a great military hero.24 In particular, elegies written in the wake of the deaths of Ossory, the first duke and his duchess, celebrated their lives and lineage, their military achievements, their public service and their private virtue together with their loyalty to sovereign, family and friends.25 Native Irish commentators challenged this representation. According to one Capuchin chronicler, ‘The family remained loyal to the English Crown in Ireland through good times and bad, for the sake of their own advantage, and during that time they contracted many marriages with the English; this

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Making Ireland English

very man [the duke of ] Ormond himself . . . had an Englishwoman for his mother, which is why he behaved like an Englishman among Englishmen’. Of course, identity was slippery and complex and could alter according to time, place and circumstance, and Ormond, like so many of his contemporaries, enjoyed multiple identities. Of his ‘Irishness’ the same chronicler claimed that the duke was descended from Irish ancestors over more than four centuries; he was bound by manifold binding ties of association with several of the best Irish families, and he had in Ireland estates, dependants, and numerous powerful off-shoots of his own extended family. He spoke the Irish language as well as English with elegance, and insisted among Irishmen that he was the most Irish Irishman of all.26

The earl of Meath concurred and claimed that Ormond was ‘as Irish as any man’.27 No doubt Ormond, like Thomond and others of their ilk, used his ‘Irishness’ when it was politically expedient to do so, but this should not disguise Ormond’s commitment to promoting the English (and Protestant) interest in Ireland. The ‘New English’ settlers, Catholic and Protestant alike, who colonized Ireland from the 1530s, flaunted their ‘Englishness’.28 However, as Toby Barnard’s insightful study of the collective mentality of the Protestant community demonstrates, the onset of the First English Civil War after 1642 forced Protestants living in Ireland to choose between king and Parliament and caused something of an identity crisis for many. Those who opted for Charles I continued to tout their ‘Englishness’; while those who sided with Parliament and later Oliver Cromwell viewed themselves primarily as Protestants of Ireland. Increasingly, religion became ‘the surest touchstone of reliability’, preparing the ground for the Protestant ascendancy of the eighteenth century and for Ireland’s emergence as ‘a part of the European ancien regime’.29 The other distinct ethnic group that settled in Ireland were the Scots. The first generation of ‘Scottish peers’ retained a strong sense of Scottish identity, but with the passage of time and presumably in a desire to become assimilated they became ever more ‘Irish’ (if Catholic) and ‘English’ (if Protestant). For example, when the earl of Mount Alexander, whose grandfather had settled in east Ulster at the turn of the century, died in 1663, no mention was made of his Scottish origins. The Montgomery family chronicler simply noted that the earl had no love or hatred ‘solely for country sake: English, Scotts and Irish were welcome to him, yet he liked and esteemed the English most (both his ladys being such)’.30 Clearly, Mount Alexander was not alone, and the extent to which it is appropriate even to label the descendants of the first generation of settlers as ‘Scottish’ is debatable. Like migrants throughout early

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Introduction

9

modern Europe, the Scottish lords who settled in Ireland often had problems in describing themselves. Instead of identifying with their place of birth they increasingly looked to their host nation, where they enjoyed rank and status, and to their monarch, as the source of honour and continued reward. Marriage, education, travel and socializing, together with shared concepts of honour and mutually beneficial political and economic agendas, also cut across ethnic and religious divides and helped to forge a common sense of aristocratic identity. Protocol and ritual regulated and reinforced the status and privilege this social group enjoyed. Thus in Ireland, as elsewhere in early modern Europe, identity formation proved an ongoing and multilayered process that was defined and redefined by prevailing political, religious and socio-economic developments.31 Making Ireland English The core argument of this book is simple: how the resident peers helped to make Ireland English.32 It illustrates how the Stuart sovereigns exercised imperial power over a troublesome dominion and how a particularly English institution, the hereditary peerage, was successfully transferred to Ireland where it served as an effective instrument in the Crown’s efforts to ‘civilize’ and anglicize.33 Victor Treadwell in his study of the duke of Buckingham in Ireland suggested that ‘Whether motivated by consideration of public policy or private interest, Buckingham was a major agent of “Britishization”. In particular, the proliferation of Irish honours and the promotion of plantation contributed to the interpenetration of English and Irish society at several levels.’34 This book suggests otherwise and argues that Buckingham’s agenda was an English rather than a British one. The Crown had long harboured ambitions to impose on Ireland an English legal, political, administrative, tenurial and honour system, together with the English language and religion (Protestantism), along with English ‘civility’ – dress, customs, codes of behaviour – and English (lowland) economic and agricultural practices.35 What distinguished the Stuarts from their predecessors was their ability to drive forward an imperial agenda in Ireland in a way not hitherto possible. James VI and I, who acceded to the throne of the three kingdoms in 1603, needed to capitalize on Elizabeth I’s hard-won victory over the earl of Tyrone and his followers at the end of the Nine Years War and, as one historian noted, move from ‘aristocratic to direct rule’.36 To achieve this, the king needed to reform his unruly subjects, to tame the overmighty lords, to replace ‘thuggery and feuding’ with ‘law and order’, and to channel labour into production rather than destruction. Yet even during the early modern period, the personalities of the monarchs and their ministers, a chronic lack of financial resources and changing

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priorities tempered metropolitan policies and attitudes towards Ireland.37 As a result, state-sponsored imperialism, which promoted military conquest, plantation and active colonization, was pursued throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries alongside more reforming assimilationist policies. With the completion of the military conquest of Ireland in 1603, the Crown aimed to establish – at the national, provincial and local levels – political, administrative and legal control over all elements of Irish society, and especially over the semi-autonomous warlords, the most powerful of whom had been ennobled by the English Crown. Closely linked to this was the determination to secure, wherever possible, religious conformity with the Church of Ireland. Alongside political subjugation and conversion to Protestantism stood cultural assimilation and the need to reform ‘uncivil’ natives and to anglicize their apparently barbarous customs, practices and culture. Finally, a combination of reform initiatives in the 1540s, 1570s and 1580s, together with official plantation and unregulated colonization, transformed the legal basis on which land was held in Ireland and thereby reconfigured the country’s economic and tenurial infrastructure in accordance with English commercial models, patterns of landowning and inheritance practices (namely primogeniture and entail). The creation of a hereditary peerage, which after the passage of the Kingship Act (1541) comprised all of the king’s Irish subjects, was an essential element of this package of reforms. Collectively these strategies, though often couched in the rhetoric of civility, effectively amounted to a form of imperialism that sought to exploit Ireland for England’s political and economic advantage, to anglicize the native population and to make Ireland English. The burden of implementing these policies in Ireland fell to the chief governors, Arthur Chichester, later baron of Belfast (1605–15), Thomas Wentworth, later earl of Strafford (1633–40), and James Butler, later duke of Ormond (1643–50, 1662–9 and 1677–85); but also to government officials, Church of Ireland clergy, lawyers and local lords. The majority of these imperial agents were Protestant newcomers or converts. However, given the scale of the enterprise and the lack of central funds, Irish Catholics, especially members of the traditional social and ruling elite, many of whom were incorporated into the resident peerage, were encouraged to serve as exemplars of civility and, whether wittingly or not, they collectively facilitated the implementation of civilizing policies on their estates across Ireland. Yet their involvement in these processes also afforded them an opportunity to negotiate compromises that best suited their personal circumstances and political ambitions. As a result, rather than being seen as passive victims, many Irish Catholics proved reactive and responsive to civilizing schemes. Moreover, the fact that English imperialism in Ireland lacked any overriding, coherent and consistent framework allowed some Catholics, especially the peers, together with many Protestant planters,

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not only to co-opt the colonial processes to strengthen their regional power bases but even to subvert the original civilizing agenda. As a result, multiple colonizations, occurring at a variety of levels, took place at different times and with varying degrees of intensity during this era. Hardly surprisingly, then, no neat imperial or civilizing model can be easily applied to early modern Ireland, something that the composite make-up of the peerage itself reflects. Structure This book offers an overview of the making of Ireland’s aristocracy during the century after 1570. The first seven decades of the seventeenth century – the reigns of James VI and I, Charles I, Oliver Cromwell and Charles II – are its primary focus. The re-Catholicizing policies of James II and VII and the wider significance of the events of 1690–1 receive limited analysis.38 The remaking of Ireland’s nobility during the reign of William III is not examined here but has received some scholarly attention elsewhere.39 A rigorous study of the Williamite land settlement and how it impacted on the exercise of noble power remains to be written. This book is divided into three parts. The first part (chapters 2–6) analyzes the political, cultural and religious reconstitution of Ireland’s peerage in the century after 1590 and charts the emergence of a Protestant service nobility. Chapter 2 offers a chronological overview of the structural reform of the resident peerage and provides detailed ‘snapshots’ of the peerage in its entirety at key dynastic and political intervals: 1603, 1628, 1641, 1670 and 1685. Three developments characterized this process of reconstruction. First, the Tudor and Stuart monarchs combined Gaelic, Old English, New English and Scottish lords of both faiths into a composite peerage, and immediately created tensions by allowing only Protestants to enjoy the full benefits of high administrative, legal and military office. Second, the inflation of honours, which began with the surrender and regrant programme of the mid-sixteenth century and peaked in the 1620s, accompanied by significant grants and transfers of land, allowed for intense upward social mobility as a generation of parvenus and adventurers secured titles, property and office. Third, the Crown created in Ireland an aristocracy which, by 1660, was identified almost exclusively with the parliamentary peerage. A corresponding cultural transformation occurred, which sometimes conflicted with these political developments and sometimes complemented them. Chapter 3 examines this cultural transformation of the titled nobility from a noble elite that drew its status primarily from blood, lineage and standing within a community to one determined by royal service and a title held from the king. The process was messy and contested especially by those Catholics who felt that they had been displaced by upstarts. Honour, central to the noble cultures of both native

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and newcomer, was the glue that bound together early modern noble society, and by 1641 ideas of honour, centred on the king and royal service, became dominant and formed an important part of wider anglicizing and civilizing processes. Chapter 4 focuses on land, the basis for political power in seventeenthcentury Ireland, and demonstrates how by 1641 the hierarchy of landownership was effectively mapped onto the status hierarchy which the peerage represented. Land, inherited through the practice of male primogeniture and entail, also provided the wealth that sustained a lineage and during the 1640s the fighting men it needed to wage war. This chapter documents the new patterns of land ownership and analyzes the landholding of the ‘top twenty lords’ in 1641 and c.1670, paying particular attention to the provinces of Munster and Ulster which underwent extensive programmes of plantation and colonization. Religion is the focus of chapter 5. In 1603 the vast majority of Irish peers were Catholic, but a combination of conversions and new Protestant creations ensured that by 1641 the religious composition of the resident peerage had changed very dramatically indeed: roughly half were Catholic and the other half Protestant. This chapter analyzes the attitudes of the peers towards religion. In particular it examines the relationship between the Stuarts (all but James II and VII were Anglican) and their Catholic subjects, especially the dogged determination of the recusant lords to maintain their faith even when it resulted in the state questioning their loyalty and depriving them of office. Finally, this chapter examines conversions and particularly the Crown’s use of wardship to secure converts to the ‘English religion’ as part of a wider civilizing mission. Contemporaries were conscious of the extent to which marriage served as a means of anglicization. Marriage, the subject of chapter 6, was a key event in a person’s life cycle and was quite literally the lifeblood for any titled family. A good marriage could bring a family immediate financial benefits (in terms of cash and lands), as well as providing access to influential political and patronage networks and to prestigious social circles. Above all the right wife would provide a lineage with a male heir to continue the line. The challenges involved in identifying a suitable bride, anxieties about her ethnic, social and religious background, and the economic and political significance of marriage are discussed in this chapter. The chapters 7–12 in part II of this book offer a broadly chronological overview of the role that the peers played in politics – parliamentary, courtly, national and regional – between the 1610s and the 1680s. Chapter 7 highlights the importance of the royal court in London, the ‘nerve centre’ of politics, as the place where policy was formulated, patrons were secured, patronage and clientage were exercised, matches were made, and bad habits and debts acquired. Above all the court allowed Irish peers to gain direct access to, and

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forge relationships with, the person of the monarch, the fount of all honour, along with his family and favourites. This chapter also analyzes the role that peers played in central and local government and how they exercised power on their estates. The contribution that the peers made to parliamentary politics, especially in the parliaments of 1613, 1634 and 1640–1, is fully discussed in chapter 8. The resident peerage in Ireland viewed itself as a fighting class or a military caste for whom service on the battlefield continued to be inextricably linked to a lord’s public and private sense of honour and virtue. Chapter 9 on ‘civil war’ offers a sustained discussion of this and analyzes the military and political contributions the peers made to the Wars of the Three Kingdoms (1639– 52), as the conflict between the subjects of Charles I is now known. The 1640s also provide a fascinating case study illustrating how relations between the monarch and his peerage broke down and also how tensions, often around religion, came to the fore. The Cromwellian military reconquest paved the way for another round of expropriation on a scale that not even Edmund Spenser or Thomas Wentworth would have imagined possible. Chapter 10 illustrates how the completion of the Cromwellian conquest reduced the resident peerage, especially those lords with royalist and confederate track records, to particularly low ebbs. In a world where land, wealth and power were inextricably linked, expropriation represented a profound threat to their status and their very existence as a privileged group in Irish society. Some peers preferred exile on the Continent to remaining in Ireland. There they eked out existences as political refugees at the royal court in exile or as military entrepreneurs. Others took their chances at home, and this chapter examines their fate and their strategies for survival. Chapters 11 and 12 focus on the fortunes of the resident peerage in the 1660s, 1670s and 1680s. The implementation of the land settlement, which defined the lives of lords for the remainder of the century, is discussed in chapter 11. For many the land transfers were largely complete by 1670 but for some, attempts to recover former estates dragged on for another decade and beyond. Who were the ‘winners’, ‘survivors’ and ‘losers’? The focus of chapter 12 is political life after 1660. It offers a detailed assessment of the role that the resident peers played in the Irish parliament of 1661–6 and the importance of Dublin as a political, social and economic centre. The restoration of the Stuarts created expectations amongst members of the Catholic peerage that they would be restored to their estates and that they would be allowed to serve their king at home, as many had during the 1640s or in exile. They were to be bitterly disappointed: it was their Protestant counterparts who benefited most from the frenzied scramble for land after 1660, held the highest offices and the senior military commands. This changed, however, with the accession of James II and VII in 1685 when the king favoured

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Catholics over Protestants and thereby alienated the latter. This chapter explores how the peers navigated the political factionalism and sectarianism of these years. The third and final part of this book (chapters 13–16) returns to a thematic discussion of the vertical bonds that sustained the peerage: income, wealth, borrowing, expenditure, kinship, family, education and death. One of the key features of the seventeenth century was the emergence of a commercially oriented, money-driven economy which privileged relationships between a lord and his tenant and focused on the production of marketable goods that could be exchanged for cash. Moreover the nobility now needed access to money – or credit – in order to fund lifestyles commensurate with their status and privileged position in society. Chapter 13 attempts to determine levels of wealth and landed income and explores how the peers made their money. Detailed case studies for leading aristocrats highlight the extent to which lords behaved as landed entrepreneurs and improving landlords, maximizing returns from mixed farming and agriculture and diversifying their income streams through proto-industrial activities or by acting as money lenders. Finally, chapter 13 examines the economic infrastructure that the peers established as they developed urban settlements and internal communications, provided funding and leadership for commercial and proto-industrial enterprises and, increasingly, involved themselves in trading networks and overseas expansionism. Expenditure is the focus for chapter 14. It examines patterns of conspicuous consumption and the strategies that families adopted for dealing with short- and long-term indebtedness. The continuities with traditional practices are often difficult to document. Nevertheless, chapter 15 examines the importance of lordship and how ties of blood, marriage, fosterage and clientage allowed, on the one hand, for the growth of powerful and geographically widespread lordships/lineages and, on the other, underpinned the exercise of political and military power, together with the trust relationships that facilitated economic exchange and high-level social interactions. The chapter also examines the wider significance of noble households and the hospitality associated with the ‘great house’. The continuities with the past, as embodied in the lordship/lineage, were real, but this was also a period of transition and the family unit, which comprised parents and children who were linked by blood or affinity, became increasingly important thanks to the primacy of primogeniture. The begetting and safe delivery of children, especially male heirs, who represented the future of any dynasty, and then equipping them with the life skills necessary to provide military and political leadership, became a priority and are explored here. Chapter 16 examines death, the final rite of passage, and discusses how noble families used death and especially funerals to mark the achievements – past, present and future – of the wider lineage. The rituals that surrounded death

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serve as a potent reminder of the general importance of ritual in helping to forge a sense of aristocratic identity and privilege. Many themes run throughout the chapters of this book, a number of which would be worthy of further study. For example, the cultural patronage and intellectual worlds of the nobility are not as fully explored here as one might wish. That said, this book has benefited enormously from pioneering scholarship on material culture by Toby Barnard, Raymond Gillespie and Jane Fenlon. The English, Scottish and continental influences on the construction of noble houses and gardens, and the acquisition of artworks and other luxury possessions, were very real.40 Recent work on Irish libraries has done much to illuminate the reading and collecting habits of the Irish elite, along with their intellectual worlds.41 The cultural patronage of great aristocrats like Ormond or Orrery has received some attention but also merits further analysis.42 Space precludes a detailed discussion of the relationships between the peerage and members of the landed gentry, the merchants and the professional classes.43 Yet these were the people who sustained a lord and his lineage, occasionally becoming visible in estate papers, inquisitions, wills, the 1641 depositions, records that detail debt and the land surveys. Members of the gentry comprised a lord’s chief tenants. They leased his lands, paid him rents, improved his property by building stone houses and planting orchards, attended his schools, worshipped in his church, formed the cortege at his funeral, helped to maintain law and order across his estate, and represented his interests in the wider community by serving as magistrates, justices of the peace and MPs. The ‘quality’ socialized with their lord, joining him for a celebratory dinner, a wedding feast, a game of cards, at a hunt or at the race course. Loyal during times of war, the gentry formed the backbone of a peer’s armies and at moments of crisis, especially during the 1650s, many did what they could to protect their lord’s interests. Even less is known about those further down the social hierarchy. These men ploughed a lord’s land, carried his water, drove his cattle to market, served as domestic servants, grooms and gardeners in his household, turned out during moments of celebration and mourning, and comprised the cannon fodder in his forces. More fully documented are the merchants who represented a very important link between a peer and the wider community, as they bought agricultural produce and livestock from a lord’s estate, provided him with goods and served as important sources of credit. Over the course of their lives, peers also interacted regularly with the professional classes, the clergy, lawyers and physicians, who ministered to them, litigated for them and cured their ailments.44 Only detailed cadastral and prosoparagraphic studies of individual lordships or regions will fully untangle these interlocking sets of relationships and allow for a better understanding of the local importance especially of the lesser lords.

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Just as each of these social groups, especially the gentry, and the relationships and dependencies between them await detailed analysis, so too does the history of the noble family – of children and grandchildren, and of the relationships between parents and their offspring and between siblings – in early modern Ireland.45 Here methodologies developed by gender historians on manhood and masculinities in early modern England might usefully enrich the study of the resident peerage, much as have recent studies of honour (see chapter 3 below).46 Gender history is essentially about power: the social relations of power, the formal exercise of power, and the mediation of power between men and women, between women and women, and between men and men. In her work Alexandra Shepard, has decoupled ‘manhood and patriarchy’ in order to ‘discern the full complexity of the workings of gender in a society’.47 She has demonstrated that for early modern England ‘stark hierarchies of age, social status, and marital status’ interacted with ‘gender hierarchies to produce a complex multi-dimensional map of power relations which by no means privileged all men or subordinated all women’. By moving away from a concept of gender ‘defined exclusively in terms of a male-female dichotomy’, she has enriched traditional understandings of patriarchy and recovered a ‘multiplicity of gender identities’.48 A history of masculinity in early modern Ireland awaits its historian, as do discussions about what the social and cultural constructions of maleness, manhood and manliness meant. Manliness, for instance, was a social as well as a sexual identity, and it might be argued that manliness was inevitably linked to the siring of a male heir, something that only two-thirds of peers managed to do. How did ‘concepts of masculinity’ interact ‘with contours of social status’ in a society where extensive intermarriage occurred between men of ‘ancient’ title and women of recent title or, in some cases, of ‘no breeding’.49 How did these complicate gender relations and compromise manhood? The Archives On his first visit to the English State Papers Office, King James VI and I was struck by the sheer bulk of records relating to Ireland and observed ‘that there was more ado with Ireland than all the world besides’.50 Despite the destruction of so many records of the Dublin government in the fires of 1711 and 1922, a wealth of material – albeit disparate and often difficult to interpret – that relates to the resident peerage has survived. Works on the peerage serve as obvious starting points. G. E. Cokayne’s Complete Peerage and John Lodge’s The peerage of Ireland provide basic information with regard to titles, patents, offices held, family circumstances (parentage, marriages and offspring) and, occasionally, they offer an insight into the educational background and the relationship an individual peer had with the Crown. The information gleaned

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from these rather dry, factual compilations needs to be used in conjunction with other sources, especially the personal archives of peers, estate papers, official records, the extensive contemporary pamphlets, and literary and visual sources. The survival of personal archives means that the nobility is often better documented than other social groups. However, bodies of correspondence for the resident peerage are the exception rather than the rule and are limited to the Butlers of Ormond, the Boyles of Cork and of Orrery (for the later decades of the seventeenth century), together with the Conway family. Largest of all is the Ormond archive, which is divided primarily between the Bodleian Library in Oxford, where the bulk of the correspondence is held, and the National Library of Ireland, where the estate papers are located. The archives of the Boyle family, currently divided between the National Library of Ireland and Chatsworth House, where much is held, contain letters, diaries, rent rolls, inventories, estates maps, leases, deeds and bonds. 51 Papers relating to the estates of the earls of Thomond (currently held at Petworth) and Orrery (located in West Sussex Record Office) also hold fascinating material on all aspects of Irish (and English) lordship in the seventeenth century.52 The letter books of the sixteenth earl of Kildare and marquis of Clanricarde have also survived, as have the diaries of the earl of Anglesey.53 Unfortunately, comprehensive, all-embracing, aristocratic archives remain the exception. Some seventeenth-century estate papers are extant for Lords Anglesey, Antrim, Balfour, Castlehaven, Castle Stewart, Claneboy, Digby, Donegal, Dungannon, Fingal, Fleming of Slane, Gormanston, Ikerrin, Kenmare, Le Power, Loftus of Ely, Ridgeway of Londonderry, Roche of Fermoy and Westmeath.54 Eighteenth-century disputes over the estates of the Plunketts, Barons Louth, contain much retrospective material.55 A significant number of wills have survived thanks in part to the fact that so many peers died in London and probate was granted by the court of Canterbury, while others survive amongst collections of family papers, along with extracts of wills granted probate in Dublin, the originals of which were destroyed in 1922.56 However, for the vast majority of peers, especially the lesser Catholic ones, there are no wills or letters or estates archives, making it very difficult to recover the nature of their finances never mind the secrets of their hearts. The fate of baronial archives was thus mixed. Some contemporaries took great care of their family papers. The guardians of the young earl of Kildare were particularly concerned about the ‘evidences and writings’ relating to his estates and stored them in a ‘council house, strongly built of stone, a little remote from the house [at Maynooth] towards the garden, a place very fit for their keeping’.57 Presumably this is why his letter book survived the destruction wrought on Maynooth castle by the insurgents after 1641. Lady Orrery carefully preserved for posterity her correspondence even if ‘many of

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the deeds and evidences’ relating to the family estate in Munster ‘were lost’ during the 1640s.58 The marquis of Clanricarde compiled letter books before he died and the earls of Anglesey, Orrery and Ormond collected together their personal papers and others relating to their lives (see chapter 16 below). Prior to the duke of Ormond’s death in 1688 his personal secretary urged the duke to commission a history of his life on the grounds that ‘every man is a debtor to his family, and ’tis not enough to leave great heaps of materials behind, if they must be left to the mercy of those who shall not employ them aright’.59 Others instructed that their papers be destroyed. Madame Preston, later Lady Tara, wrote many love letters to her husband during the 1640s and asked him to burn them after he had read them.60 Lady Clancarthy requested that her agent destroy her correspondence after she died and Lady Massareene instructed her executor to do likewise with her late husband’s papers.61 Natural disasters claimed other archives. A trunk containing ‘writings’ belonging to the earl of Desmond was recovered after he died in a shipwreck in 1629 and a Welsh pedlar was prosecuted for riffling through them.62 A fire in 1664 destroyed the personal papers of the Montgomery family, while the archive of Arthur Forbes, first earl of Granard, was lost when ‘owing to the dishonesty of my grandfather’s agent, the family papers were carried away or destroyed’.63 The publication of family memoirs and narratives, which glorified the achievements of a dynasty, became increasingly common across early modern Europe and helped to preserve select archives. From the early eighteenth century, published histories of the Bourkes of Clanricarde, the Boyles of Cork and of Orrery, the Butlers of Ormond, the Forbes of Granard, the Hamiltons of Clanbrassil, the MacDonnells of Antrim and the Montgomerys of Mount Alexander appeared and often reproduced contemporary memoirs and correspondence, along with other significant documentation such as grants, patents and wills.64 Given the haphazard rate of survival for personal archives, these volumes are of considerable historical value even if they were essentially works of propaganda. The lack of evidence for so many of the families that comprised the resident peerage is frustrating, and while it is critical not to downplay the distinctive contribution made by particular lineages whose records happen to be extant, this study also aims to pay due attention to the lesser peers, especially the Catholic ones, whose personal archives have not survived and who invariably lost out. Equally, noblewomen are everywhere and nowhere in the archives, and only the exceptional few – Ladies Antrim, Conway, Ormond, Orrery and Ranelagh – have left some written records. This absence of evidence is redressed in part by the survival of a substantial amount of material relating to the titled nobility among the papers of select lord deputies, especially Chichester, Wentworth and Ormond.65 Particularly important are the administrative and legal papers of the state in Dublin and

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especially in London, where archives are intact (but often not catalogued).66 For example, Kenneth Nicholls has alerted historians to the significance of Irish legal records, especially those of the court of Chancery, which survived the bombardment of 1922.67 Equally, English Chancery records (housed in the National Archives in Kew) require further examination not simply to uncover cases that involved peers resident in England but others that relate directly to Ireland.68 Other extant legal records, especially inquisitions and the records of the Court of Claims, illuminate disputes over debts, mortgages, marriage settlements, and provision for widows and minors.69 The 1641 depositions are particularly valuable in helping to reconstruct what actually happened during the early months of the uprising and the impact that the rebellion had across Ireland.70 There are two types of deposition: the statements taken down within a few years of the events that were alleged to have happened and those collected during the 1650s. Over 8,000 depositions record losses and contain accounts of how the rebellion changed the lives of ordinary folk as well as great lords. This witness testimony allows scholars to ‘listen in to the conversations of many ordinary people as they struggle with conflict, fear and trauma; we can hear the words they used. . . . We can feel the pain and the traumas.’71 Alongside these qualitative sources are more quantitative ones. The Irish statute staple records contain a wealth of information on the activities of titled creditors and debtors, and are worthy of detailed analysis since they provide a fascinating insight into the credit network that helped to sustain much economic activity during these years.72 The recognizances taken by the mayors of the staple, known as statutes staple, were a form of registered bond by which a debtor(s) entered into a recognizance to pay a creditor(s) a fixed sum, at a given time, together with interest at 10 per cent. The bond accorded security for the loan and was usually double the amount of the loan. The statute staple was thus an effective means of securing financial transactions, and by the early seventeenth century its significance lay in the regulation of debt. Perhaps in recognition of this, the Irish staple towns expanded to include Belfast, Carrickfergus, Derry, Galway, Kilkenny, Limerick, New Ross, Sligo, Wexford and Youghal, as well as the original towns of Cork, Drogheda, Dublin and Waterford.73 Of particular importance are the various maps and surveys associated with the plantations of Munster and Ulster, the Strafford Survey of Connacht (1636–40), Sir William Petty’s ‘Down Survey’ (1654–9) and ‘Civil Survey’ (1654–6). The Books of Survey and Distribution, ‘being abstracts of various surveys and instruments of title, 1636–1703’, are especially noteworthy.74 Arthur Capel, earl of Essex, ordered their compilation during his lord deputyship (1672–7), though some sets contain references to forfeitures after 1688.75 The Books of Survey and Distribution are the equivalent of the

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Domesday Book (a great English land survey dating from 1086) for Ireland and recapture the revolution in landholding that the country experienced during these years. The most complete set is in the National Archives in Dublin (the ‘Quit Rent’ set) and includes entries for every county in Ireland. Drawn up in the wake of the restoration land settlement in part for taxation purposes (‘quit rent’), these contain a wealth of information. The names of landholders in 1641 and again in c.1670 appear in columns together with the number of plantation acres (profitable and non-profitable) and the county, barony and parish where the land was held.76 The entries are linked to the Down Survey maps, or in some instances, to the Strafford Survey. Units of measurement were not standardized, which frustrates attempts to provide accurate totals of acres owned, but by the mid-seventeenth century the use of the ‘plantation’ or ‘Irish plantation’ measure (the terms are interchangeable) was common.77 The survival of records like these is rare and offers historians of early modern European nobilities a fascinating opportunity to examine in painstaking detail the land transfers that helped to make – and to break – Ireland’s political, economic and social elites.78 Finally, contemporary pamphlets and literary sources, especially prose and poetry, help the historian to probe the mindsets and mentalities of the peers.79 Visual sources – ranging from portraits and engravings to estate maps and images of funeral monuments – offer additional insights into the physical, material and cultural worlds of resident lords.80 Sadly, extant examples of seventeenth-century domestic architecture are few – whether in 1641, 1798 or 1922, baronial mansions quickly became targets for Irish insurgents – and this frustrates attempts to offer extensive sampling. However, what has survived, combined with a variety of written and cartographic sources, recaptures the building frenzy that gripped the aristocracy as they constructed elaborate English-style mansions, replete with walled gardens, orchards and deer parks, or renovated medieval castles.81 Historiography The seminal book on the nobility in the Stuart kingdoms remains Lawrence Stone’s The Crisis of the Aristocracy 1558–1641 (first published in 1965). Informed by rigorous analysis of extant archives and by methodologies pioneered by the Annales school of French social history, Stone argued that the English nobility, during the later sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, underwent an economic, political and intellectual crisis which shook the very foundations of Stuart society.82 Despite the hostile reception Stone’s study received in some quarters, it helped to transform how historians studied nobilities.83 While it is now clear that Stone’s emphasis on ‘crisis’ proved something of a distraction, the controversy it generated had the positive benefit of

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stimulating further research into nobilities across early modern Europe. The emphasis of this new research is more conceptual: what was noble status and how it was acquired; what is known of noble demography and family structure; the importance of the wider lineage, marriage and inheritance; attitudes to violence, education and culture; and patterns of office holding.84 Writing in 1966, Hugh Kearney, in a review for Irish Historical Studies, suggested that Stone’s book ‘is certain to have reverberations in the field of Anglo-Irish history, though what form re-interpretation will take is difficult to foresee at the moment’.85 What reverberations did Stone’s magisterial study have on the study of the aristocracy in Ireland? The simple answer is remarkably little. That said, historians of early modern Ireland have increasingly devoted scholarly attention to the study of the elites in the early modern period. Medieval and Tudor historians have paid particular attention to the importance of lordship.86 A monograph on the Irish House of Lords after 1690 sheds some light on the parliamentary activity of the peerage in the earlier decades.87 The earls of Antrim, Kildare and Orrery have been the subjects of recent political biographies.88 Roughly a third of the resident peers merit entries in both the Dictionary of Irish Biography and the Dictionary of National Biography. All of the leading aristocrats, along with some of the lesser peers (Bermingham of Athenry, Butler of Galmoy and of Ikerrin, Magennis of Iveagh, Netterville of Dowth and Roche of Fermoy), are provided with entries, together with a small selection of their wives, including Ladies Antrim, Conway, Cork, Kildare, Ormond and Ranelagh, and younger sons or brothers who had distinguished clerical or military or business careers. Recovering the life stories of individual lords is an essential first step in reconstructing the political, social, cultural and economic worlds they inhabited. Particularly important in this regard is Nicholas Canny’s social and cultural biography of the first earl of Cork and, more recently, David Edwards’ superb study of the Butler lordship.89 Pioneering work has also been done on marriage, death and honour, and these studies are particularly relevant for those interested in studying the titled nobility in Ireland.90 The wider relationships that resident peers had with the royal court have also received meticulous analysis.91 Aristocratic culture and values have been carefully recovered by scholars working on bardic poetry.92 The culture, life and politics of the Protestant elite in the early modern period have also been extensively researched.93 Important though these works undoubtedly are, the question remains as to why historians of early modern Ireland have not studied the aristocracy as a collective. First, the unevenness of the archives and the absence of papers, especially for the lesser Catholic houses, have proved a major and understandable deterrent. Second, the focus of much research on early modern Ireland has, until relatively recently, been on political and military history at the expense of social, economic and cultural history. Third, the association of the

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aristocracy in Ireland (albeit of a later vintage than most of the peers discussed in this book) with English imperialism made it an unpopular subject of study amongst Irish historians. During the Irish civil war of the twentieth century the ‘big house’, which stood as an uncomfortable reminder of a colonial past, became a military target; writing the histories of their titled occupants did not sit well with a tradition that was republican and nationalist. Of course this is changing, something that became clear at a conference, held in 2009, on ‘Nobilities in Early Modern Ireland’ at the University of Galway. There, a new generation of scholars re-evaluated the contribution nobles made to the development of early modern Ireland and challenged the sentimentalized preconceptions and hagiographic histories that characterized earlier studies of the aristocracy, particularly those written in the nineteenth century. Wider historiographical debates have also highlighted the need to understand who the ruling elite were and what these lords actually did. Consider, for example, the ‘New British history’.94 Throughout the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the histories of the three kingdoms became inextricably intertwined. Events in one kingdom, especially during periods of plantation and the wars of the 1590s, 1640s and after 1688, influenced affairs in its neighbour. After 1603 the royal court in London served as an important point of contact and a cultural melting pot for English, Irish, Scottish and Welsh aristocrats. Individuals – like Lords Anglesey, Antrim, Clanricarde, Cork, Ormond and Orrery – enjoyed political, military, landed, commercial, literary or intellectual interests across the Stuart kingdoms and invite ‘holistic’ and pan-insular analysis.95 As a methodology the ‘New British history’ is useful in other respects. Increasingly, Irish historians have become interested in the study of social and cultural history and have adapted methodologies pioneered by scholars of early modern England or Europe, where the extant archival material is often richer. This book owes much to the research, methodologies and arguments developed by Stone on the English peerage and Keith Brown’s superb two-volume study of the Scottish nobility. The scholarship of Stone, Brown and of European historians like Ronald Asch, Hamish Scott and Karin MacHardy means that comparisons across the Stuart kingdoms and early modern Europe can be made.96 It is also critical to remember that early modern Ireland formed part of continental Europe. Throughout this period France, Spain and Italy were particularly important temporary destinations for young lords in search of cultural, economic, educational, military and religious experiences and training. After 1603 political exiles from Ireland became permanent features at the European courts, and the expansion of the Spanish aristocracy during the later decades of the seventeenth century included many Irishmen (Berehaven, Butlers, Husseys, O’Donnells, O’Neills and Taaffes) who secured titles, lands, office and became quickly assimilated into their host society.97

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Introduction

23

Others continued to use a title abroad that had been declared forfeit at home. For example, the earldom of Tyrone was created in 1542 and forfeited in 1608, yet Hugh, second earl, and his sons, the third and fourth earls, continued to style themselves as ‘earl of Tyrone’ and were recognized as such by continental monarchs.98 A few held titles from continental sovereigns as well as the Stuarts. For example, Hugh Hamilton, later baron of Glenawley, was ennobled in Sweden under the title Baron Hamilton of Deserf, and his sister-in-law, Anna-Catherina Grubbe-Stjernfelt, was styled ‘Lady Hamilton of Tullykeltyre’ after the family moved back to County Tyrone.99 The fact that Ireland, like other states across early modern Europe, was responding to similar sets of pressures – state formation, confessionalization, the professionalization of warfare, and so on – facilitates meaningful comparisons around the contributions that their aristocracies made to these processes and to the emergence of common noble cultures across early modern Europe.100 Equally, noble responses to these processes can be examined. Historians have, for example, noted the adaptability of nobilities and their capacity ‘to assimilate cultural trends . . . and to subordinate them to its own value system’.101 Meaningful parallels can be drawn between Ireland and the Habsburg territories of Bohemia and Lower Austria after 1620, where the emperor set out to create a Catholic service nobility. There, as in Ireland, land transfers underpinned and facilitated this social engineering as monarchs rewarded favourites or those whom they sought to win over with confiscated acres, along with titles of honour and office. The ubiquity of warfare in the seventeenth century ensured that landed windfalls occurred across early modern Europe, especially in Bohemia, Muscovite Russia, Sweden and Denmark, which had profound implications for noble life.102 Of course, identifying differences is as important as examining the similarities. For example, the fact that many resident peers in Ireland practised a religion different to that of their king, which flew in the face of the contemporary doctrine of cuius regio, eius religio, would not have been tolerated elsewhere. The ambiguities and tensions that characterized Stuart Ireland ended in 1691 with the military defeat of Irish Catholics and their total exclusion from power, politics and public office. Thereafter Ireland resembled more closely the Habsburg lands of Bohemia and Lower Austria where, after 1620, nobles who wished to exercise power, own land and have a political voice had no alternative but to espouse the religion of their ruler.

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PART I The Reconstitution of Ireland’s Aristocracy, 1590s–1670s

This section analyzes the political, cultural, tenurial, religious and marital reconstitution of Ireland’s peerage in the century after 1590 and charts the emergence of a Protestant service nobility. Chapter 2 offers a chronological overview of the structural reform of the resident peerage and examines the peerage in its entirety at key dynastic and political intervals: 1603, 1628, 1641, 1670 and 1685. Chapter 3 explores the cultural transformation of the titled nobility from a noble elite that drew its status primarily from blood, lineage and standing within a community to one determined by royal service and a title held from the king. Chapter 4 demonstrates how by 1641 the hierarchy of landownership was effectively mapped onto the status hierarchy which the peerage represented. Religion is the focus of chapter 5 and marriage is the subject of chapter 6.

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CHAPTER 2

The Transformation of the Peerage Like his Tudor predecessors, James VI and I was determined to ‘civilize’ Ireland. This involved imposing English legal, political, administrative and tenurial structures, along with an English honour system, the English language, Protestantism, English dress, customs, codes of behaviour and lowland economic and agricultural practices.1 The peers played a central role in the Crown’s efforts to ‘civilize’ Ireland, and a study of titles reveals how the king manipulated the lords and created a primarily Protestant service nobility, akin to what the Habsburgs achieved in Bohemia and Lower Austria after 1620.2 There, as in Ireland, land transfers underpinned and facilitated this social engineering as monarchs rewarded favourites or those whom they sought to win over with confiscated acres, along with titles of honour and office. The key difference was that in the Habsburg lands the emperor actively favoured Catholic nobles as his loyal servants and excluded Protestant ones. In Ireland the Stuarts initially preferred elevating Protestants to peerages, but by the 1620s the king created lords of both faiths. As a result by the midseventeenth century nearly 70 lineages formed the backbone of the Stuart peerage in Ireland, just under half of whom were from ‘old’ families and half of whom were Catholic. Lands, titles, religion and loyalty became inextricably intertwined and provided the Stuarts, who lacked a substantial standing army and a sizeable bureaucracy, with an effective and relatively inexpensive means of governing a particularly troublesome kingdom. The Stuarts did, however, draw the line at allowing Catholics to hold senior positions of authority in the Dublin administration, the judiciary and the army. In short, having created a service nobility, the Stuarts then prevented all but the greatest Catholic aristocrats from actually serving their prince as bureaucrats, as judges or as officers, alongside more recent Protestant creations. This resulted in the Catholic nobility, who saw themselves as the king’s natural supporters and as the traditional leaders within Irish society, feeling aggrieved. Political tensions bubbled

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Making Ireland English

to the surface in 1613, during the mid-1620s and, most spectacularly, during the civil wars of the 1640s. During years of shared exile on continental Europe in the 1650s these Catholic peers finally had an opportunity to serve their monarch, and after the Restoration Charles II rewarded their loyalty by restoring them to their hereditary estates. Despite enjoying the goodwill of the king after 1660, Catholics were still not permitted to hold high office or senior military commands until James II and VII ascended the throne in 1685 and actively promoted Catholics, much to the irritation of the Protestant peers, who resented any diminution of their privileged position as the king’s loyal servants in Ireland. The link between service, land and a title of honour was not, however, hard and fast. The Stuarts and their favourites, especially George Villiers, duke of Buckingham, viewed Irish land and titles as resources that could be exploited in the interests of wider politics, and handed out Irish peerages to reward avaricious English courtiers and tedious claimants. Strapped for cash, James VI and I and Buckingham shamelessly sold Irish honours to those without sufficient clout or cash to secure an English title. The result was that nearly a third of the peerage did not reside or have any interest in Ireland, nor were they in a position to serve the king in Ireland.3 Instead these parvenus generated animosities amongst members of the established peerages in all three kingdoms.4 This chapter offers a chronological overview of the structural reform of the resident peerage in Ireland and provides detailed ‘snapshots’ of the peerage in its entirety at key dynastic and political intervals: 1603, 1628, 1641, 1670 and 1685.5 The obvious starting point is 1603 and the regal union of the Stuart kingdoms under the ‘imperial crown’ of James VI and I. An examination of the composition of the peerage in 1603 forms the baseline against which change and expansion over the course of the seventeenth century can be monitored. The inflation of honours associated with the royal favourite Buckingham was particularly significant and explained why the second key date was Buckingham’s death in 1628, rather than the accession of Charles I in 1625. This should not suggest that the early Stuarts did not take a very direct interest in Ireland. They did. In particular, James VI and I personally oversaw the plantations in Ulster and boasted that the reform of Ireland was one of his greatest achievements. Ultimately, the rancour caused by his only Irish parliament (1613–15) soured his enthusiasm and he effectively delegated ruling Ireland to Buckingham.6 The importance of 1641 as a watershed in Irish history cannot be overstated. It marked the outbreak of the Irish rebellion and the onset of a decade of civil war followed by another decade of Cromwellian occupation. The survival of detailed data for 1641 is particularly fortunate. In particular, the Books of Survey and Distribution, which list landowners in 1641 and again

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in c.1670, make it possible to reconstruct the general extent of baronial estates prior to the outbreak of war and to assess the impact that the revolution in landholding of the 1650s had on them (see chapters 4 and 12 below). With this in mind, 1670, rather than the return of Charles II to the throne of the three kingdoms in 1660, is taken as the key date for the Restoration period. The accession of James VII and II in 1685 is the final date for which a detailed analysis of the peerage is given. How many peers were there at these key moments and what proportion were resident in Ireland and committed to Irish affairs? What was the ethnic and social background of these lords? Why were the creations of new titles significant? Before offering a generational analysis of the Stuart peerage, it is essential to establish how these seventeenth-century peers related to those ennobled in the years before 1603 and to appreciate how the Stuarts espoused the reforming and ‘civilizing’ policies begun by the Tudors. Tudor Peerage Prior to the 1540s the peerage in Ireland was small and had remained relatively stable for the three previous centuries. Only three lines – Barry (created 1261?), Bermingham of Athenry (created 1280?) and Fitzmaurice of Kerry and Lixnaw (created 1295?) – traced their titles back to the thirteenth century. The earldoms of Kildare and Ormond dated from the early fourteenth century (created 1316 and 1328), along with three other titles, Courcy of Kinsale (created 1340?), Preston of Gormanston (created 1370?)7 and Fleming of Slane (created 1370?). In the fifteenth century the king honoured six families: St Lawrence of Howth (1440), Plunkett of Killeen (1449), Roche of Fermoy (1461),8 Plunkett of Dunsany (1462), Barnewall of Trimleston (1462) and Nugent of Delvin (1478). These families of Anglo-Norman provenance comprised the English aristocracy of Ireland and the country’s colonial elite. These lords quickly adapted to the warring and politically fragmented Irish landscape. In the sixteenth century baronial warfare had proved endemic and had escalated into major noble risings (Silken Thomas’s rebellion of the mid1530s, the earl of Desmond’s of the 1570s and the earl of Tyrone’s of the 1590s). Each of these sixteenth-century rebellions had specific causes but each one fed off the widespread lawlessness that afflicted Tudor Ireland.9 This general disorder stemmed in large part from the fact that a small number of powerful Old English and native Irish overlords not only controlled their own territories but also collected tribute (in the form of military service, food, lodgings, and agricultural labour) and demanded submission from previously independent regions, thereby extending their political control and enhancing their standing within their own lordship. Since military might and robust

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Making Ireland English

baronial networks determined dynamic lordship, maintaining and sustaining an effective army became a priority for any sixteenth-century Irish lord. It also underpinned the social order, for a lord’s followers were not only obliged to feed and house soldiers but to offer military service themselves in return for his protection. This elaborate system of extortion, intimidation and protection was known to the Old English as ‘coign and livery’ and enabled individual lords to field substantial private forces.10 Since livestock, especially cows, constituted an important form of wealth, cattle raiding was also rife. A successful cattle raid sometimes resulted in the submission of a territory, which enhanced the military and political standing of those who led the raids, and brought increased riches in the form of tribute.11 Many English observers were shocked at the extent to which AngloNorman and Gaelic Irish lineages had by the sixteenth century (if not long before) come together ‘in kin[d]red, alliance and affinities of bludd’, and effectively shared many aspects of the same political culture despite prohibitions against doing so.12 Rather than being the upholders of civility, these lords were held responsible by their critics for the degeneration of Ireland into lawlessness as they pursued violent vendettas and became embroiled in factional feuding. A number of great dynasties – Desmond, Kildare, Ormond, O’Brien, O’Donnell and O’Neill – predominated as they vied with each other to exploit to their best advantage the political geography of their estates and to bring lesser lordships under their protection. By the early sixteenth century there were two dominant factional networks – the Geraldines (Fitzgeralds of Kildare and Desmond) and the Butlers (Ormond) – which the Crown attempted, with varying degrees of success, to manage in an effort to rule Ireland.13 The passage of the Kingship Act in 1541 transformed Ireland’s status from a feudal lordship into an imperial kingdom and enabled the Crown to reshape the aristocratic elite. This ‘constitutional revolution’ redefined relations between the English king and his subjects, especially those of Irish provenance, who were now accorded the same rights as those of English origin.14 Sir John Davies later suggested that the Anglo-Norman nobility resented the Irish being made ‘free subjects’ since this threatened the privileged position of the former, as the colonial elite, within society.15 Legislation that promoted English language, dress and culture also became law in 1537. ‘An Act for the English Order, Habite, and Language’ mandated ‘a conformitie, concordance, and familiarity in language, tongue, in maners, order, and apparel, with them that be civil people’ from the English Pale. The Act also outlawed the Irish language, the wearing of glibs (or long fringes) or Irish garments such as mantles.16 Later legislation prohibited other Gaelic agricultural, social, political and cultural practices. For instance, the removal of Irish-speaking ‘tympanours, poets, story-tellers, babblers, rymours, harpers, or any other

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Irish minstrels’, who served as symbols of the ‘feasting and fighting’ culture, became a priority.17 Alongside these ‘civilizing’ and anglicizing initiatives, the Crown promoted the policy of surrender and regrant whereby those lords who held land without an English title surrendered it to the Crown. The issue of letters patent regranted the title in perpetuity under the sovereignty of the Crown and in tenure good in English law. The lord agreed to renounce his Gaelic title for an English one, to accept primogeniture as the basis for succession and inheritance, to recognize the king’s writ and courts, and promised to anglicize his territories.18 By 1547 some 40 Gaelic chieftains had surrendered their lands, including some of the most powerful magnates. Lord Deputy Anthony St Leger was the great proponent of surrender and regrant, believing that ‘the king’s subjects will be sooner brought to conformity by small gifts and honest persuasion than by rigor’.19 With this in mind, he presented a paper in December 1540 to the Irish council which proposed that baronages be granted to Sir Edmund Butler (Dunboyne), Brian Fitzpatrick (Upper Ossory), Oliver Plunkett (Louth), Sir William Bermingham (Carbery), and viscountcies to Sir John Rawson (Clontarff ) and Sir Thomas Eustace (Baltinglass). The king and council endorsed his recommendations and between 11 and 29 June 1541 these six titles of honour were granted. Three became extinct before the end of the sixteenth century (Carbery, Clontarff and Baltinglass) but not before James, second Viscount Baltinglass, had plunged the country into rebellion between 1579 and 1583.20 Lords Dunboyne, Louth and Upper Ossory remained loyal to the Crown during the rebellions of the sixteenth century and the Nine Years War (1594–1603).21 The particular willingness of Gaelic lords to collaborate and compromise with the Crown highlights the extent to which they were ‘in fact pragmatists concerned with maximising their power and enhancing their reputation at minimum risk’.22 David Edwards’s pioneering study of the Fitzpatricks or MacGiollapadraigs of Upper Ossory, one of the middle-ranking Gaelic dynasties, offers a series of fascinating insights into Gaelic attitudes towards English rule and Tudor reform. In 1541 Brian Fitzpatrick willingly surrendered his chiefly title (‘the MacGiollapadraig’) and lands, agreed to end the use of Gaelic practices, adhere to the English common law (including primogeniture), to encourage his followers to use the English language and dress, and permitted his son, Barnaby, to be reared at court with Edward VI (where he embraced Protestantism). Brian Fitzpatrick was the first Gaelic chieftain to take his seat in the House of Lords. Despite the rhetoric of the agreement, ‘the barons of Upper Ossory remained cattle lords in the classic Gaelic tradition’. They embraced Tudor reforms as a means of minimizing English interference and of bolstering their own position within the

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lordship. In the short term, collaboration proved a very effective survival strategy.23 The middle decades of the sixteenth century witnessed a considerable expansion of the peerage in Ireland, with the creation of three earls, a viscount and seven barons. With the exceptions of Baron Le Power (created 1535), Viscount Mountgarret (created 1550), the earl of Clancare (created 1565) and Baron Bourke of Castle Connell (created 1580), these titles dated from the years between 1541 and 1543 and were linked to surrender and regrant agreements.24 In addition to the six titles granted in 1541 (discussed above), Con O’Neill, long a thorn in the side of the authorities and source of constant trouble, was created earl of Tyrone in October 1542, with the remainder of his title passing, contrary to normal practice, to his illegitimate son, Matthew, who was styled Baron Dungannon, in tail male.25 Of equal political significance, Murrough O’Brien, prince of Thomond, surrendered to the king’s authority ‘his captainship, title, superiority, and country’, covenanting ‘utterly to forsake and refuse the name of O’Breen’. On 1 July 1543 in Greenwich the king elevated him to the earldom of Thomond. On his death the earldom passed to his nephew (styled Lord Ibracken) and his barony (of Inchiquin) to his son.26 As in the case of Matthew O’Neill, the Crown ignored, for pragmatic reasons, the primacy of primogeniture. The Thomonds promoted anglicization as a survival strategy, and a scholarly study of lordship shows that the ‘essential characteristics of the traditional lordships were in fact preserved and institutionalised under English law in the seventeenth century, though in an altered form’. By the late sixteenth century Donough, fourth earl, who had been reared at the English court, embraced Protestantism.27 The other great overlords in the west were the Bourkes. Anglo-Norman in origin, the de Burghs had become gaelicized and the clan leader enjoyed the title, ‘the MacWilliam’. A succession dispute over who would be the MacWilliam resulted in one of the candidates, Ulick na cgeann (the beheader), cutting a deal with the English administration. In 1543 Ulick travelled to court for the formal surrender and regrant of his lands, and on 1 July 1543 he was elevated to the earldom of Clanricarde at Greenwich (the elevation of Clanricarde and Thomond on the same day later resulted in endless wranglings over precedency, with Clanricarde claiming seniority). Clanricarde’s earldom triggered the onset of a long process of anglicization, lasting at least five generations, which was interrupted by bouts of resistance. As in the cases of Thomond and Fitzpatrick, the true impact of anglicization only became really apparent after 1603 once Ireland had been militarily subdued and the Crown finally had the resources to enforce Tudor reforms.28 Over time, these arrangements became increasingly sophisticated. Throughout the 1570s and 1580s, the state pressured leading powerbrokers to accept ‘composition’ agreements that sought to demilitarize the local magnates by

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appealing directly to their principal followers and enhancing the power of the state in the process.29 Thus, the ‘Composition of Connacht’ (1585) promoted anglicization in the lordships of Clanricarde and Thomond and paved the way for moderate tenurial and political reform. Ultimately, however, it weakened rather than strengthened the position of the lesser landowners and enshrined in English law the ‘essential characteristics of the traditional lordships’.30 Thus, these reforming arrangements not only protected, at least in the short term, the estates of leading lords from confiscation but also represented an effective form of ‘unconscious colonization’. The experiences of the other great Gaelic overlords, the MacCarthy Mórs, whose estates encompassed much of south Kerry and west Cork, differed and they highlight the dangers inherent in entering into a surrender and regrant agreement. In a ceremony in London on 24 June 1565 Donal, ‘the MacCarthy Mór’, formally submitted and surrendered his lands to Elizabeth I, who created him earl of Clancare and baron of Valentia.31 Despite Clancare’s promises to promote the English legal system and English cultural practices, his lordship continued to operate as it always had and the impact of anglicization was limited. Rumours of an ambitious scheme to colonize Munster, including Clancare’s lands, provoked the earl into military action and resulted in his public renunciation of his English title in favour of his Gaelic one, the MacCarthy Mór. The rebellion came to nought and Clancare once again submitted to the English administration. He attempted to keep a low profile during the 1570s as the earl of Desmond’s rebellion plunged Munster into chaos and resulted in the forfeiture of his estates and the demise of the mighty house of Desmond.32 The onset of the Munster plantation after 1584 posed a renewed threat to Clancare, as the Crown confiscated territories held by lords from whom he collected tribute. This combined with his escalating debts and the death of his only legitimate heir left the earl very vulnerable. Under the terms of the 1565 royal grant his lands would revert to the Crown in the event that he died without leaving a legitimate male heir. In a last-ditch attempt to prevent the breakup and redistribution of his estates, Clancare tried to marry off his daughter, Ellen, to a local English planter rather than to Florence MacCarthy Reagh to whom she had been betrothed. This failed and the line became extinct until the MacCarthys of Muskerry assumed the title of Clancarthy after the Restoration (discussed below). Despite the Crown’s dependence on securing the cooperation of local magnates, criticism of these ‘overmighty lords’ continued.33 Civic humanists like Sir Thomas Smith and Thomas Blennerhasset wanted to break the feudal ties that bound common folk to their lords and thereby facilitate Ireland’s transition to a civil society.34 Writers like Edmund Spenser and Sir John Davies particularly resented the power and influence enjoyed by the ‘over mighty’ lords who ‘exercise plain tyranny over the common people’.35 Fynes

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Moryson added that they used ‘husbandmen … as slaves’.36 According to Spenser, these lords wielded a nearly absolute power over their inferiors, compelling their sizeable body of dependants ‘to followe them into any action whatsoever’.37 Lord Deputy Chichester concurred. Writing at the turn of the seventeenth century he reported to London that the peoples of Cavan and Monaghan were unacquainted with the laws of good government, having been so long subject to oppression and tyranny, as they shall ever be, unless some men of more civility and understanding be seated among them both to instruct and to defend them; for it is death to the great lords that their tenants and followers should know or understand more than brute beasts, by reason their greatest advantage for profit in times of peace, and for opposition and defence in days of rebellion, ariseth from the ignorance of the meaner sort.38

As the seventeenth century progressed, the state enjoyed authority over these ‘tyrannous Irish lords’ and exercised a monopoly over the use of violence. In 1625 Sir William Parsons, master of the much hated court of wards, reported to Lord Conway in London that the common law was respected and king’s writ obeyed everywhere. Irish lords no longer operated as ‘petty sovereigns’ but ‘now embraced and [were] environed by [royal] authority’.39 Peerage in 1603 On the accession of James VI and I to the throne of the Stuart kingdoms in March 1603 the Irish peerage, like the English and Scottish peerages, was small and comprised 25 lords, all of whom resided in Ireland. Within six months there were two new peers, giving a total of six earls, five viscounts and 16 barons (see tables 1 and 3 below). The majority were Catholic (24 peers). The three Protestant lords were recent converts: Lords Thomond, Courcy of Kinsale and Ormond, the last of whom had been raised at court with Prince Edward. Five were peers of native Irish or Gaelic background. Shortly after James’s accession Rory O’Donnell, one of the leading insurgents during the Nine Years War, became earl of Tyrconnell in a surrender and regrant agreement.40 The others were Tyrconnell ally and leader of Irish resistance, Hugh O’Neill, third earl of Tyrone;41 the infant Dermot O’Brien, fifth baron of Inchiquin, whose father had died in English service fighting against O’Donnell; Florence Fitzpatrick, third baron of Upper Ossory, a loyal supporter of the Crown;42 and Donough O’Brien, fourth earl of Thomond, another loyalist and Munster power broker.43 Together these five Gaelic-speaking lords comprised 19 per cent of the peerage in 1603 (see table 2 below).

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Table 1.  Ethnic breakdown of all peers in 1603, 1628 and 1641. 1603

1628

1641

Non-resident English

0

29

24

Native Irish

5

6

7

New English

0

22

22

Old English

22

30

33

Scots

0

6

5

Welsh

0

1

1

Total (resident)

27

94 (65)

92 (68)

Note: resident peers in parentheses

The 22 lords of Old English provenance, comprising 81 per cent of the 1603 peerage, predominated, which reflected the political influence that the descendants of the Anglo-Norman invaders enjoyed as members of Ireland’s ruling elite. They included the great houses of Kildare, Ormond and Clanricarde whose fortunes during the early decades of the seventeenth century were mixed. Gerald Fitzgerald, sixteenth earl of Kildare, succeeded to his title in 1599, but Lettice Digby, later baroness of Offaly, disputed his claim to the Fitzgerald estates, resulting in lengthy litigation and acrimony. This combined with an inability to secure the succession with an adult male heir exposed the house of Kildare to external interference. The Butlers of Ormond were equally exposed when Thomas Butler (‘Black Tom’), tenth earl of Ormond, who had supported the Crown with enthusiasm during the Nine Years War, failed to produce a legitimate heir and the nephew he had been grooming to succeed him (Theobald Butler, Viscount Tulleophelim, only surviving son of his brother, Edmund, who had conformed and married Ormond’s daughter) died prematurely in 1613.44 Yet right up until his death in 1614 Black Tom exercised real power and commanded the support of the cadet Butler houses of Cahir, Dunboyne and Mountgarret. The most politically influential Old English lord was Richard Bourke, fourth earl of Clanricarde. He did his utmost to ‘improve’ his patrimony by encouraging his tenants to build stone houses, enclose land, plant trees, and adopt ‘modern’ agricultural techniques. He also maximized profits from his mills (which in itself suggests increased grain production) and developed the natural resources on his estates (particularly ironworks and fishing).45 In 1604 Sir John Davies reported that he had attended the sessions at Galway with Clanricarde and found the people civil and ‘more obedient’ than their neighbours in the Pale. He praised the earl’s ‘extraordinary industry and judgement’, adding that ‘his affability and good temper

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wins him great love and respect among them’.46 Having distinguished himself in royal service during the Nine Years War, Clanricarde married in 1603 Frances Walsingham, daughter of Elizabeth I’s secretary of state and widow first of Sir Philip Sydney and then Robert Devereux, earl of Essex. Shortly afterwards Clanricarde asked permission to go to England, since he was ‘already too full of Ireland, where there is little good company, much malice, and every place, though for the present quiet, yett full of discontent’.47 Thereafter Clanricarde spent much of his time at court where his English allies pressured him to ‘secure a title and privileges in England’. In 1624 he settled for an English viscountcy ‘to avoid the dislike or envy of earls of Scotland or of Ireland ancienter than myself when they come hither’, but four years later he acquired the earldom of St Albans (1628), together with an English estate.48 In the 1610s, using monies raised by mortgages on his Irish estates, the fourth earl built at considerable expense a magnificent H-plan house and deer park on his wife’s estate at Summerhill, close to the fashionable spa at Tunbridge Wells. Situated on a hill, the house enjoyed fine views into Surrey, the Seven Oak hills and the Canterbury hills. With its splendid state rooms, elaborate chimneys and carved wainscot, Summerhill was built for entertaining and made a powerful political statement about the influence, status and wealth of its owners.49 In short, Clanricarde lived like an English lord and ruled his Connacht patrimony by pen. Back in Ireland, his fellow peers led less privileged existences. David, Viscount Barry, who had been involved in Desmond’s rebellion but was pardoned in November 1602, held the title because his elder brother, Richard, though sane, was deaf and dumb.50 More loyal were Richard, fourth Baron Power, and David Roche, seventh Viscount Roche of Fermoy, who had served the Crown during the Nine Years War. It was Roche who proclaimed James VI and I king in Cork when the local mayor refused to do so.51 Another royal favourite was John De Courcy, thirteenth Lord Courcy of Kinsale, who had conformed and distinguished himself against the Spaniards at the battle of Kinsale and later served as a gentleman of James’s bedchamber. The Old English lords of the Pale kept relatively low profiles. They had supported the Crown during the Nine Years War, but the Dublin administration questioned the loyalty of a few of them. Richard Nugent, fourth Baron Delvin, and Nicholas St Lawrence, eighth Baron Howth, were arrested on suspicion of being involved with Tyrconnell and Tyrone (who had fled to the Continent in September 1607 and forfeited their titles and estates shortly thereafter).52 Nugent was pardoned and in 1621 he purchased for £1,500 the earldom of Westmeath.53 Howth had also disgraced himself by becoming involved in a number of public brawls and murdering a man.54 The remaining lords of the Pale – Jenico Preston, fifth Viscount Gormanston, William Fleming, eleventh

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Baron Slane, Christopher Plunkett, eighth Baron Dunsany and Robert Barnewall, seventh Baron Trimleston – were among the Catholic peers who subscribed to the proclamation of James VI and I as king.55 These men were nobles of ancient creation and saw themselves as the king’s loyal servants. Inflation of Honours The early decades of the seventeenth century saw an inflation of honours (knighthoods, baronetcies and hereditary peerages) across the Stuart kingdoms, and Lawrence Stone has suggested that the sale of titles brought into the royal coffers at least £620,000.56 By 1628 and the death of the royal favourite George Villiers, duke of Buckingham, the composition of the peerage in Ireland had more than trebled in size from 27 lords in 1603 to 94 (see table 1 above). Over a comparable period 258 knighthoods had been bestowed, along with 45 baronetcies (between 1619 when the rank was introduced to Ireland and 1630).57 The English peerage underwent a similar transformation, increasing threefold from 59 to 179 peers, thanks to the addition of 56 new peers during the reign of James VI and I and a further 64 during that of Charles I.58 The number of Scottish peers rose by 50 per cent up to the year 1625 and another 38 per cent by 1649.59 Comparable inflations occurred throughout early modern Europe, especially in the Iberian Peninsula, France, Muscovy and Sweden. For example, the number of ‘ducs et pairs de France’ increased from 11 (1589) to 28 (1643), and the titled nobility of Spain (grandes de España and titulos) rose from 99 (1528) to 165 (1599) to 239 (1613).60 Of course the specific forces driving these augmentations varied, but a number of key factors can be identified: a desire on the part of the Crown to reward favourites and loyal service, to strengthen and add lustre to its position at court, to dilute particularism of the established Catholic peers and to generate cash. In terms of the scale of the enlargements and the motives behind them, developments in Ireland accorded with trends elsewhere, albeit with one important difference. The number of men elevated to the peerage who were effectively absentees is striking. In any analysis of the peerage it is critical to distinguish between those whose principal estates and interests were in Ireland (even if the peer himself may have spent extended periods at court and owned English estates) and those who enjoyed minimal Irish connections. Between 1618 and 1628 there were 29 ‘absentees’ who acquired Irish titles. These creations spanned the decade but the bulk of ennoblements fell in the years after Charles I’s accession in 1625 (14 dated from 1628 alone) and were closely associated with Buckingham. Whether it was the king’s intention that these men should cultivate interests in his third kingdom and thereby facilitate integration ‘under one imperial crown’ is unclear. Richard Hadsor, an

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Old English lawyer who had made his career at court, had advocated precisely this in a discourse he prepared for James VI and I shortly after his accession in 1603, lamenting the fact that English peers no longer enjoyed Irish interests and vice versa and encouraging the king to return to these earlier policies.61 Victor Treadwell in his study of Buckingham in Ireland suggests that ‘Whether motivated by consideration of public policy or private interest, Buckingham was a major agent of “Britishization”. In particular, the proliferation of Irish honours and the promotion of plantation contributed to the interpenetration of English and Irish society at several levels.’ Only Buckingham’s premature death in August 1628 ‘precluded the erection of a new British aristocratic hierarchy in Ireland’. This together with ‘the elimination of the Court in the 1640s and 1650s, [prevented] the homogenisation of the aristocracies of the three kingdom into a British aristocracy’.62 Yet Protestant Englishmen, with English rather than British agendas, predominated. The bulk of these absentee peers held no Irish lands nor enjoyed any significant Irish associations either at the time of their creation or subsequently. Even if they did not own estates, a few of these English lords – William Hervey, Baron Hervey of Rosse (created 1620), and Oliver St John, first Viscount Grandison of Limerick (created 1621) – had served in Ireland during the Nine Years War, and St John had enjoyed a position of eminence as lord deputy between 1616 and 1622.63 Other claims were more tenuous. Robert, first Viscount Kilmorey (created 1625), owed his only link with Ireland to his father, Sir Robert Needham (d.1603), who had served with Essex and incurred great expense which had not been reimbursed (and, perhaps, explains his title). Similarly, William Fitzwilliam, Baron Fitzwilliam of Lifford (created 1620), was the grandson of Sir William Fitzwilliam, who had served three times as lord deputy of Ireland. Only one absentee was of native Irish provenance. Dermot O’Mallun, first Baron Glanmullen (created 1622), about whom little is known aside from the fact that he was a cousin of the earl of Thomond who had spent most of his life ‘off the country’, travelling all over Europe, studying law and marrying a noblewoman from Artois, through whom he acquired a considerable estate and influence at the court in Brussels. Neither Dermot nor his heir, Albert, sat in any of the Irish parliaments despite being summoned to attend.64 Hardly surprisingly, Buckingham’s ennoblements proved deeply controversial. The sheer scale of them alarmed many throughout the Stuart kingdoms, and especially the English peers who were horrified at the prospect of being outranked by a peer with a more senior Irish title.65 The established Irish lords, fearful of being outranked by landless parvenus, scrambled to protect their privileges largely by securing higher titles within the peerage (discussed below). It also became a political issue. One of the Graces (37) of 1628 mandated that absentee peers without estates in Ireland should pay their fair

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share of the subsidies ‘and all other payments towards the charge of our army there’.66 With the aid of Poynings’ Law, Lord Deputy Wentworth blocked an unofficial bill requiring peers to purchase an Irish estate appropriate to their status, introduced in the first session of the Irish parliament of 1634–5.67 The Catholic confederates raised the matter again during their negotiations with the king. In 1645 they insisted that all peers should hold Irish estates worth at least £200 (for a baron), £400 (for a viscount) and £600 (for an earl).68 Again in 1648 the confederates demanded that in order to take their seat in Parliament men with Irish titles must hold Irish estates.69 The process itself attracted contempt as it became apparent that honours were simply being sold to the highest bidder across the Stuart dominions.70 At least 18 Irish titles were sold, primarily to lords resident in Ireland (discussed below). Men with no lands and no connection with Ireland also purchased titles of honour there presumably because they lacked the cash or political clout to buy English peerages.71 Elizabeth’s last chief governor in Ireland was Charles Blount, Baron Mountjoy and earl of Devonshire, and in 1618 his illegitimate son, Mountjoy, was created baron of Mountjoy Fort (and later first earl of Newport in the English peerage). It is likely that he purchased the honour by bestowing a house and lands at Wanstead either on James or Buckingham.72 A minor favourite at court, Mountjoy had no contact with Ireland aside from holding a few hundred plantation acres in the barony of Dungannon, County Tyrone, which he had presumably inherited from his father.73 In other cases cash simply changed hands. For example, in 1628 George Chaworth became Viscount Chaworth of Armagh for £1,500, and William Pope’s earldom (of Downe) cost him £2,500. Neither had or developed any Irish connections. In addition to trafficking titles, Buckingham and, to a lesser extent, his royal masters used them to reward loyal service or promote clients and kin.74 The distinguished Welsh diplomat and philo­ sopher Edward Herbert became first Baron Herbert of Castle Island in 1624 as compensation for the considerable debts that he had incurred during his embassy to France. In 1625 he acquired, through his wife, estates in County Kerry but he and his heirs rarely (if ever) visited Ireland, preferring to spend time in London and on their estates in Montgomeryshire.75 Interestingly, the family later claimed that their Welsh estates subsidized their Irish one.76 Of the 29 ‘absentee peers’ roughly half were Buckingham’s clients.77 As lord deputy of Ireland between 1616 and 1622, Oliver St John, first Viscount Grandison, effectively acted as Buckingham’s agent as he oversaw the distribution of plantation lands in Wexford, Longford and Leitrim. Grandison watched over Buckingham’s cronies, including men like John Vaughan, Baron Vaughan of Mullingar (created 1621) and later earl of Carbery (created 1628). He had served in Ireland during the Nine Years War and acquired 1,000 acres in the Ulster plantation. Despite this, Vaughan and his heir

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focused on Welsh affairs, rather than Irish ones. Kinship links reinforced Lord Deputy Grandison’s personal loyalty to his English patron. Childless, Grandison’s Irish title, pension and County Leitrim estates passed on his death in 1630 to Buckingham’s great-nephew, William Villiers, son of his half-brother, Edward, and Barbara St John, the lord deputy’s niece.78 Richard Preston, Lord Dingwall and after 1619 earl of Desmond, a great favourite of James VI and I and a gentleman of his bedchamber, was in a similar position. He had married Elizabeth Butler, the only surviving child of Thomas Butler, tenth earl of Ormond, and resided briefly in Kilkenny after 1624. Their only daughter, Elizabeth, was heir to much of the Ormond estate and as a child had been betrothed to George Fielding, Buckingham’s eight-year-old nephew, who had been elevated to the Irish peerage in 1622 as Viscount Callan.79 In the event Elizabeth Preston married her cousin, James Butler, later first duke of Ormond, but on Preston’s death in 1628 Fielding became, as his heir presumptive, the earl of Desmond. Elizabeth appears to have made a wise choice, for in 1635 Fielding’s wife sued him in the High Commission court for divorce on the grounds that he was unable ‘to please a reasonable woman’.80 Finally, the quality of the ennoblements caused consternation since so many individuals were clearly not even modestly suited to their dignities and were regarded as landless parvenus. Thus the sale of titles cheapened and brought dishonour to the peerage.81 Writing in 1652, Sir Edward Walker quipped: ‘many persons who could not procure titles of honour in England, for money and other reasons have with great ease gotten them . . . [in Ireland]; so as there is hardly a town of note, much less a county, but hath some earl, viscount or baron of it’.82 He argued that rather than strengthening the Crown with judicious elevations to the peerage, James and later Charles had debased it by bestowing honour on men without ‘public merit’.83 Walker had a point. Of the 29 ‘absentees’ who received dignities during the 1620s, only a very small proportion had the ‘breeding’, the means and the record of service commensurate with the honour they held.84 Members of the established English aristocracy noted developments with considerable dismay and deeply resented the influence exercised by Buckingham and his cronies across the Stuart kingdoms.85 It is, however, important to acknowledge that a number of non-resident peers represented significant points of contact with the royal court in London. For example, the Calverts connected Ireland with England and the New World. George Calvert, first Baron Baltimore (created 1625), was a protégé of Sir Robert Cecil, a client of Buckingham (until 1624), a close friend of Thomas Wentworth, later earl of Strafford and lord deputy of Ireland, a member of the English Privy Council and principal secretary of state during the reign of James VI and I. Despite his Catholicism, Baltimore acquired

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estates in Ireland of over 9,000 acres and lived there with his family briefly in the mid-1620s. In 1628, keen to promote plantations ‘in those remote parts of the world’, he transferred his interests from Ireland to the New World, first to Newfoundland (he had obtained a charter to found a colony in 1623) and later to Maryland (the charter was issued shortly after he died in 1632).86 In the event, his eldest son, Cecil, and 200 English Catholic migrants went on to found the Maryland colony that his younger son, Leonard, later governed.87 Many Irish Catholics migrated to the new colony. The elevation of so many newcomers to the Irish peerage also enlarged the marriage market for resident lords.88 For example, Henry O’Brien, fifth earl of Thomond, married the daughter of the first Baron Brereton of Leighlin while two of his daughters were matched with other non-resident peers who enjoyed political clout in England.89 Buckingham’s second cousin, Sir Thomas Beaumont, created Viscount Beaumont of Swords in 1622, was a wealthy entrepreneur from Leicestershire who allegedly made £1,000 per annum from coal mining. Within two months of acquiring his Irish dignity, he had negotiated a marriage contract between his son and heir, Sapcote, then only eight years old, and Katherine Boyle, daughter of the earl of Cork, who brought with her a dowry of £4,000. With Buckingham’s death in 1628 the match no longer held political value for Cork, and the earl asked for his money and daughter back (Katherine had been living with the Beaumonts).90 The union in 1616 of Thomas, first Viscount Somerset of Cashel (himself the third son of the wealthy and politically powerful earl of Worcester), and Helena Barry, daughter of David, Viscount Barrymore, and the widow of Thomas Butler, earl of Ormond, gave Somerset access to a great estate in Ireland. Almost immediately he muscled in and became involved in an acrimonious dispute with Cork over the wardship of his wife’s nephew, the young Lord Barrymore. Given his connections to Buckingham and his other court contacts, he won. He then sold his interest to Cork for £850.91 Resident Peerage in 1628 Of the 65 resident lords in 1628, 13 were earls, 23 viscounts and 29 barons. Prior to 1620 there were only 10 new ennoblements: Chichester (1613); two in 1616;92 Hamilton of Strabane (1617); four in 1618;93 and two in 1619.94 The drastic inflation of the Irish peerage dated from the 1620s, with the creation of 31 new titles by 1628. There were five in 1620;95 six in 1621;96 seven in 1622;97 Cromwell of Lecale (1624); four in 1627;98 and eight in 1628, which might be associated with preparations for the Parliament proposed for November 1628.99 Elevations within the peerage account for a significant number of these titles, especially the earldoms. In 1620 Randal MacDonnell and Richard Boyle quite literally traded in their lesser titles, which they had

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held for only a few years, for the earldoms of Antrim and Cork, with the latter paying at least £4,500 plus fees of £305 4s 4d for his honour and Antrim something similar.100 Eager to maintain their position in the social hierarchy and to avoid being outranked by newcomers, others followed suit. In 1622 James Dillon became the earl of Roscommon and Thomas Lord Ridgeway the earl of Londonderry; in 1627 the baron of Ardee became the earl of Meath; and in 1628 David Barry assumed the earldom of Barrymore and Luke Plunkett that of Fingal (the former cost £1,000 and the latter, £2,700).101 Others – Moore (1622), Cromwell (1624), Chichester (1625) and Sarsfield (1627) – abandoned their baronages in favour of viscountcys.102 Old English peers dominated these elevations, highlighting the determination on the part of the established, pre-1603 aristocracy to enjoy a more exclusive position in the new Stuart social order. In this scramble for titles both Catholics and Protestants acquired new honours, but the latter predominated. The number of Catholic peers increased by nearly a third (from 24 to 31) and that of Protestant peers soared over tenfold from three in 1603 to 34 in 1628 (discussed at length in chapter 5). The ethnic make-up of the peerage also changed radically (see table 2). The percentage of native Irish peers dropped from 19 per cent in 1603 to 9 per cent in 1628, while Old English peers now represented only 46 per cent of the peerage (in 1603 the figure had been 81 per cent). While their Table 2.  Ethnic composition of the resident peerage in 1603, 1628 and 1641. 1603

1628

1641

Native Irish

5 (19%)

6 (9%)

7 (10%)

New English

0

22 (34%)

22 (33%)

Old English

22 (81%)

30 (46%)

33 (49%)

Scots

0

6 (9%)

5 (7%)

Welsh

0

1 (2%)

1 (1%)

Total

27

65

68

Table 3.  Breakdown by rank of resident peerage. baron

viscount

earl

marquis

duke

Total

1603

16

5

6

0

0

27

1628

29

23

13

0

0

65

1641

29

26

13

0

0

68

1670

24

26

24

1

1

76

1685

20

26

28

0

1

75

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proportional share dropped, the total number of native Irish peers increased slightly from five in 1603 to six in 1628 (seven in 1641). The only earl, Henry O’Brien, fifth earl of Thomond, was Protestant and would have regarded himself as being ‘English’, not native Irish. Sir Charles MacCarthy, one of the most powerful figures in Munster, used his Buckingham connections to secure the viscountcy of Muskerry in 1628.103 Thomond pressured Muskerry, his son-in-law, and grandson to conform or, in the words of a clerical observer, Thomond ‘infected [them] with the same pestilence of the souls [i.e. Protestantism]’.104 The conversion proved superficial and on his deathbed in 1640 Muskerry reverted to Catholicism. Of the three native Irish barons, one, Murrough O’Brien, sixth Baron Inchiquin, conformed thanks to the efforts of his guardian and father-in-law, William St Leger, president of Munster.105 The other two barons, Barnaby Fitzpatrick, fifth baron of Upper Ossory, and Brian Roe Maguire, first Baron Maguire of Enniskillen, whose 1628 title was a reward for his support for the Crown, remained staunch Catholics.106 This also held true for the native Irish viscounts who joined the peerage during these years. In 1623 Arthur Magennis, who had acquired considerable estates in County Down ‘in capite by knight’s service’, purchased the title Viscount Magennis of Iveagh for the sum of £2,000. Despite his elevation the Dublin administration regarded him as potentially subversive, thanks in part to his earlier links with the earl of Tyrone.107 It was 1631 before another devout Catholic and loyal supporter of the Crown during the Nine Years War, Terence O’Dempsey, joined their ranks as first Viscount Clanmalier. The Old English remained the largest ethnic group in 1628 and the numbers of peers increased from 22 to 30 (in 1641 this figure was 33), giving a total of 15 Old English barons, eight viscounts and seven earls. The Tulleophelim line had became extinct in 1613 but nine new lords (three barons, five viscounts and an earl) joined the established Old English peers. Following the successive deaths of her paternal grandfather and uncles (the twelfth and thirteenth earls of Kildare), Lettice Fitzgerald (as heir general) assumed the style of Baroness Offaly and claimed the title and certain lands, while the earldom went to the male heir. In 1620 after a lengthy legal dispute with her cousin George, sixteenth earl of Kildare, she was created baroness for life.108 Equally contentious was the attempt by Theobald Bourke to claim the title of Castle Connell from his nephew, the legitimate heir. When this failed, Theobald instead became baron of Brittas in 1618, but litigation over disputed lands continued.109 More routine was the elevation of Laurence Esmond, a veteran of the Nine Years War, who became baron of Limerick in 1622. As for the new Old English viscounts, Dominick Sarsfield, a prominent lawyer from Cork who was attorney general, chief justice for Munster, judge of the king’s bench and finally chief justice of the common pleas, took the title Viscount Kinsale in 1625. This provoked a rancorous dispute with

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John De Courcy, thirteenth Baron Courcy of Kinsale, which resulted in a ruling in his favour. Sarsfield opted for the title Viscount Sarsfield of Kilmallock.110 It was 1627 before the king rewarded Theobald Bourke (styled ‘Tibbot na Long’ because he was born at sea), a major figure in Connacht, with a title, Viscount Mayo, for his loyalty during the Nine Years War.111 Another loyal veteran of gentry stock, John Taaffe, first Viscount Taaffe of Corren (created 1628), held extensive lands in Louth and during the early years of the seventeenth century acquired vast estates in County Sligo. Taaffe’s humble origins left him vulnerable to accusations of social climbing. One Irish commentator held that he was ‘a man of meane ranke (though viscounte) . . . inferior . . . in reputation, honour, and extraction’.112 An established peer damned him with faint praise, describing him as a ‘very gallant gentleman, [who] has gained much honour in England, the king’s servant, wellesteemed’.113 Of ancient and distinguished gentry background, Nicholas Netterville, who became first Viscount Netterville of Dowth in 1622, held estates in Counties Meath, Wexford and Westmeath. The marriage of his son and heir to the daughter of the allegedly Catholic Sir Richard Weston, chancellor of the exchequer in England, provided some return for the honour that had cost him £2,000. Of similar stock was Theobald Dillon, first Viscount Dillon of CostelloGallen (created 1622), who from the 1580s used his Pale connections to carve out an extensive estate in Connacht.114 Like Netterville, Dillon purchased his honour, paying £2,500.115 His kinsman James Dillon, created baron of Kilkenny-West in 1620, was elevated to the earldom of Roscommon two years later. An Old English political activist with estates in Counties Longford, Meath and Westmeath, Dillon had been imprisoned in 1605 after offering the lord deputy a petition from the nobility and gentry of the Pale against interference with ‘the private use of our religion and conscience’. Yet, according to his patent, he won his honours by loyal service and by ensuring that his son conformed to the Established Church.116 Richard Nugent, Lord Delvin, was also regarded as a trouble maker, but in 1621 he purchased the earldom of Westmeath for £1,500 and later supported Buckingham’s expedition to Rhé and helped to negotiate the Graces in 1627–8.117 There were three further ennoblements in 1629: John Bourke, an illegitimate son of Ulick, third earl of Clanricarde, and client of the fifth earl, became first Viscount Bourke of Clanmorres; Pierce Butler, Viscount Ikerrin, the son of Sir James Butler and a grandson of Thomas, tenth earl of Ormond, was closely associated with the house of Ormond and Buckingham;118 and Thomas, Viscount Fitzwilliam of Merrion, a prominent Dublin figure who had attended Gray’s Inn.119 The Fitzwilliams of Merrion owed their prominence, together with their wealth and landed estates, to an able late fifteenthcentury lawyer, also Thomas, and his successors, who had all attended the

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Inns.120 In 1628 eight (of 30) Old English peers were Protestant: the earls of Barrymore and Kildare, together with Baroness Offaly, and Lords Courcy, Esmond, Howth, Kerry and Kilmallock. In 1628 there were 22 New English peers (four earls, eleven viscounts and seven barons). In terms of rank the most senior of the earls was a Catholic veteran of the Nine Years War, Mervyn Touchet, who was eleventh Baron Audley in the English peerage and from September 1616 first earl of Castlehaven in Ireland. Next in rank was Richard Boyle, baron of Youghal (created 1616) and later viscount of Dungarvan and earl of Cork (created 1620). The ‘upstart earl’, as he has been dubbed, had arrived in Ireland in June 1583 ‘a younger brother of a younger brother’ from Kent with £27 3s 0d in his pocket.121 He quickly secured extensive lands in Munster and Connacht together with public offices, including that of lord justice, and by the late 1630s was one of the richest men in the Stuart kingdoms (discussed in chapters 4 and 13 below). Though much less successful than Cork, Thomas Ridgeway, earl of Londonderry, was a Devon man who had served the Crown during the Nine Years War before becoming a prominent planter.122 In 1616 the king made Ridgeway a baron, and on 19 August 1622 he purchased the earldom of Londonderry, in the gift of Sir James Erskine, to whom Ridgeway ‘sold’ 2,500 acres in County Tyrone.123 Finally, William Brabazon, second baron of Ardee and after 1627 first earl of Meath, was the grandson of Sir William, who had settled in Ireland during the 1530s and held a variety of offices including that of lord justice.124 The extremely high number of New English viscounts (11 in all) can be explained by the desire of new peers to have precedence over barons in both kingdoms. One – Lewis Boyle, Viscount Kinalmeaky (created 1628) – was the nine-year-old son of the earl of Cork (his father paid £1,000 for the honour).125 The rest were ex-soldiers. Henry, Viscount Valentia (created 1621), was a career soldier who had served with distinction during the Nine Years War. Originally from Kent, Garret Moore, who according to one hostile source had been ‘raised from the common soldiery’, distinguished himself in the Nine Years War and then acquired estates in Counties Louth and Armagh which passed to his son, Charles, the second viscount.126 His widow later married a fellow servitor, Charles Wilmot, first Viscount Wilmot of Athlone (created 1621), who became president of Connacht. Similarly Richard Wingfield, Viscount Powerscourt (created 1618), had seen active service on the Continent and in Ireland before becoming involved in the plantations of Ulster and Wexford.127 Despite his record of service the childless adventurer paid at least £2,000 to one of James’s favourites for his title.128 Other new peers were the sons or relatives of swordsmen. Having served in Ireland with the earl of Essex, Edward, father of Thomas Cromwell, first Viscount Lecale (created 1624), sold his English estates and purchased lands in the barony of

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Lecale, County Down (though Thomas spent much time in London cultivating Buckingham). Edward Chichester, first Viscount Chichester of Carrickfergus (created 1625), was the younger brother of the lord deputy, Sir Arthur, Baron Chichester of Belfast (created 1613). Another veteran of the wars in Ireland and the Low Countries was Thomas Roper, who in 1627 became Viscount Baltinglass of Wicklow, having purchased for £3,000 the historic abbey lands of Baltinglass three years earlier.129 A distant relative of Buckingham (his Derbyshire cousin had married the favourite’s elder brother), he used these connections to secure his honour and to nurture an Irish alehouse syndicate and other commercial and landed interests.130 Less common in Ireland, though not elsewhere in early modern Europe, were educated career administrators who secured titles as a reward for service.131 Yet there were a few. The lawyer Adam Loftus, first Viscount Loftus of Ely (created 1622), had attended Lincoln’s Inn and continued his legal studies in London, becoming a bachelor in civil law before coming to Ireland in 1597 where he then accumulated an array of public and legal offices, including that of lord chancellor of Ireland. Loftus was the nephew of Archbishop Adam Loftus and Roger Jones, first Viscount Ranelagh (created 1628), was the entrepreneurial son of another archbishop of Dublin, Thomas, who had also served as lord chancellor. Buckingham’s influence ‘procured’ the title Viscount Killultagh (created 1627) for the Warwickshire squire, Edward Conway, who had served as secretary of state to James VI and I and Charles I.132 Commended for his ‘soldiership’, knowledge of languages, honesty and ‘courtiership’,133 Conway had married a greengrocer’s widow for her fortune.134 Unlike his father, the eldest son and heir, Edward, second viscount, spent most of his time in Ireland having acquired from his uncle, Sir Fulke Conway, estates at Brookhill, near Lisburn, in County Antrim.135 There were seven New English Protestant barons in 1628. One – Roger Boyle, Baron Broghill – was the seven-year-old son of Cork (the title, like that of his bother, cost £1,000).136 Like the viscounts, the majority had military backgrounds. Henry Docwra, baron of Culmore, distinguished himself during the Nine Years War and as governor of Derry.137 Charles Lambert, second baron of Cavan, was the son of Oliver Lambert, who had served with Essex in Ireland and helped to reduce the province of Ulster. Oliver had described himself as ‘a poor man who has spent his hool [i.e. whole] life in the warres’.138 He had hoped for a viscountcy but had to make do with a baronage.139 Thomas Folliott, second baron of Ballyshannon, was the son of Henry Folliott who had fought at Kinsale in 1601; and William Caulfeild, second baron of Charlemont, was the nephew and heir of Toby Caulfeild who distinguished himself under Essex in Ireland. There was one legal baron. Originally from Cambridgeshire, Francis Aungier, first Baron Aungier of

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Longford, like Loftus of Ely, quickly acquired legal offices, including master of the rolls, and served as a commissioner for the plantations of Ulster, Wexford and Longford. Like Aungier, Robert Digby, first Baron Digby of Geashill, enjoyed a gentry background but had close connections with the English peerage (John, his eldest brother, later became earl of Bristol). A single Welshman from Montgomeryshire, Edward Blayney, baron of Monaghan (created 1621), who had served with Essex during the Nine Years War, needs to be added to the list of 22 New English settlers. Over the course of the next generation the number of New English lords remained stable and the composition had only changed slightly by 1641. The death in 1634 of Richard Wingfield, Viscount Powerscourt, without an heir meant that his title became extinct and, as a result, the number of viscounts dropped from 11 to 10. The numbers of barons increased by one (from seven to eight) when Francis Annesley became Baron Mountnorris in 1629. A client of Lord Deputy Chichester and of Buckingham, he was an able colonial administrator and politician who, like Loftus and Aungier, quickly acquired influence, lands and offices only to clash with Lord Deputies Falkland and Wentworth.140 According to Edward Hyde, later earl of Clarendon, Mountnorris ‘raised himself from a very private, mean condition (having been an inferior servant to lord Chichester)’.141 Like so many of the other Protestant ennoblements, Mountnorris was a parvenu. The Scots comprised one further ethnic group in the resident peerage. By 1628 there were six Scottish peers (one earl, two viscounts and three barons). In May 1617 James Hamilton, heir to the earl of Abercorn, was created baron of Strabane. Sir Randal MacDonnell, whose forebears had established themselves in County Antrim in the mid-sixteenth century, was ennobled as Viscount Dunluce in May 1618, a privilege for which he paid a hefty £5,000. The earldom of Antrim followed in December 1620.142 The remaining Scots were all associated with the plantation of Ulster. On 7 November 1619 Andrew Stewart, Lord Ochiltree, became Baron Castle Stewart, and the following day Sir James Balfour became baron of Glenawley. On 3 May 1622 Sir Hugh Montgomery became Viscount Montgomery of the Ards, and on 4 May Sir James Hamilton was elevated to the viscountcy of Claneboy and thereby conceded parliamentary precedence to Montgomery. By 1641 the Balfour line had become extinct, leaving five Scottish peers, two of whom (Strabane and Antrim) were Catholics. Resident Peerage in 1641 By 1641 there were 68 peers (13 earls, 26 viscounts and 29 barons), of whom 32 were Catholic. The relative ethnic make-up of the peerage had stabilized: 49 per cent were Old English, 33 per cent were New English, 10 per cent of

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the peerage were native Irish, 7 per cent Scottish and 1 per cent Welsh (see table 4). These overall proportions remained fairly constant at these levels until the 1690s, as did the ethnic breakdown of each rank of peer (earl, viscount and baron), which roughly reflected the overall figures. Thus of the 29 barons in 1641, 15 (52 per cent) were Old English, eight (32 per cent) were New English, three (10 per cent) native Irish, and three (10 per cent) Scottish and Welsh; and of the 26 viscounts, 11 (42 per cent) were Old English, 10 (38 per cent) New English, three (12 per cent) native Irish and two (8 per cent) Scots. When viewed from the perspective of social status the newcomers to the peerage in Ireland fell into three broad groups: those who had noble backgrounds and associations; those who were professional soldiers and became landed entrepreneurs or government administrators; and, finally, those, usually with legal training, who served the state as bureaucrats and legal officers. In the first group well over a third of the new creations were junior members of the English, Scottish or Irish titled nobility and enjoyed lineages worthy of ennoblement. The new native Irish lords – Magennis of Iveagh, MacCarthy of Muskerry and O’Dempsey of Clanmalier – all enjoyed illustrious pedigrees and were the descendants of ancient Irish noble stock. Similarly, many of the Old English ennoblements came from cadet branches of the great aristocratic houses of Butler of Ormond or Bourke of Clanricarde, or from amongst the upper echelons of influential gentry families of the Pale, such as the Dillons and Nettervilles. Half of the Scottish peers, all of whom were great favourites of James VI and I, enjoyed close links with Scottish peers: the Hamiltons of Strabane were intimately connected to the earls of Abercorn, the MacDonnells of Antrim to the leaders of Clan Donald and Baron Castle Stewart held the Scottish title of Lord Ochiltree. Of the 22 New English lords, only a few had noble origins. Castlehaven held the English title, Lord Audley; and Digby’s brother became earl of Bristol. During the early decades of the seventeenth century, lineage continued to be important Table 4.  Ethnic composition of the resident peerage in 1641, 1670 and 1685. 1641

1670

1685

Native Irish

7 (10%)

7 (9%)

7 (9%)

New English

22 (33%)

24 (32%)

25 (33%)

Old English

33 (49%)

37 (49%)

36 (48%)

Scots

5 (7%)

6 (8%)

5 (7%)

Welsh

1 (1%)

2 (3%)

2 (3%)

Total

68

76

75

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and established peers used it to maintain their exclusive position in society and, where possible, to keep out any upwardly mobile parvenus. This was especially true for Catholics, whose religious beliefs precluded them from taking the oath of supremacy and thus holding prominent positions as military commanders or as top bureaucrats and lawyers. Unable to serve, they emphasized the importance of lineage over the virtue of offices held or military service. Half of the New English creations (12 peers) fell into the second category and were professional soldiers who served and settled in Ireland, becoming landed entrepreneurs. They included veterans of the conflicts on the Continent and of the Nine Years War, such as Lord Deputy Chichester and Lords Blayney, Caulfeild, Cavan, Docwra, Moore and Roper. Two Old English peers – Esmond and Mayo – also fell into the military category, but none of the Scottish or native Irish peers did. Service to the state was the hallmark of the third, and smallest, category. Five New English and two Old English lords – men like Lords Loftus of Ely, Aungier, Sarsfield of Kilmallock and Fitzwilliam of Merrion – rose to prominence thanks to their administrative or legal abilities. Like the adventurers, their social origins were often humble, something contemporaries noted. For example, Gerald De Courcy, later fourteenth baron of Kinsale, in a petition to the English Privy Council drew attention to his own ‘ancient Norman lineage’, while denigrating that of his adversary, Viscount Sarsfield, who was the son of ‘a mean Cork merchant’.143 Of equally modest and dubious provenance were those who defy easy categorization. For instance, men like the upstart earl of Cork, the Scottish planters Hamilton and Montgomery and Viscount Ikerrin, did not enjoy military or titled backgrounds (on the contrary their origins were very modest), nor were they legally trained or administratively gifted, yet they quickly became highly successful landed adventurers. Of course, the barriers between these three groups were porous and mobility across them occurred, especially as professional soldiers became career administrators and entrepreneurs. Moreover, membership of these groupings changed over time, as peers became increasingly educated, attending university and the Inns of Court and/or undertaking a European grand tour. Equally, New English newcomers, especially those of humble origins, did their upmost to ally themselves, usually through marriage, to established families, while the Old English paraded their merit and worth by very public displays of loyalty to the Crown. Thus by 1641 the titled hierarchy ceased to be determined simply by traditional criteria such as lineage, regional status, or the number of followers over whom a lord wielded power. Increasingly, lordship also came to reflect a peer’s financial prowess, his ability to exploit his landed resources and his success in

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securing high office and ability to network – especially at court. The Crown had effectively created a service nobility, a new generation of predominantly Protestant, ambitious and avaricious peers, who wanted either to consolidate their patrimonies and political influence or to make their fortunes in Ireland, and to secure public reward and social recognition. They were also determined to establish themselves in the community of honour and to demonstrate that they had been ennobled by merit, rather than the purse. Thus on the eve of civil war crude tiers of lordship had emerged. First, a small and select group of premier peers that included men with established titles such as the earls of Ormond, Clanricarde and Thomond; the earl of Cork, whose financial acumen ensured that despite his humble origins he enjoyed the status of a ‘super peer’; and Antrim, who owed his pre-eminence to his vast estates and court connections. The second division of middleranking lords comprised many of ancient lineage: the Old English earls of Kildare and Barrymore, Viscounts Mountgarret and Costello-Gallen, and Lords Dunboyne, Dunsany, Louth, Slane and Trimleston, together with others of Gaelic extraction such as Viscounts Muskerry and Baron Inchiquin. They were joined by more recent ennoblements: a host of New English viscounts and barons including Aungier, Baltinglass, Lambert, Loftus of Ely, Moore, Ranelagh, and others of Scottish origin, such as Viscounts Claneboy and Montgomery. Finally, the third division of lesser lords was largely made up of Catholic barons and Protestant swordsmen who had secured cheap lands at opportune moments. For a few of these men, their titles outlived their means. They included the Bourkes of Castle Connell, whose fortune by the 1630s was ‘small, or rather nothing left to support the honour with’, and the Maguires of Enniskillen and the Magennises of Iveagh. For families like these the outbreak of civil war initially provided an opportunity to regain fortunes and status, but ultimately military defeat and the revolution in landholding associated with the 1650s brought them to their knees (discussed in chapters 11 and 14 below).144 Of course the boundaries between these tiers were neither clear-cut nor static. Political and economic developments combined with the ability of a family to produce an heir ensured that some peers scrambled up the baronial hierarchy, while others moved down it. Mid-Century Elevations The inflation of honours associated with the 1620s elevated three types of people: first, those with contacts at court, the majority of whom were ‘absentee’ peers or who were willing to buy titles from the avaricious favourite; second, those who distinguished themselves during the Nine Years War and continued to serve the Crown in a military and increasingly administrative capacity; and, finally, those from titled backgrounds who needed to secure

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new and higher honours. The hallmark of many of the post-1641 elevations and some of the new ennoblements was loyalty to the Stuart cause. Service in the camp and at court, together with shared experiences of exile, secured for Ormond an Irish marquisate in 1642, an English earldom in 1660, an Irish dukedom in 1661 and, the ultimate accolade, an English dukedom in 1682.145 After the Restoration he was, without doubt, Ireland’s premier peer and the most influential aristocrat in Stuart Britain. The Crown rewarded other peers for their contributions to the royalist cause. Antrim’s marquisate (1645) can be attributed to the key role he played in rallying support for the king in Scotland and the lobbying of his influential wife, Katherine Villiers, widow of the ubiquitous duke of Buckingham. In 1645 the earl of Clanricarde, who maintained the king’s cause in Connaught, also received the marquisate that he had long been angling for but was irritated that Antrim now outranked him.146 Like Clanricarde, Thomas Cromwell, Viscount Lecale, was a staunch supporter of the Stuart monarchy and during the 1640s he commanded a regiment of horse. The earldom of Ardglass (1645) was his reward. Viscounts Claneboye and Chichester led the anti-Catholic war effort in east Ulster and in 1647 received the earldoms of Clanbrassil and Donegal. The same year another active royalist and formidable military commander, Charles Lambert, became first earl of Cavan. Proximity to the royal court in exile and a close friendship with Ormond facilitated the elevations of Inchiquin to an earldom in 1654 and Muskerry to the dignity of earl of Clancarthy in 1658. Oliver Fitzwilliam, second Viscount Fitzwilliam of Merrion, had served with the English royalist armies before joining the exiled court in Paris. In 1661 he became earl of Tyrconnell. After 1660 Charles II rewarded with earldoms those who had actively worked to secure his Restoration. The most prominent were Lord Broghill, once a great favourite of Oliver Cromwell, who became the earl of Orrery in 1660, and Arthur Annesley, who inherited his father’s Irish titles in 1660 and was created Baron Pagnel and earl of Anglesey in the English peerage in 1661. The following year Montgomery of the Ards became earl of Mount Alexander and his brother-in-law, Viscount Moore, became earl of Drogheda. Charles II also remembered his favourites, especially those who had shared his exile. Thus Viscount Taaffe, who according to the queen mother, Henrietta Maria, was ‘a person of great merit who has served the king . . . with affection and utmost fidelity’, became in 1661 the earl of Carlingford.147 Another great favourite of Henrietta Maria was the second earl of Cork. This together with the connections of Cork’s wife and his high standing at court secured his advancement to the English earldom of Burlington (or Bridlington) in 1665. Finally, in 1665 William, Baron Caulfeild, was created Viscount Charlemont, having agreed the previous year to sell the strategically sited Charlemont fort to the Crown for £3,500.

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Mid-Century Creations Of the new mid-century titles, three dated from the 1640s and one, Preston of Tara, from 1650. In 1642 Thomas Butler, Ormond’s eight-year-old son and heir, became sixth earl of Ossory.148 Edward Butler was created first viscount of Galmoy in 1646 on Ormond’s recommendation. He was an active confederate and a grandson of the fifteenth Lord Slane, and related by marriage to the houses of Mountgarret, Ormond and Upper Ossory.149 Sir Nicholas Barnewall of Turvey, who in 1646 became first Viscount Barnewall of Kingsland, was from a distinguished Old English legal dynasty and remained a committed royalist throughout the war, albeit with confederate sympathies.150 Thomas Preston, first Viscount Tara, was the second son of fourth Viscount Gormanston, a veteran of Spanish service and commander of the confederate Army of Leinster.151 According to the anonymous author of the Aphorismical Discovery of Treasonable Faction, Ormond also promised to secure titles for Walter Bagnel, who was to become Viscount Newry, and Viscount Mountgarret, who was to be elevated to the earldom of Wexford. The chronicler claimed, even the promise of a title of honour served its purpose of dividing Catholic interests and ‘tended to drawe those members from the due observation of theire severall oaths of association and confederacie’.152 The remaining 12 new titles were linked to the Restoration of Charles II. Despite their track records as parliamentarians and their Cromwellian associations, which enabled them to amass vast estates during the 1650s, the king created in 1660 John King, first Baron Kingston,153 and John Clotworthy, first Viscount Massareene.154 The following year he rewarded Sir Charles Coote with the earldom of Mountrath despite the fact that Coote had supported both Parliament and Oliver Cromwell.155 His brother, Richard Coote, received the dignity of baron of Colooney on the same day. A supporter first of the king and then Parliament, James Barry, who in 1661 became Baron Barry of Santry, used his Dublin civic and mercantile connections to promote Charles II’s Restoration and became one of the most influential and distinguished judges in later Stuart Ireland.156 Others had less chequered careers during the 1640s but could also be regarded as parvenus. The son of a Welsh planter in County Down, Mark Trevor, who in 1662 became first Viscount Dungannon, had fought for Charles I at Marston Moor (1644), inflicting a sword wound on Oliver Cromwell.157 During the 1650s he reached an accommodation with the ruling regime and later became a favourite of Ormond. An active confederate, Daniel O’Brien, who became first Viscount Clare in 1662, was the third and youngest son of Connor O’Brien, third earl of Thomond, and probably owed his honour to the influence his grandson, Daniel, exercised at the Stuart court.158 Descended from a legal dynasty and trained as a lawyer, William

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Dungan, first Viscount Dungan of Clane (created 1662) and later first earl of Limerick (created 1686), had served with the royalists in England and enjoyed royal favour thanks to the connections of his mother, Mary, sister of the influential Richard Talbot, later earl of Tyrconnell.159 Shared experiences of exile and royal favour helped Francis Boyle, a younger son of the earl of Cork who in 1638 had married Elizabeth Killigrew, a confidante of Queen Henrietta Maria, secure his title (Viscount Shannon) in 1660. Similarly, Ormond’s favoured position enabled his fifth son, Richard, to become earl of Arran in 1662.160 In 1665 Folliott Wingfield revived the title Viscount Powerscourt, thanks to the influence of his guardian and father-inlaw, the earl of Orrery.161 Folliott’s grandfather had inherited the Powerscourt estate (but not the title) in 1634 from his cousin Richard.162 In similar circumstances the Balfours of Glenawley had failed to produce a male heir and as a result the line became extinct in 1636, only to be revived by Hugh Hamilton who in 1661 became first baron of Glenawley (his wife, Susanna, was one of the original Balfours).163 Hugh was born in Ireland, the younger son of Scottish parents (his father Malcolm, archbishop of Cashel, had originated in Lanarkshire). In 1624 he became a private soldier in Sweden, later rising to the rank of lieutenant colonel, and spent most of his life in northern Europe serving in Scottish regiments before returning home and securing a title.164 As a man of the sword determined to make his fortune in Ireland, Glenawley – together with Coote of Mountrath, Coote of Colooney, King of Kingston and Trevor of Dungannon – was typical of an earlier generation of Englishmen who had received Irish titles. There was also a significant grouping of men who were primarily bureaucrats, often with legal training – Barnewall of Kingsland, Barry of Santry and Dungan of Clane, later earl of Limerick. Finally, there were those who owed their titles to the influence of established peers eager to found cadet lines: Ossory and Arran were sons of Ormond, and Galmoy was a close kinsman; Boyle of Shannon and Wingfield of Powerscourt were part of the earl of Cork’s lineage; and Clare, who was born in c.1577, was a son of the third earl of Thomond. While some of these new lords might have been associated with the Cromwellians during the 1650s, all of them were established in Ireland prior to 1641. The Books of Survey and Distribution capture the extent of the pre-war holdings for a number of these men or their fathers.165 For example, Sir Daniel O’Brien’s acres, largely in County Clare, equalled those of many of the pre-war earls. The estates of the Cootes, Trevors, Wingfields and Kings were also significant and on a par with those enjoyed by other early seventeenth-century newcomers like Montgomery of the Ards or Moore of Drogheda (see chapter 4 for details). More modest, but still sufficient to maintain the honour, were the lands enjoyed by Lords Dungan and Barry, though the latter’s income would have been supplemented with legal fees.

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Resident Peerage in 1670 and 1685 In 1670 there were 76 resident peers (see table 4). Sixteen new men had been ennobled and the lines of eight others had become extinct or, in the case of Maguire of Enniskillen, one of the leaders of the 1641 rebellion, forfeited. If the total resident peerage in 1670 is analyzed from the perspective of rank, the extent of upward social mobility becomes clear (see table 3). There was a drop in the number of barons from 29 in 1641 to 24 in 1670 and the number of viscounts remained the same (26). The most striking change came with the near doubling of the number of earls from 13 in 1641 to 24 in 1670 and the creation of an Irish dukedom (Ormond) and two marquisates (Clanricarde died in 1658, leaving only Antrim). The dukedom marked out once and for all the Butlers of Ormond as Ireland’s premier aristocratic family; while Antrim’s marquisate ensured that he outranked everyone but Ormond and those peers from Ireland who held English earldoms as well as Irish titles.166 Men whose titles dated from the early seventeenth century acquired most of the earldoms: Taaffe of Carlingford, MacCarthy of Clancarthy, Cromwell of Ardglass, Lambert of Cavan, Chichester of Donegal, Moore of Drogheda and Boyle of Orrery.167 Keen to consolidate their exclusive position on the social hierarchy to prevent encroachment by a new wave of arrivistes, these men behaved much as the established lords had done in the 1620s. The extent of intermarriage within Ireland makes the use of ethnic labels after 1660 highly problematic, but an analysis of surnames suggests that the ethnic breakdown of the peerage echoed trends characteristic of the pre-war years. The religious breakdown of the resident peerage also remained largely unchanged, with 39 Protestant and 37 Catholic peers. Eleven of the 15 new ennoblements were Protestant, which helped to compensate for the fact that two peers (Viscount Dillon of Costello-Gallen and Baron Inchiquin), who had conformed in 1641, had converted to Catholicism during the mid-seventeenth century. The onset of civil war in England after 1642 brought with it a fresh wave of non-resident ennoblements that need to be noted. While loyal servants of the king’s cause in England, none of these men enjoyed significant Irish connections. That said, Charles Cokayne, an ardent royalist from Surrey who had allegedly lost £50,000 in the king’s cause, became Viscount Cullen (created 1642) and married Mary O’Brien, a daughter of the fifth earl of Thomond. In 1644 Thomas Bulkeley received for this loyalty the title Viscount Bulkeley of Cashel. Other creations followed in 1645: Francis Hawley became baron Hawley of Duncannon and Henry Bard, Viscount Bellomont. Elevations associated with the Restoration enjoyed tenuous connections in Ireland: in 1661 Thomas Fanshawe, who was related by marriage to the Thomonds, became Viscount Fanshawe of Dromore, and two

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years later Charles Berkeley, who briefly served as a commissioner in Ireland, became Viscount Fitzhardinge of Berehaven. Finally, William Ducie became Viscount Downe in 1675. His title became extinct on his death in 1679, and two years later John Dawny purchased the viscounty of Downe (he allegedly paid a hefty £25,000 for the honour, a far cry from the 1620s’ price). In 1681 Richard Lawrence produced a ‘catalogue’ of the peers with Irish titles in order to highlight ‘the Strength of the English Interest in the House of Peers’.168 He identified a total of 121 lords whom he listed according to rank. Of these 75 can be regarded as resident, though figures like the duke of Ormond and the earls of Cork and Thomond spent more time living in England than on their Irish estates, and the remaining 46 were absentees. On the accession of James II and VII to the throne in 1685, the overall make-up of the peerage had changed little in the intervening 15 years. There were 75 resident peers, 37 of whom were Protestant and 38 Catholic. Since 1670 six lines had become extinct and six new peers created.169 In terms of rank there was one duke (Ormond), 28 earls, 26 viscounts and 20 barons (see table 3). There had been two elevations within the peerage. In 1675 Baron Aungier of Longford became a viscount; an earldom followed two years later. The elevation of Richard, sixth Baron Le Power, to the earldom of Tyrone in 1673 can be attributed to the influence of his father-in-law, Arthur, earl of Anglesey.170 On 8 September 1673, shortly after he became lord privy seal, Anglesey visited the king at Whitehall ‘and moved his majesty for an earldome in Ireland for my son Power w[hi]ch he graciously granted w[i]th this expression not only for his sake but for mine’.171 Tyrone later gained notoriety for his alleged involvement in the Popish Plot, which resulted in his incarceration on a number of occasions, much to Anglesey’s embarrassment. Also implicated in the popish plot and briefly imprisoned for his alleged involvement was Richard Talbot, a great favourite of the new king, who in 1685 became earl – and, in 1689, duke – of Tyrconnell and later lord deputy. The youngest son of the leading Catholic lawyer, Sir William Talbot of Carton in County Kildare, Tyrconnell had served in Ireland, being wounded at Drogheda in 1649, before fighting in Spain where he became a close friend of James, duke of York.172 Throughout the Restoration he used his position at court to influence the course of the Irish land settlement and to promote Catholic interests.173 There were three Protestant ennoblements during the 1670s. Murrough Boyle, first Viscount Blessington (created 1673), was the son and heir of Archbishop Michael Boyle, who had taken his seat in the House of Lords as a spiritual peer, and the grandson of the earl of Inchiquin.174 In 1676 Ormond’s patronage secured a viscountcy for Sir George Lane, his private secretary, despite the family’s rather modest landed estates.175 Little wonder the duke discouraged George who was first Viscount Lanesborough and later the second from becoming earls, ‘well remembering that it was not

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without difficulty and envy that I obtained the honour they had for them’.176 No doubt Ormond was reluctant to allow one of his underlings to enjoy a grade comparable to that of his sons. The composition of the peers of Scottish provenance changed most between 1670 and 1685, with three lineages dying out. The line of Castle Stewart became dormant in 1678, and with the deaths of the earl of Clanbrassil in 1675 and Baron Hamilton of Glenawley three years later both titles became extinct. There were two new ennoblements. Arthur Forbes, born in Ireland of Aberdeenshire parents, became first Viscount Granard in 1675 (he was elevated to the earldom in 1684). The Forbes family had settled in Ireland in 1620, having secured plantation lands first in Leitrim and later in Longford. In 1641 Sir Arthur, held, according to the Books of Survey and Distribution, 3,149 plantation acres (only 1,778 of which were described as profitable) in the baronies of Longford and Granard in County Longford, and in the barony of Mohill in County Leitrim.177 By the late 1670s the estate had trebled to 9,466 plantation acres (7,573 of them profitable) and generated an annual income of £1,700.178 Presumably it was Forbes who helped to secure a title for William Stewart, his step-son, ward and the grandson of a successful Scottish planter, Sir William Stewart (d. c.1647), who had amassed sizeable estates in Donegal and Tyrone. In 1683 Stewart requested a viscountcy, ‘since viscounts are the men in fashion in Ireland’, and asked that he be known as Viscount Mountjoy.179 When an objection was raised, Sir William retorted in a letter to Lord Lieutenant Ormond: My Lord, it is no new thing to assume an ancient title without having the land or place so called. Of near fifty viscounts that I could number, hardly five enjoy the place of their honour, and I thought taking a name from a family so utterly extinct, that their lands, as this Mountjoy did, devolved to the Crown, would displease none.180

During his brief reign James VII and II also added to the Irish peerage. On the eve of his only Irish parliament (7 May–18 July 1689) he summoned by writ four men who had served him loyally as bureaucrats and military leaders. On 2 April John Bourke, a close relative of Clanricarde, became Baron Bourke of Bophin; the following day Thomas Nugent, second son of the second earl of Westmeath, became Baron Nugent of Riverston; on 20 April Sir Valentine Browne, grandson of first Viscount Muskerry, became Viscount Kenmare; and on 1 May 1689 Alexander Fitton became Baron Fytton of Gosworth.181 Justin MacCarthy was created first Viscount Mountcashel on 23 May and took his seat in the House of Lords the following day. He was the youngest son of Donough, first earl of Clancarthy, and a nephew of Ormond who had been raised in exile in France, where he later entered

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military service. In January 1685 he became colonel of an Irish regiment despite objections that he was a Catholic, and on the outbreak of the War of the Three Kings he commanded a regiment for James II.182 Edward Cheevers, who had married Patrick Sarsfield’s sister, became Viscount Mount Leinster in August 1689 and fought at the Boyne in 1690. It was January 1691 before Sarsfield himself was elevated to the earldom of Lucan. Like so many of the other Jacobite creations, Sarsfield was Catholic and enjoyed a military background, serving first on the Continent and then as one of James’s leading commanders in Ireland.183 The constitutional position of the lords whose titles dated from 1689 and after is problematic, since on 11 December 1688 the English – but not the Irish – Parliament declared James II to have abdicated the throne. By virtue of the Kingship Act (1541), Ireland was a ‘dependent, subordinate kingdom’ and ‘inseparably united’ to the Crown of England, yet to what extent did an ‘abdication’ in England override all kingly rights in Ireland?184 The 1689 Irish parliament did not follow the English example, declared that James remained king, and passed a massive bill of attainder against those who had rebelled against him. Thus the peerages created by James in 1689, when he possessed his regal rights and was de facto king of Ireland, and which were duly enrolled on the Irish patent rolls, formed part of a constitutional conundrum that conveniently resolved itself when these peerages became extinct shortly after their creation.185 Securing the Succession Other lines became extinct for want of a male heir. As the figures in table 5 illustrate, over two-thirds of peers resident in Ireland (71 per cent) were succeeded by a son and in the majority of cases these boys had reached the age of majority, a statistic that is comparable with England where two-thirds of peers produced a male heir.186 In one-third of peerage families a title did not pass directly from a father to his son. A small number of grandsons (6 per cent) succeeded directly to the title, but thanks to the longevity of their grandfathers these boys tended to be older (mid-twenties), and better equipped to deal with the responsibilities that their honour brought. In at least 39 instances a brother succeeded a brother. In eight families a title passed to a nephew, in eleven to a cousin and in four to an uncle. At moments such as these a lineage was vulnerable, especially to external interference from the Crown and economic pressures associated with the provision for wives and daughters. For example, the failure of Ulick Bourke, marquis of Clanricarde, to father a son meant that on his death in 1658 much of his disposable wealth passed to his daughter and his title and ancestral lands to his cousin, Richard, who became sixth earl. Richard was the son of Sir William Bourke, who was

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Table 5.  Inheritance amongst resident peers.187 Relationship

No. of peers

Sons

195

71%

Grandsons

17

6%

Brothers

39

14%

Nephews

8

3%

Cousins

11

4%

Uncles

4

2%

274

100%

Total

Percentage of total

the third son of the third earl of Clanricarde (d.1601). Richard died in 1666 without producing a son and, like the marquis, provided generously for his daughters.188 His brother, William, succeeded as seventh earl but to an estate that was heavily encumbered with provisions for the womenfolk of his predecessors. The house of Kildare had eight earls between 1597, when the twelfth earl died, and 1707 when Robert became the nineteenth earl. Over the course of 110 years the line rarely passed from father to son and when it did the son was often underage. Gerald, fourteenth earl, died suddenly in 1612 leaving an infant son, Gerald. On his death at the age of eight years and ten months the title passed to his teenage cousin, George, who succeeded him as sixteenth earl. Only an abundance of collateral male heirs saved the dynasty from extinction and enabled the Kildares to emerge in the eighteenth century as dukes of Leinster and Ireland’s premier dynasty.189 The fecundity of Theobald, first Viscount Dillon of Costello-Gallen, who had eight sons (four of whom married), saved the line from extinction later in the century. Theobald died in 1624 and since his eldest son had predeceased him, his teenage grandson, Lucas, succeeded him as second viscount. Lucas died prematurely and his posthumous son succeeded him as third viscount in 1629, only to die the following year. The title then passed to his teenage uncle, Thomas, who conformed to the Established Church but later reconverted. On his death in 1674 his fourth and only surviving son, Thomas, succeeded him as fifth viscount. Thomas died the following year and his cousin, Lucas, who also had no heir, became sixth viscount. On his death in 1674 another cousin, a grandson of the first viscount by his second son, succeeded him as the seventh viscount, only to die at Aughrim in 1691. His son, Henry, became eighth viscount, and through him the line continued.190 Others struggled to produce even one son. As his poignant funeral monument highlighted, Baron Chichester’s heir had died as an infant and so on the

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baron’s passing on 19 February 1625 the title became extinct. His brother, Edward, inherited his vast estates, and on 1 April 1625 Charles I conferred a viscountcy on him. On Edward’s death in 1648 his son, Arthur, who later became the first earl of Donegal, succeeded him. The earl only fathered a daughter, Anne, and on his death in 1675 she inherited much of his disposable wealth, leaving his nephew, Arthur, as heir to the title. He died three years later and his son, the third earl, died prematurely in 1706, leaving a minor to succeed him. Biological failure and erratic successions played havoc with family finances, but at least the Chichester lineage managed to survive.191 The majority of Irish resident peerages were held in tail male and extinctions occurred upon the death of the last collateral male heir.192 At least 32 titles became extinct by the mid-eighteenth century for want of legitimate male heirs: Aungier of Longford (1704),193 Balfour of Glenawley (1636), Boyle of Blessington (1732), Boyle of Shannon (1740), Butler of Arran (1686), of Gowran (1676), of Ormond (1758), of Tulleophelim (1613), Conway (1683), Cromwell of Ardglass (1687), Dillon of Roscommon (dormant after 1722), Docwra (1647), Dungan of Clane and Limerick (1715), Esmond of Limerick (1645), Fitzpatricks of Upper Ossory (1713), Folliott of Ballyshannon (1716), Hamilton of Clanbrassil (1675), Hamilton of Glenawley (1681), Jones of Ranelagh (1712), Lane of Lanesborough (1724), Loftus of Ely (1725), Montgomery of Mount Alexander (1757), Power of Tyrone (1704), Preston of Tara (1674), Ridgeway of Londonderry (1714), Roche of Fermoy (1733), Roper of Baltinglass (1672), Stewart of Castle Stewart (after 1678), Taaffe of Carlingford (1738), Trevor of Dungannon (1706) and Wingfield of Powerscourt (1634 and 1718). The ‘new’ peers were most vulnerable and 16 of English provenance became extinct. Equally, within a century five of the Scottish houses (out of a total of nine) had become extinct and another forfeited its title in 1691. Even by early modern standards, when it was not unusual for a third of all lines to die out after four or five generations, this represents a very high rate of attrition.194 Of the 68 resident peers who held titles in 1641, 19 (or 28 per cent) had become extinct by the mid-eighteenth century, and of the 76 peers who held titles in 1670, 26 (34 per cent) had become extinct over the same period. Protestant lineages became extinct more rapidly than Catholic ones in large part due to the recentness of these ennoblements and the fact that there were insufficient male heirs in the direct line. Of the 36 resident Protestant houses in 1641, 16 (44 per cent) had become extinct by the mid-eighteenth century while only three Catholic lines had. By 1670 the Protestant figure had risen to 20 (out of 39 resident Protestant peers, or 51 per cent) and just six Catholics (out of 37 resident Catholic peers). At first glance the overall rate of extinction in Ireland (one-third in 1670) was considerably less than neighbouring England where the level of extinction by the early 1680s had

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reached 59 per cent, but the figure for Protestant resident peers (51 per cent) was closer to the English one. It is also important to include in these calculations the forfeiture of 13 Catholic titles in 1691.195 If these are added to the six Catholic extinctions (mentioned above), the overall rate of attrition of Catholic peerage families – 19 out of 37 resident Catholic peers in 1670 (or 51 per cent) – was significant and equalled the Protestant losses. If the totals for Catholic and Protestant extinctions and forfeitures are combined, the overall rate of attrition was 39 peerages (out of 76), or 51 per cent. Attainders and forfeitures notwithstanding, the families who held pre-1603 peerages fared best thanks to their fecundity. The Fitzgeralds of Kildare overcame the dynastic crises that had plagued them in the seventeenth century to replace the Butlers of Ormond as Ireland’s premier aristocrats. The Bourkes of Clanricarde, the Butlers of Mountgarret, the Courcys of Kinsale, the Nugents of Westmeath, the O’Briens of Inchiquin, the Plunketts of Dunsany, the Plunketts of Killeen and Fingal, the Prestons of Gormanston and the St Lawrences of Howth all managed to produce male heirs and to secure their succession. Continued political compliance and religious conformity meant that many of these dynasties prospered as they entered the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The great exception to this general trend of survival was the Butlers of Ormond. Writing in 1680 John Dryden brought into public view in Absalom and Achitophel, in the dedication of the Plutarch (1683), and yet more strikingly in Fables (1700) the fragility of the Ormond lineage.196 The earl of Ossory’s death in 1680 left only his younger brother, Richard, earl of Arran, and Ossory’s fourteen-year-old son, James, and James’s younger brother Charles, as male heirs. Ossory’s death also highlighted how the house of Butler faced, yet again, dynastic crisis.197 The problems the family had in securing the succession during the early decades of the seventeenth century were common knowledge. In 1603 the king gave permission for a marriage between the daughter of Thomas, tenth earl of Ormond, and Theobald Butler, ‘a kinsman of the earl’s own blood, whereby to save the succession to his estates’, and advanced Theobald to the rank of viscount ‘out of esteem for the earle’s old services’. Viscount Tulleophelim’s premature death in 1613 sparked a major crisis that was finally resolved by the marriage of James, later duke of Ormond, to his cousin, Elizabeth Preston (see chapter 6 below).198 Between 1632 and 1646, the first duke and duchess produced 10 children, yet none of the eight sons outlived their father, and Ormond’s sense of anguish at the deaths first of Ossory in 1680 (see chapter 16) and later of Arran (1686) is particularly poignant.199 Shortly after Arran’s death the duke wrote to Primate Boyle that ‘I say nothing of the sad change lately befallen my family. I hope I have learned what use to make of it, and of whatever it

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shall please God to do with me and mine.’200 Since the future of the lineage would come to rest with James (who in 1688 would become the second duke), Ormond focused his efforts on securing a suitable bride for his grandson. In July 1682 James married Anne Hyde, daughter of Laurence, earl of Rochester. Following her early death after a miscarriage, James wed Mary Somerset, Beaufort’s daughter, who gave birth to Thomas on 24 September 1686.201 The earl of Clarendon immediately congratulated Ormond: ‘I pray God your Grace may live to see many more of these blessings, and that your family may multiply and flourish in spite of your enemies.’202 Within six months of the first duke’s death on 21 July 1688 the great grandson was dead, and though five daughters were born to the union of James, second duke of Ormond, and Mary Somerset, there would be no male heir. Charles, who succeeded James as third duke in 1745, had married in 1705 but produced no legitimate children, and when he died in 1758 the line became extinct.203 Conclusion Of course, the primary responsibility for any peer was to provide his dynasty with a legitimate heir, ideally an adult son. Over two-thirds of titled nobles did father a son, but a significant minority died leaving an underage heir. When the direct male line failed, a family turned to the male descendants of the founding peer. For established families, whose titles dated from the pre-1603 years, these men usually existed in abundance but for more recent ennoblements this could pose a major problem. The combination of biological failure and the demographic uncertainties that characterized early modern Ireland made extinction as much of a ‘ubiquitous danger’ as it was throughout early modern Europe.204 Protestant peers of English and Scottish origin with titles dating from the seventeenth century were particularly vulnerable to extinction. It is ironic that these service nobles, whom the king had elevated with the specific purpose of making Ireland English, were the ones who ultimately failed to secure their lineages, with the result that by the early eighteenth century over half of their titles had became extinct. Historical attention has focused on the newcomers but in reality members of the established nobility, especially the great Catholic aristocrats and those who converted to Protestantism, also benefited from the creation of a Stuart service nobility. The wars and rebellions of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries allowed the Crown to winnow out the most disloyal lords and to replace them with men willing to collaborate and to consolidate their positions. Of the families who had negotiated surrender and regrant agreements in the mid-sixteenth century, the O’Briens of Thomond and the Bourkes of Clanricarde became highly anglicized, and in the case of Thomond abandoned Ireland in favour of England. Over the course of the century the

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peerage became increasingly stratified and many of the lesser nobles – the Butlers of Dunboyne, the Fitzpatricks of Upper Ossory, the Folliotts of Ballyshannon, the Plunketts of Louth, the Prestons of Tara, the Roches of Fermoy and the Stewarts of Castle Stewart – simply faded into impoverished obscurity or had their titles forfeited in 1691.205 This might be attributed, at least in part, to the fact they were denied an opportunity to serve the Crown and therefore an income. As such, they were of less use to the Crown, which continued to depend on securing the support of leading aristocrats, themselves regional power brokers, for the smooth running of Ireland. The level of upward social mobility within the peerage is remarkable especially in the pre-war years when an unprecedented number of arrivistes secured titles and established lords, many of whom had been content with their baronages for generations, scrambled for earldoms in order to secure their pre-eminent positions in the social hierarchy. After the Restoration opportunities for ennoblement were more limited, but peers whose titles dated to the pre-war years traded in their viscountcys for earldoms and thereby prevented a new generation of parvenus from outranking them. By the later seventeenth century the opportunities for upward mobility continued to be limited and the ranks of the nobility became increasingly stratified. At the top of the social pyramid were the Butlers of Ormond, who had spawned three cadet branches (Arran, Gowran and Ossory). The Boyles of Cork (and Burlington) also enjoyed the status of a ‘super peer’, with two cadet lines (Orrery and Shannon). Lords Antrim, Clancarthy, Clanricarde, Inchiquin, Kildare, Ranelagh and Thomond headed up the second division. As for the rest, a high number became extinct after three or four generations or operated as lesser lords whose title had long outlived their means and political authority. Distinctions between members of the lower peerage and highranking gentry became increasingly blurred. Nonetheless, many successful and politically well-connected Old English Catholic families with distinguished lineages and considerable landed and personal wealth never became ennobled, while others like the Brownes used their legal and political connections to secure social advancement (as Viscount Kenmare).206 Equally prosperous and influential Protestant lineages – like the Parsons, Percevals or Rawdons – had to wait until the eighteenth century before securing a title worthy of their conspicuous lifestyle and social ambitions.207 Finally, the relative stability of the peerage as a social group is worth noting. After the initial influx of lords during the 1610s and 1620s the overall size of the peerage remained relatively constant, with a core of roughly 70 resident families. As families became extinct, the Crown kept the overall number stable by ennobling new men. From the 1630s the king dispensed honours judiciously and thereby ensured that Irish titles retained their value and remained much sought after as marks of royal favour. After a flurry of

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Protestant ennoblements in the early seventeenth century, the peerage remained equally divided between Catholics and Protestants, comprising men from a variety of ethnic origins and representing an interesting cross section of Stuart society. This should not imply that the peerage was a homogeneous group, far from it, but it was a coherent body and one which, with the passage of time, consolidated its position, became – thanks to economic, social and kin relationships – increasingly integrated and, from the perspective of the Crown, more manageable.

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CHAPTER 3

The Transformation of Noble Culture The previous chapter examined the political and social reconstruction of

the peerage in Ireland from the mid-sixteenth to the late seventeenth centuries. Three developments characterized this. First, the Tudor and Stuart monarchs combined Gaelic, Old English, New English and Scottish lords of both faiths into a composite hereditary peerage but immediately created tensions by allowing only Protestants to enjoy the full benefit of high administrative, legal and military office. Second, the ‘inflation of honours’, which began with the surrender and regrant programme of the mid-sixteenth century and peaked in the 1620s, accompanied by significant grants and transfers of land, allowed for intense upward social mobility as a generation of parvenus and adventurers secured titles, property and office. Third, the Crown created in Ireland an aristocracy that, by 1660, was identified exclusively with the parliamentary peerage. A corresponding cultural transformation occurred, which sometimes conflicted with these political developments and sometimes complemented them. In any event, by the late seventeenth century anglicized lords had become politically, economically, socially and culturally dominant. This chapter has four goals. First, it attempts to untangle what it meant to be noble in the context of early modern Irish society where different cultural groups interpreted nobleness in different and often conflicting ways and disputed who was eligible to be considered as noble. It examines the cultural transformation of the titled nobility from a noble elite that drew its status primarily from blood, lineage and standing within a community to one determined by royal service and a title held from the king. The process was messy and contested, especially by those Catholics who felt that they had been displaced by upstarts, something that the bardic poetry captures so vividly. Second, the chapter focuses on what it meant to hold a title of honour from the Crown: what responsibilities did this bring and what privileges did a peerage confer? Third, this chapter offers a sustained examination of honour.

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Honour was central to the noble cultures of both native and newcomer, the glue that bound together early modern society. New notions of honour, especially continental ones, often cross-pollinated or were grafted onto existing Gaelic and English ones. Finally, this chapter examines how honour was contested and defended. Adherence to carefully choreographed rituals – in Parliament, in church and in the home – brought order and helped to regulate the complex sets of relationships around and between lords. Squabbles over precedence, concern with protocol, status and standing, together with a determination to defend and enhance honour, preoccupied the peers, and an examination of these ‘honour disputes’ highlights its evolving nature and how they defended theirs. Honour was a collective status, as well as an individual one: a lord’s honour resided ultimately in the achievements, real or imaginary, of his forebears, which he was duty-bound to uphold and seek to eclipse. Therefore, peers ensured that honour was validated in each generation and extended to the wider kin group. Exposing the young to and educating them in concepts of honour and virtue was regarded as an essential part of their upbringing, if only to prevent the young person from dishonouring and bringing shame to the family (as, indeed, a number nevertheless did). By 1641 ideas of honour, centred on the king and royal service, became dominant and formed an important part of a wider anglicizing and civilizing process. As we have seen, the peerage in Ireland comprised native and newcomer, Catholic and Protestant, and men of Irish, English, Scottish and Welsh extraction. In short, it represented a cross section of Stuart society where lords of ancient pedigree were forced to rub shoulders with parvenus of no ‘breeding’ but who had served the Crown or secured royal favour. Whatever their provenance, these peers comprised some of the most influential political, military, social and economic figures in seventeenth-century Ireland. While members of the ancient nobility – the Butlers, earls (and later dukes) of Ormond, the Fitzgeralds, earls of Kildare, the Bourkes, earls of Clanricarde, the O’Briens, earls of Thomond, and so on – enjoyed wellestablished senses of honour, from the beginning of the seventeenth century they nevertheless sought to reinforce their individual (and collective) position within the social hierarchy; vied to establish their pre-eminence in the community of honour; and, thereby, to differentiate themselves from the upstarts. For their part these newcomers wanted to behave and be accepted as honourable men. The passage of time, intermarriage and economic interaction broke down many of these social and cultural barriers, and by midcentury the peerage formed communities of honour, which were defined by blood, military valour, service, loyalty to the Crown and the need to live a virtuous life. These communities were often transnational and exchanges of

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gifts, intermarriage, economic and political interdependence and patronage reinforced relationships within and across them. Nobles in Irish Society The bardic poets, guardians of the aristocratic tradition, acknowledged the nobles as the true and legitimate leaders in Irish society. With the outbreak of war in 1641 the Dominican poet Pádraigín Haicéad looked to ‘Ireland’s noble persons’ to provide leadership as they had in the past. In a verse entitled ‘After the beginning of this war in Ireland, 1641’, Haicéad asked: Who will bring to pass The revival of Gaelic glory After long injustice to their tribes, As their prophets forecast; Now or never seems the time For the chieftains of the Irish nation To have exalted or cut down Their fame, their faith, their reputation.1

Haicéad, like his fellow literati, looked to ‘chieftains of the Irish nation’ to provide leadership for their Catholic followers. Some of these ‘chieftains’ held titles of honour from the Crown; many did not.2 Members of the New English community held similar views about the role that the nobility should play. Writing in the 1680s, Richard Lawrence suggested that ‘The Nobility of a Kingdom are the Pillars of it, and therefore called Peers.’3 Though Haicéad and Lawrence represented the interests of two diverse communities and operated in very different social and political contexts, both the Gaelic intellectual and the English settler held members of the nobility to be the natural leaders in Irish society. Where they disagreed – and did so profoundly – was over the qualities a noble should possess. Haicéad believed that a true noble was a natural leader capable of calling his men to arms, a brave warrior who enjoyed great physical prowess, loyal to his faith, hospitable, kind, generous, wise, learned, a patron of the arts, popular with his people and respected by his peers. He was also a man of ancient lineage, honour and virtue who was godly and a devout Catholic. Lawrence offered a narrower definition of what constituted the nobility and limited it to members of the parliamentary peerage who had secured recognition for their service, as well as their noble qualities. The distinction is important, and by the end of the seventeenth century Lawrence’s view prevailed and the membership of the hereditary peerage and the ruling aristocracy (or the top layer of nobility) overlapped.

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Yet there were many, especially in the Gaelic community, of noble birth or who enjoyed noble characteristics and disposition but were not peers. The learned classes frequently noted this. In a eulogy entitled ‘My life is now so poor’ one of the greatest poets of these years, Daibhí Ó Bruadair, whose main patrons were the MacCarthys and Barrys in County Cork, mourned the passing in 1650 of John Barry, a leading Catholic royalist who had married Alice Boyle, the eldest daughter of the earl of Cork. Though he held no title of honour, Barry was a near kinsman of the aristocratic houses of Clanricarde, Antrim, Ormond and Westmeath, and for Ó Bruadair he embodied the qualities of a great noble: He was lordly, unruffled, considerate, loving, and mild, In good ever busy, adventurous, skilful, and brave, Though fierce to his foes, he was ever forbearing to friends; And the Church of God found a safe pathway in him unto peace.4

For Ó Bruadair, Barry did not require a title to be considered noble, something that Cork recognized when he allowed his daughter to marry him. The contemporary Capuchin historian, Richard O’Ferrall, reminded his readers that the confederate general assembly had many noble members – often descended from the kings of Ireland – who were not distinguished ‘by any titles of duke, count, baron, nor of knighthood’. According to O’Ferrall, these men had spurned those English titles and simply bore the family name (‘the O’Neill’ or ‘the MacCarthy Mór’).5 There were also those who held titles according to custom, rather than by royal patent: the Husseys, barons of Galtrim, the Purcells, barons of Loughmo, and the Nangles, barons of Navan. A few of these lords had been summoned to some of the medieval parliaments, and contemporaries recognized and regularly used their titles. The bardic poetry also recorded what the literati perceived to be the collapse of aristocratic rule in Ireland and the replacement of men of true nobility with upstarts and parvenus. As Bernadette Cunningham noted, ‘in a traditionally hierarchical society where honour based on lineage and valour was still key to social order, the dislocation resulting from colonization had irrevocably altered the social code that defined status and respectability in Irish society’.6 The loss of office, land and status to those they believed to be socially inferior, whether Catholic or Protestant, left the noble elite feeling dishonoured and aggrieved. They vented their spleen against the men ‘hatched in ignobilitie’, who might be Protestant newcomers, converts or Irish Catholics from humble backgrounds who had risen above their social station.7 The anonymous author of the Aphorismical Discovery of Treasonable Faction lambasted John, Viscount Taaffe, as a ‘comon, cogginge, gamster, a route banke and a temporizer’ and as ‘a man of meane ranke (though

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viscounte) . . . inferior . . . in reputation, honour, and extraction’.8 Richard O’Ferrall suggested that Dominick Sarsfield, the son of a Cork merchant, had ‘increased his own estate by obtaining filthy profits’ which he accrued by fining priests. ‘By doing so he [Sarsfield] grew so wealthy that among lesser distinctions and honours (though indeed honours of ill repute) he came into the most opulent title of Viscount of Kilmallock’.9 Many, such as Geoffrey Keating, author of Foras feasa ar Éirinn, and Michael Kearney, his Englishlanguage translator, felt that the newcomers were ‘blood-suckers and moths’ who would make Ireland ‘a withered dry stump of a tree, left without fruit, flower, leaves or bark’. These men had ‘received advancement in honour and riches beyond their merits or deserts’ and turned the social hierarchy on its head.10 The anonymous author of Pairlement Chloinne Tomáis, a remarkable text probably dating from the 1630s, also lamented the rise to prosperity of the lower orders at the expense of the rightful nobility. Pairlement Chloinne Tomáis charts the fortunes of a family of minor Gaelic nobles, Clan Thomas, who used the availability of cheap land in the wake of the Nine Years War, marriage alliances and the Crown’s ‘civilizing’ and commercializing policies as a route to social advancement.11 The family of upstarts quickly overextended itself and called a ‘parliament’ (pairlement) which met over three sessions. The descriptions of the proceedings and of the low-born members of Clan Thomas who aped English language, manners, dress and customs, offer, in the words of Brendan Kane, ‘a scathing commentary on Irish social inversion’.12 Writing later in the century, Ó Bruadair lamented the fact that he had to live amongst vulgar, ‘gloomy boors’, ‘fat-rumped jeerers’ and ‘ignorant dullards’ who value English fashion more than learning.13 In short, as Marc Caball and Joep Leerssen have shown, the poets equated honour ‘with adherence to uniquely Gaelic cultural forms and dishonour with Anglicization’. These notions of honour were religiously charged and culturally exclusive, but it would seem that the Catholic peers, much to the disgust of the literati, largely disregarded them as they embraced English notions of honour.14 In Ireland the English monarch was the fount of all honour, creating new titles and regulating entry into the ranks of the peerage.15 ‘To be the Fountain of Honour, is the peculiar priviledge of Sovereign Princes,’ wrote Richard Lawrence, adding ‘and though they may trust a Subject with the Key of their Treasury, and Cabinet; yet the Key of Honour should always be tied at their own Girdles.’16 In a society consumed by status, marks of royal favour were highly prized. The Crown reserved English titles for only a select handful of very privileged Irish lords. In 1628 Richard, sixth earl of Clanricarde, acquired the English earldom of St Albans. He took real pride in relating this ‘extraordinary’ favour to his agent in Connacht and reminding him that ‘an English title is held no small matter especially for a [man of ] Irish birth’.17 In 1682 Charles II recognized Ormond’s extraordinary services to the Crown

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with the ultimate prize, an English dukedom, and Ormond was grateful for the precedence the honour conferred.18 Of course, Irish titles were also eagerly sought and the recipients regarded them as an ‘eminent and lasting mark of favour’ (see chapter 2 above).19 In principle the process of ennoblement comprised three stages. First, the king created a new peer by oral or, increasingly, written declaration. Second, the king or his representative (usually the lord deputy) invested the new peer by girding him with the sword of that country.20 In the sixteenth century Irishmen invariably travelled to England and submitted themselves to the king or queen in person, but after 1603 this rarely happened. Third, a charter or patent was issued recording and announcing the creation of the title. The precise terms and conditions of patents did vary but the general format was similar. It explained why the honour was deserved. For example, the earl of Castlehaven’s patent (1616) stated that his honour was ‘in consideration of his military services in the Netherlands, France, and Ireland, and more particularly at the siege of Kinsale, where he was severely wounded’.21 The earl of Barrymore’s grant of 1625 referred to him as ‘one of the ancient nobility of Ireland and chief of a very honourable and well-deserving English family planted there from the first conquest’.22 The earl of Roscommon’s patent (1622) attributed his earldom to loyal service and the fact that his son conformed to the Established Church.23 The charter usually mentioned a grant of lands, often entailed, and the amount of the ‘creation fee’ (or modest royal pension the peer was entitled to claim). The patent also explained how the remainder was to be disposed of, usually to a ‘lawfully begotten’ male heir (‘tail male’), and thus a lineage often depended for its long-term survival on the ability of the first lord to produce legitimate adult male heirs (and many failed to do this, discussed in chapter 2 above). The widespread adoption of primogeniture and entail created a relatively stable and in many instances enduring landed aristocracy. Occasionally, a title passed to a designated family member. In a few instances, the marquisates of Antrim and Clanricarde, a title was held for life. Some patents included a reversion clause that saw lands revert to the Crown in the absence of a legitimate male heir.24 The link between a title and land was of fundamental importance and grants of property often accompanied the passing of a patent for a peerage. Sir Randal MacDonnell’s patent referred to his role as a loyal servant to the Crown and as a planter who had ‘reduced to civility the barbarous people of those parts where he doth reside’.25 The patent dated from 25 June 1618. Four days later Lord Deputy St John created him Viscount Dunluce (earl of Antrim in 1620) in a ceremony performed in his presence chamber in Dublin castle. A sermon preceded the ennoblement and a lavish feast, paid for by Dunluce, concluded the celebrations. Of particular importance were the royal grants that related to a lord’s estate, and in Dunluce’s case these dated from

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the previous decade (28 May 1603).26 The bardic poet Fear Flatha Ó Gnímh captured the delight of his patron in securing his patent to his lands in the Route and Glynns of Antrim: ‘On a smooth membrane-roll of parchment, in consequence of promise of favour, he brought from the king, on the day he was summoned for the grant, Glenarm and the estuary of the Bann.’27 As part of this grant MacDonnell was to provide ‘120 foot soliders, 60 to be good shot, and the rest swordmen and pikemen, and 24 horsemen’.28 MacDonnell, like so many Catholic Irish lords, held his lands directly from the king by knight’s service in capite, which meant that they were liable to the feudal incidents of wardship, marriage, seisin, relief and escheat.29 The tenures Abolition Act of 1662 replaced knight’s service in capite with tenure by free and common socage, which was how many of the Protestant newcomers already held their lands. The significance of these feudal incidents, especially marriage, wardship and relief, was very real. The king had the right to choose a lord’s spouse. Wardship accorded the king the authority to educate and to manage, for his own profit, the estate of a young lord until he came of age (i.e. became twenty-one). Relief was the payment due to the king by the heir of full age as the price of his right to succeed (i.e. the heir sued out his livery), and the king had the right to take possession of the land until the appropriate homage and relief had been rendered. To make matters worse the Act of Supremacy determined that a Catholic who held land by knight’s service could only sue for livery to his estates when he took the oath of supremacy (something that clauses 15–17 of the Graces ended). The Crown’s ability to use these feudal incidents, particularly wardship, to ‘civilize’ the nobility is discussed elsewhere (see chapter 5), but suffice to say they accorded the king considerable power over his subjects and allowed him to exercise control over the most influential members of Irish society. A title of honour conferred on a lord a variety of political, judicial and social privileges. Peers took their seats in the upper chamber of the Irish parliament alongside the archbishops and bishops.30 Those willing to take the oath of supremacy held key public offices as government ministers and as regional and local administrative and judicial officials. As such they represented an informal point of contact between the king and his subjects, and many spent time in London at the royal court, the ‘nerve centre’ of seventeenth-century politics.31 A few served as the king’s favoured counsellors. As well as these political privileges Irish nobles enjoyed legal ones. A nobleman accused of a crime could claim special legal treatment and the privilege of being tried by his peers. Thus in 1628 Baron Dunboyne was tried in Dublin before his peers on a charge of manslaughter (discussed below), a privilege that was denied Lord Maguire of Enniskillen when he was tried in London for treason in 1645.32

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The peers also played a critical role in the administration of justice, serving in the public courts and dispensing justice in their baronial courts. Peers in Ireland, like their English counterparts, did not enjoy exemptions from taxation, but their pre-eminent position as landowners accorded them privileges which represented an important source of revenue. They enjoyed a monopoly over access to and exploitation of natural resources, especially timber, together with hunting and fishing rights, and they could compel their tenants to use their mill or local court (discussed in chapter 4 below). Peers were not subject to complex rules around derogation, which prevented some continental nobles from engaging in activities not deemed to be in keeping with noble status, namely trade, thus preventing them from acting as landed and commercial entrepreneurs.33 Finally, the peers had a range of honorific privileges, such as the right to hold armorial bearings, which helped to differentiate them from other members of society and underscored their elevated social status. In return, a lord had to behave in a manner befitting his rank and station and to live a life of conspicuous consumption (discussed in chapter 14 below). A worthy lord also needed to demonstrate that he was loyal, wise, charitable, virtuous and honourable.34 Honour Despite being ‘the social glue’ of Stuart society, the analysis of honour in an early modern Irish context has attracted relatively little attention from historians.35 There are, of course, a number of exceptions. Articles by Bernadette Cunningham and William Palmer on honour in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, together with books by James Kelly on duelling, Clodagh Tait on death and, above all, Brendan Kane, have drawn attention to the importance of the subject.36 In his pioneering study Palmer argued that ‘the concept of honor played an important role in the mental worlds of Irish lords and English conquerors’ and that ‘the English and the Irish developed different and distinctive concepts of honor, which were expressed in individual actions, various kinds of writing, symbols, and rituals. The English conception of honor emphasized English dominance in Ireland and loyalty to the crown, while the Irish conception, though less clear, stressed individualism and defiance of authority.’37 In short, English and Irish notions of honour did little to transcend ethnic and sectarian divides and to foster stable communities of honour. More recently Brendan Kane, drawing on rich Irish-language sources as well as English ones, has approached the topic from the refreshing perspective of the operation of honour politics across Ireland and Britain.38 As the arbiters of noble honour, Kane shows how the writings of the bards ‘offer an extremely sensitive barometer for measuring change or continuity in

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contemporary ideas of honour’.39 In his various publications Kane explores the interface between honour, culture and politics, and analyzes how honour principles operated in an Irish context, how a distinctive Irish community of honour gelled, and how these discussions had a very direct impact on court politics. Using surrender and regrant agreements, the Crown sought to incorporate the peers into a ruling class and to ‘create an aristocratic honour culture’ centred on the king. Kane suggests that despite the very real ‘social, cultural and political differences separating English from Irish’ the Tudor Crown and administration in Dublin under Lord Deputy St Leger ‘saw Ireland’s Gaelic and “English-Irish” elites as simply variations on a recognized model of European nobilities’.40 Kane examines noble honour in three broadly chronological contexts. The first looks at honour in the ‘fighting and feasting’ culture of medieval Ireland. The second, covering the years between the passage of the Kingship Act in 1541 and the outbreak of rebellion in 1641, explores how being a kingdom influenced notions of honour. There was the ‘shift away from culturally (Gaelic) specific honor notions to more broadly negotiated ones’ in which ‘the honor bond between king and subject was now made explicit’.41 He argues that ‘Irish intellectuals reworked traditional notions of Gaelic honour to fit rapidly and radically changing social, cultural, political and religious circumstances’.42 He also takes cognizance of the wider European context and demonstrates how ‘the influence of Tridentine Catholicism’ and continental ideas of honour refashioned Gaelic ‘notions of honour’.43 The third element in Kane’s argument ‘considers anglicized “British” honor’ which, by the mid-seventeenth century, predominated.44 Kane’s pioneering research owes much to the scholarship of historians of early modern England who have demonstrated that honour was a slippery, nuanced and complex concept. It meant different things to different people; it was individualistic and communal; could be applied in a variety of ways and in both the public and private spheres, and its meaning changed over the course of the early modern period. The most influential, if now rather dated, discussion of honour and politics in early modern England was Mervyn James’s English Politics and the Concept of Honour, 1485–1642 (first published in 1978). In this James ‘mapped out a pattern of change amongst the élite whereby a concept of honour associated with chivalry and lineage came to be overlaid by a concept linked to humanism, Protestantism and obedience to the crown. The virtues of wilfulness, steadfastness and assertiveness gave way to wisdom, temperance and godliness.’45 Richard Cust has challenged James’s model.46 Cust has suggested that ‘For many contemporaries blood and lineage remained fundamental to their understanding of honour, and this view could coexist with an emphasis on virtue and service to the crown.’ He continues that ‘It would be misleading to privilege one particular concept as dominant and thereby marginalize others. Even if concepts of honour

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were not straightforwardly transformed by a shift from an old “lineage” discourse to a new “civil” one, nevertheless it is apparent that they were altering in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.’47 This may well have been the case in England, but in seventeenth-century Ireland honour became increasingly linked to service even if lineage remained particularly important for those Catholic families denied office because of their faith. Of course, as Cynthia Herrup notes, ‘honour was less a single value than a selection from a medley of values. It was . . . inborn and achieved, self-generated and bestowed, activist and stoical. . . . Honour was both inherited and earned . . . dependent upon royal favour and community approval.’48 Honour was its own reward. Honour was also highly gendered, with female honour being inextricably linked to chastity, sexual purity and obedience (discussed below in chapter 6).49 A woman, who usually took her ranking from her husband, depended on men – her husband, her father, her brother – to defend her honour. For, as one commentator wryly noted, men could repair their reputations but a woman’s was like glass and once broken impossible to mend.50 In a pioneering study of honour, gender and reconciliation, Linda Pollock argues that honour was ‘ubiquitous’ and ‘resided in social relationships’. She examines three interlinked aspects of honour culture: ‘the importance of restraint and reconciliation; the role of collective, family honour; and the contribution of women to the honour culture.’51 In particular, she analyzes how women took an active role in shaping honour culture and constructing ideas of communal honour. They praised their menfolk when they behaved honourably, criticized them when they did not or when they threatened to bring dishonour to the wider lineage, and stressed the importance of domestic harmony to the reputation of the family. The importance of communal or collective honour is discussed below, and the particular significance of interventions by women is vividly illustrated by the duchess of Ormond and her interactions with her husband and their adult children (see chapter 15 for details). Those peers of ancient lineage, like the Ormonds, viewed themselves, thanks to the good fortune of their birth and their chivalric origins, as enjoying a predisposition to honour. They commissioned family trees that traced their ancestry back in time, some to Adam or in the case of the earls of Thomond to Brian Boru, high king of Ireland, and Milo, the first Gaelic invader of Ireland and a descendant of the ancient Greeks. Genealogies and pedigrees focused on the nobleness and legitimacy of particular lineages and helped to differentiate them from the arrivistes.52 Towards the end of the sixteenth century the Ulster king of arms began to compile coats of arms for peers with Irish titles. By the turn of the seventeenth century the use of heraldic devices was widely established. It was also common for families to

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return funeral entries, which recorded the name of the deceased, the date of his/her death, the names of spouses, children (living and dead), grandchildren, sometimes with other information relating to the marriages of children and the place of burial.53 Bernadette Cunningham has suggested that ‘This interest in heraldry within the context of a settler social hierarchy, and more particularly the associated verification of pedigrees, closely paralleled the work of the hereditary historians in Gaelic society in affirming contemporary social status by reference to ancestry.’54 The anonymous author of the ‘Aphorismiscal Discovery of Treasonable Faction’ ridiculed the Old English obsession with origin. He took delight in trawling the annals with the intention of exposing the humble beginnings of many of the established lords: ‘I haue perused both those chronicles and founde nothinge remarkable, any noble extraction, either in bloude or action, or other thinge, wherof these present gentlmen might bragg off theire proper beinge from thence descended.’55 Often lacking an illustrious pedigree, the newcomers to the peerage emphasized their service to the Crown. Military service, which had long been a defining feature of the nobility, was particularly important. Across early modern Europe ‘It was assumed that a nobleman’s overwhelming sense of honour, of family and of lineage would ensure that he would always do his duty. Military virtue was believed still to reside principally in the social elite, for whom army service long remained a defining characteristic and not simply a career choice.’56 The innovations associated with the Military Revolution spread across early modern Europe and changed the nature of warfare, as technological advances in the use of firepower and the construction of fortifications led to a dramatic increase in the size of armies in which the infantry, rather than the heavily armoured cavalry so prevalent in the Middle Ages, predominated.57 This changed and enhanced the military role of the nobility, even in Ireland which embraced the technological innovations associated with the Military Revolution later than elsewhere.58 Military valour and chivalric values continued to fuel notions of honour and the exercise of arms at home or abroad remained a central part of noble culture.59 The language of honour, martial prowess and loyal service pervaded Sir Toby Caulfeild’s long patent.60 Particular mention was made of Sir Toby’s defeat of ‘the traitor’, Hugh O’Neill, earl of Tyrone. The letters patent extolled Sir Toby’s worthy lineage, his military training in France and the Low Countries, and his soldierly triumphs in Ireland. He displayed ‘true loyalty, unfailing constancy, and indefatigable labour, and the virtues of men devoted to their Prince’, which was in stark contrast to the dishonoured Tyrone, who was described as hateful, crafty, obstinate, perfidious and barbarous.61 Since Sir Toby had never married, his letters patent provided for the transfer of his title to his nephew, Sir William, who was described as ‘a man of distinguished talent and character, a strenuous imitator of his uncle’s military and other

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virtues’.62 Similarly, Sir Edward Blayney’s ‘conduct as a valiant soldier’ during times of war helped to secure his honour, as did his ‘services as an able counsellor during the peace’.63 As the work of Nicholas Canny, Clodagh Tait and Patrick Little has demonstrated, Richard Boyle, first earl of Cork, stands as an excellent example of someone who used royal service, marriage and death to portray himself as virtuous and his lineage as honourable, even if it was clear to contemporaries that he was a grasping, greedy, social-climbing commoner who lacked noble virtues and qualities.64 He purchased armorials and the latest books on the English peerage. He ostentatiously adorned his new home in Dorset with heraldic shields. The earl commissioned Christopher Watts, mason and carver from Bristol, to make ‘a very fair chimney’ for the parlour that would reach up to the ceiling ‘with my coat of arms complete, with crest, helmet, coronet, supporters and mantling’. He also asked Watts to carve two figures, each three feet high, ‘with my coat with a coronet’, which were to be placed on the staircase where they might remind the household and visitors of the family’s pre-eminence.65 Of course, Cork was not alone and other ‘upstarts’ flaunted their nobleness. The funeral sermons of Protestant lords extolled their public virtues: their ‘noble’ birth and ancestry, their role as loyal public servants, as brave soldiers, as devoted supporters of the Crown and of the Established Church; together with their personal qualities – their learning, wisdom, tenderness, compassion, hospitality, charity, faithfulness – and, above all, their sense of honour (see chapter 16 below). The greatest royal servant during these years was the duke of Ormond.66 Contemporary historians, like Edward Hyde, earl of Clarendon, represented him as a courageous, selfless, loyal servant who put the interests of the Crown before his own.67 John Dryden’s portrait of Ormond as Barzillai in his poem Absalom and Achitophel exemplified Ormond’s loyalty in terms of service and sacrifice in civil-war Ireland (‘regions waste beyond the flood’) and extols his honour (‘Barzillai crown’d with Honour’).68 Two years later, Dryden published his translation of Plutarch’s Lives and dedicated it to the duke. In the preface he emphasized the duke and his family’s sense of virtue and honour, his ancient and distinguished lineage, his long and loyal service to the Stuarts, and his remarkable and effective rule in Ireland.69 Ormond also enjoyed close relationships with some of the other leading literary figures in Stuart England and Ireland, including Aphra Behn, Katherine Philips, Nahum Tate and John Wilson. Writing in 1685 to celebrate the coronation of James II, Aphra Behn represented Ormond as ‘Stedfast in Loyalty, in Honour nice’.70 Like John Dryden, these writers were concerned with depicting the family’s sense of honour or, in the case of the Butler women, their virtue. The writers portrayed the duke as a loyal servant to the Stuarts, as a premier courtier and as an

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extraordinary statesman, and his son, Ossory, as a faithful commander and military hero (comparable to Caesar or ‘a Carthaginian prince’).71 Honour was a collective status and the example of the Ormonds illustrates this vividly. In particular, elegies, written in the wake of the deaths of Ossory and the first duke and his duchess, celebrated their lives and lineage, their military achievements, their public service and their private virtue, together with their loyalty to sovereign, family and friends. Richard Lawrence dedicated The interest of Ireland to Ossory’s young heir, later the second duke, and in the preface reprinted many other poems that appeared in the wake of Ossory’s death in 1680. These focused on his lustrous and ancient lineage, his commitment to Protestantism, his loyalty to the Stuarts (‘Charles was his Polar Star’), his naval and military victories, his ‘publick spirit’, and his personal qualities of diligence, affability, humility, charity, and honour.72 One-page broadsheets also circulated ensuring that the widest possible reader­ship learned of Ossory’s bravery, martial acts, fidelity and honour.73 John Dryden in his opening dedication of Fables (1700) deftly linked the three generations and celebrated the Ormonds as a model for the unbroken descent of virtue, honour and charity, and suggested that they were ‘descended from one of the most Ancient, most Conspicuous, and most Deserving Families in Europe’.74 Given their position as the premier lineage in Stuart Britain, these representations of the Ormonds as the ultimate embodiment of aristocratic honour are understandable, as is the extent to which they became a model for others to emulate. Contesting and Defending Honour The acquisition or possession of honour was one thing; its significance, however, lay in the fact that others acknowledged it publicly. ‘Honour is not in his hand who is honoured,’ wrote James Cleland, ‘but in the hearts and opinions of other men.’75 In return for behaving according to their rank and station the peers demanded deference and respect. Rank and date of creation determined the order in which peers assembled, processed and sat at a council table, in parliament or in church. This was a hierarchical society and so issues of precedence and protocol often proved contentious. Disputes over precedence, for example, dogged the openings of nearly all of the seventeenthcentury Irish parliaments. The 1613 parliament proved particularly troublesome. Lord Deputy Chichester noted how the peers squabbled ‘about the priority and precedency of their places (more to interrupt this great affair as we conceiv’d it, then for any sound reasons besides) and professed that they would neither come to the Parliament house, not yet accompany us unto the Church, before those differences were first decided’. He suggested that this was simply a delaying tactic. He invoked the king’s name to force their

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attendance and indicated ‘that howsoever they did ranck themselves for that day, it should be held for no disparagement for the time, nor prejudice unto the right of precedency of any one of them’.76 Chichester also attributed the confusion to the infrequency with which parliament met and the fact that ‘few of them had any letters to shew for their creations, all which they pretended to be consumed or lost by accidents, again the Parliament rolls are uncertaine and various’. He sent a list of contested titles to London and asked for instructions on how best to determine precedence cases.77 In the interim Chichester had to settle disputes between Viscounts Gormanston, Barry and Roche, and between Lords Slane, Courcy, Lixnaw, Delvin and Killeen.78 In 1625 Dominick Sarsfield’s attempts to claim the viscountcy of Kinsale triggered a stream of objections from Lord Courcy of Kinsale, whose title dated back to the reign of Richard II.79 In a long drawn-out dispute between the earls of Clanricarde and Thomond over which earl enjoyed seniority, Clanricarde vowed in 1627 to settle the issue discreetly and thereby to clear his family name of ‘wicked and foolish aspersions’.80 The elevation of Ulick, fifth earl, to the marquisate of Clanricarde temporarily resolved the problem but it became an issue again in the Restoration Parliament.81 During the early 1660s Lords Courcy and Kerry also sparred over issues of protocol and precedence, as did the earls of Drogheda and Tyrconnell.82 The king carefully protected the honour of the Crown, as did his representatives in Ireland who enjoyed quasi-regal status.83 Elaborately orchestrated ceremonial events – like the opening of parliament, the inauguration of a new lord deputy, an official vice-regal progress, the ritual act of ennoblement – provided lord deputies with ideal opportunities to promote the cult of monarchy and to remind people that ‘the name of king is higher than the name of lord’.84 They also used these events to highlight their own importance. In 1613 the attorney general, Sir John Davies, drew attention to the semi-regal status and powers of the lord deputy. ‘For he that doth fight with the sword of a king, write with the pen of a king he that hath the justice, mercy and bounty of a king in his hands, had need be furnished with those noble powers and virtues as are fit for the rule and government of a kingdom.’85 As lord lieutenant, Ormond used rituals and processions to underscore his own authority and that of the restored Stuart monarchy.86 A detailed account, dating from September 1666 when the duke was at the height of his powers, of one progress from Kilkenny to Youghal vividly recaptured the pomp and ceremony associated with these public displays of political power, military might and great nobility. The duke continued his progress, stopping in Kinsale, Blarney House and Youghal ‘where the Earl of Cork received him kindly and gave him “a noble entertainment” ’. ‘In all places’, the earl of Orrery noted, the duke ‘was received with the respect due to the King’s representative and to a man of his merit’.87 Ormond’s use of

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ritual was typical of the wider aristocratic community, who manipulated public and private events to remind contemporaries of their elevated rank and privileged position in society. These rituals also helped to forge a sense of aristocratic identity and to underscore communal notions of honour. When due deference was not given or when a peer believed that his honour had been slighted, confrontation often occurred. In these instances individuals used violence (including formal duels) and the courtroom as a means of defending honour. These ‘honour disputes’ reveal much about private and public perceptions of honour, honour culture, and the relationships a lord enjoyed with the king and his fellow peers, in other words the wider honour community. Violence was common throughout early modern Europe and Ireland was no exception. Linda Pollock discusses violence as an element of an honour system that, on the one hand, promoted behaviour that was ‘aggressive, masculine, and sharply hierarchical’ but, on the other, condemned unnecessary violence (including duelling) as dishonourable.88 The furious dispute between the maverick Baron Howth and some prominent English newcomers illustrates the tensions inherent in the honour system and the complexities involved in interpreting incidents of interpersonal violence that involved honour and reputation.89 Between 1608 and 1611, the ninth baron of Howth, whose title dated from the mid-fifteenth century, clashed with the sons of two English settlers who had risen to prominence under Lord Deputy Chichester, but whom Howth regarded as upstarts. One was Sir Garret Moore, who became Baron Moore of Mellifont and later first Viscount Drogheda; the other was Moore’s son-in-law, Roger Jones, son of Thomas, archbishop of Dublin (Jones was raised to the peerage as Viscount Ranelagh in 1628). This formed part of an ongoing vendetta between Howth and Moore. Moore claimed that the encounter began when Howth made ‘false and slanderous accusations’ against him and others. Moreover, as Moore added, the ‘Lord of Howth’s malice to the English is also well known, and how that publicly he used the most detracting, disgraceful, and malicious speeches he could of the whole nation’. He concluded his statement by insisting that Howth was ‘an enemy, and a public slanderer of the King’.90 Attempts to resolve the matter failed ‘to abate the edge of his [i.e. Howth’s] tongue’, and Chichester referred the dispute for arbitration to the court in London.91 Initially the king sided with Howth. In April 1609 Chichester was informed that ‘His Majesty has chosen rather to judge of his [Howth’s] loyalty by his former carriage and his disposition in religion [Howth claimed to be a Protestant], than by the allegations against him, [and] he has restored him freely to his favour as before.’ A few months later Howth wrote to the king, out of ‘concern for his own good name’, informing him that Sir Roger Jones had attacked him one day while he was playing tennis. Chichester and the

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archbishop of Dublin offered an alternative account of the altercation, which had resulted in the death of one of Jones’s kinsmen.92 The archbishop complained that Lord Howth ‘who, although of noble birth, is of a most violent and seditious disposition, and who had never ceased since his appearance before the Council in England, to insult and calumniate him’. He went on to relate ‘the murderous attack made by Howth and his cut-throat . . . retainers upon his son’. Two things infuriated the archbishop: first, the attack affected ‘the dignity of his [ecclesiastical] office and authority’, and second, it had impeached his ‘personal character and reputation’.93 After a further unpleasant incident of verbal abuse, in which Howth allegedly accused Jones and the English generally of being cowards, the king withdrew his earlier favour towards the baron. Howth took this as a direct slight on his honour and felt aggrieved that he had not been offered an opportunity to defend publicly ‘his honour and reputation’.94 This testosterone-driven dispute, dressed up in the language of honour, can be presented as a cultural confrontation between native and newcomer. There may have been truth in this, but other factors may also have been at work. The dispute coincided with a particularly difficult moment in Howth’s personal life as his marriage to an English Protestant, Elizabeth Wentworth, ended in acrimony. In 1608 the English Privy Council instructed the baron to pay her an annual allowance of £100. Elizabeth appears to have taken charge of their brood of six children, raising them as Protestants and in 1615 marrying the eldest son to the daughter of George Montgomery, bishop of Meath.95 The Howth–Moore dispute also presented the Crown with an opportunity to clip the wings of a family whose proclivity for violence was well known.96 Sometimes the Howths fought, raided and plotted on behalf of the Crown, but when it suited them they acted against it. The ninth baron’s predecessors had practised their Catholicism openly (and his own commitment to Protestantism wavered), quarrelled loudly with their peers, and committed extreme acts of domestic abuse against their servants, wives and children, thereby threatening the validity of the household as the social building block in Stuart society.97 The Dublin administration could no longer tolerate the situation and used the escalation of this unsavoury incident to vilify the disruptive baron and to neuter his lineage. Thus with Howth’s death in 1619 the family became politically compliant: it conformed to the Established Church, individual barons spent increasing amounts of time living in England, and the lineage faded into relative obscurity. Others resorted to duelling as a means of preserving their reputation and winning honour, despite the fact that the Crown did everything possible to curb the practice. A lord felt obliged to accept a legitimate challenge to a duel if he wanted to retain his reputation as an honourable man. There were many recorded instances of duels, often involving young men or those associated

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with the court. Matters of the heart resulted in a duel between the 19-yearold Roger Boyle, Lord Broghill, and the son of an English earl, much to the annoyance of the earl of Cork who approved neither of his son’s resort to violence nor of the young lady.98 When Lord Wilmot of Athlone heard that his son (also 19) had been involved in a duel, he suggested that he be sent to serve in the Low Countries but later forgave him on the grounds that his son had acted ‘according to such rules of honour as now misguide the world’.99 In 1669 a drunken brawl caused ‘a triple duel’ in the Phoenix park involving Lord Brabazon, son of the earl of Meath, and other senior army officers; one man died and another was ‘run through’.100 As a peer Brabazon escaped censure (his accomplices were found guilty of manslaughter) and secured a formal pardon.101 A spat between the earl of Roscommon and the earl of Clancarthy’s brother over precedence at a funeral in 1667 resulted in a duel at Merrion, just outside Dublin, with the earl of Arran acting as second for the former and Lord Mountgarret’s son for the latter. Ormond heard about the duel and immediately sent his guard to stop it.102 Early intelligence also prevented a duel in March 1670 between the earls of Roscommon and Mount Alexander.103 Roscommon’s son, Lord Kilkenny-West, was as hotheaded as his father. In 1686 he sought revenge for an assault he had received during a drinking spree. ‘I will not desire to live when I suffer a blow from any but those I owe duty to,’ he informed his father.104 Presumably Roscommon, now older and wiser, cautioned restraint; nothing further was heard of the matter. By the early seventeenth century the courtroom acted as an important forum where a peer’s reputation could be defended and his honour restored. The case of Edmund Butler, Lord Dunboyne, patron of the poet Pádraigín Haicéad, illustrates this. In 1628 Dunboyne came with some followers to Cahir castle to collect a legacy that his father-in-law had left him. The keeper of the castle and a kinsman, James Prendergast, refused to hand the plate over and a heated argument began. James Butler, the local justice of the peace, tried to keep order but one of Dunboyne’s men goaded Prendergast, telling him that Dunboyne ‘was a better man than he or any in the house, except the two lordes’. Prendergast gave Dunboyne ‘the lie’ and Dunboyne punched him; Prendergast then drew his sword and Dunboyne ‘suffered him not’. In the ensuing melee Prendergast died of stab wounds. A Tipperary grand jury found Dunboyne guilty of manslaughter, but the baron proclaimed his innocence and, as was his right, asked to be tried before his peers in Dublin. The setting for the trial was suitably formal, with ‘a place being prepared in the King’s Bench with a chaire and a cloath of state, and other places for the nobilitie, peers, judges, the King’s counsell, and common people to behold and see’. The court proceedings aimed to impress those present with the legitimacy of royal authority as the only means of resolving disputes.

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According to an observer ‘The Lord High Stewarte of Ireland came on horse from the White friares, attended by the peeres and judges.’ A sergeant at arms, ‘with his Mace and two ushers’, preceded them. Dunboyne presented his case with due formality to the assembled lords and argued that he had not administered the fatal blow. Convinced by Dunboyne’s testimony, the court returned a non-guilty verdict. When he heard it, Dunboyne ‘satt downe upon his knees, and praied for the king, and afterwards arose and thanked his peers’.105 Dunboyne’s trial was a very public and carefully choreographed display of royal justice in which a group of Irish lords of mixed ethnic and religious backgrounds operated as a collective community of justice and honour. The significance of this and of Dunboyne’s public submission to the king and his peers would not have been lost on the ‘common people’ who witnessed it and those who later heard of it. Though the context was very different, Donough MacCarthy, second Viscount Muskerry and, later, earl of Clancarthy, also used the courtroom to secure his honour. In December 1653 Muskerry stood trial before a Cromwellian court, charged with the murder of innocent civilians including women and children, allegedly committed during the civil wars of the 1640s. He had chosen to stand trial, returning to Ireland from exile in the Iberian Peninsula, to bear (as he put it) his ‘crosses’. He offered a spirited defence and after a three-day ordeal was acquitted. In a moving speech he thanked the court, which, he believed, had acted ‘with justice’. He continued: ‘I consider that in this Court I come clear out of that blackness of blood . . . [which] is more to me than my estate. I can live without my estate, but not without by credit.’106 In other words he could not live without his honour, which interestingly he expressed in monetary terms. Muskerry’s speech highlights the importance of personal honour and the premium he placed on securing his reputation for the collective honour of his lineage. Increasingly, a lawsuit or arbitration was regarded as an acceptable alternative to violence in defence of one’s good name.107 The number of slander cases illustrates this trend.108 In parliament peers regularly took action against those who uttered ‘scandalous speeches’ against them and, invariably, fierce punishment was meted out to men who spoke these ‘scandalous words’.109 On the petition of Oliver Fitzwilliam, the Catholic earl of Tyrconnell, two men, Rowse and Wright, were brought to the bar of the house in 1661 for speaking contemptuously to Tyrconnell. Rowse was put into the stocks in Ringsend for two hours and ordered to ask Tyrconnell and his brother Mr Fitzwilliam for forgiveness. Wright was to be put into the pillory ‘with paper on his breast saying he standeth there for calling the Earl of Tyrconnell a rogue’.110 In 1666 Francis Annesley, brother of Arthur, earl of Anglesey, accused Mark Trevor, first Viscount Dungannon, of having committed treason. A committee of the House of Lords effectively tried Francis for the slander. First his judges

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ordered him to apologize to the House and to ‘acknowledge himself guilty of a very rash and inconsiderate action’. He was then instructed to appear before the next assizes in County Down, where Dungannon’s estates lay, and the assizes in ‘every county in Ulster, [to] acknowledge in the face of the country, that he has committed a very gross error in accusing my Lord Dungannon of treason’. This public humiliation of Francis may have restored Dungannon’s good name but it also brought that of Annesley into disrepute, and Anglesey immediately retaliated by making a formal complaint about his brother’s treatment.111 Moreover, when his own good name was challenged Anglesey did not hesitate to take action. Shortly before he died in 1686, Anglesey took Anthony Philpott to task for his ‘barbarous and scandalous usage’. According to the earl, he himself had ‘arrived at old age with unblemished honour and allegiance’ and he hoped to bequeath his unsullied reputation to ‘his numerous progeny’.112 Cases of scandal brought issues of honour to public notice. Gossip, rumour, aspersions and insinuations about the behaviour of influential statesmen, or their immediate kin, could often have serious political consequences. Ormond was particularly concerned about gossip and how this affected his reputation at court. The whispering campaign that the earl of Orrery conducted against him in the midst of the popish plot irritated him intensely since it left him with no means of clearing his name. In a letter to the earl’s elder brother, Ormond complained about Orrery’s dishonourable conduct: ‘To an accusation a man knows what to make answer, and has liberty and opportunity to do it, and the accuser is under some obligation of credit at least to prove his assertions. But, by the way my Lord, your brother, has taken, I have no means of defence, neither is he under the obligation of proof.’113 In terms of damage to reputations, the earl of Anglesey’s spat with Ormond during the early 1680s exposed the good names of both men to public scrutiny, courtly gossip and intrigue in both England and Ireland.114 The details of the very public dispute have been well documented and are discussed in detail in chapter 16 below.115 Suffice to say that it highlights the concern of both peers with their personal reputations as loyal and honourable nobles and with how posterity might judge their respective lineages.116 Conclusion Linda Pollock has suggested that ‘honour was deeply ingrained in the English elite, entwined in the fibers of their beings, something they lived with, thought about, and debated on a daily basis’.117 Honour was ubiquitous in Ireland too but, as Brendan Kane has demonstrated, ‘Irish aristocrats now derived their sense of noble honor in large part from their relationship with the monarch.’118 Honour determined the behaviour and actions of

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individuals and of wider lineages, and how a peer interacted with other members of society. It would be inappropriate to suggest that by 1641 a common and monolithic sense of honour and virtue had transformed the Irish lords into a homogeneous social group. However, by the end of the seventeenth century, adherence to shared and overlapping principles of honour, together with a variety of other factors – especially extensive intermarriage and economic interdependence – helped to forge a common sense of identity amongst the peers, something that became very apparent after the Restoration (see chapter 12 below). Moreover, these lords belonged to a community – or, more accurately, communities – of honour, the membership of which was fluid and was figured and reconfigured over time and according to specific contexts and events. These communities of honour might be defined by place, by the ancientness of title, by the nature of royal service, by valour on the battlefield, and by political engagement (especially in the Irish parliament). Ethnicity was another complicating factor, something that Raymond Gillespie emphasizes in his fascinating article on the social thought of Richard Bellings when he suggests that ‘The Old English . . . were not simply an economic or social elite but a moral one also, imbued with the sense of honour and duty conferred by their lineage.’119 Religion also played a role, especially during times of crisis – the 1640s and after 1688 – when the peerage aligned along sectarian fissures. While religion did remain divisive, the forging of a common sense of honour and the recognition by many Protestant peers that Catholicism was an honourable faith served as one of the key factors in facilitating the social and economic integration, the cultural cross-assimilation and the political cooperation within the resident peerage.120 Little wonder then that at his trial Viscount Muskerry, who, rather appropriately, had first learned of the outbreak of the 1641 rising whilst at a dinner party at Castle Lyons attended by local Munster barons and the earls of Cork and Barrymore, was more concerned about his ‘credit’ and honour than his ‘estate’.

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CHAPTER 4

Landed Nobility Land was the basis for political power in seventeenth-century Ireland and

the nobility was a landed one. Land, inherited through the practice of primogeniture when property passed from a father to his legitimate male heir and through marriage, provided the wealth that sustained a lineage and, during the 1640s, the fighting men it needed to wage war. The dissolution of the monasteries, the rebellions of the sixteenth century and the wars of the seventeenth century resulted in large swathes of Irish land being expropriated and redistributed by the Crown to favourites, clients, the ‘deserving’ and those who needed to be paid off. In addition numerous opportunities – informal land transfers through widespread mortgages and sales – allowed for the purchase of cheap land and facilitated upward social mobility.1 Greedy speculators of all creeds and backgrounds grabbed lands wherever they could, which allowed for the creation of vast estates that were held by a variety of tenures and titles. Whether Catholic or Protestant, native or newcomer, all peers during these years aspired to accumulate landed resources, and landholding became inherently linked to the changing situation of the peerage. By 1641 the hierarchy of landownership effectively mapped onto the status hierarchy which the peerage represented. Thus the greatest aristocrats, with the most political clout, held the largest estates while the lesser-ranking peers held more modest ones. The widespread adoption of entails, whereby land was settled on a number of persons in succession so that it could not be bequeathed at pleasure by any one possessor, created relatively stable landed bases and allowed for the emergence of powerful and enduring landed dynasties. The creation of a landed nobility in Ireland represented a significant departure from the medieval past when status and influence were determined by the number of followers who owed loyalty to a lord, rather than the size of his estates. Moreover, in the medieval Irish system, land belonged to the sept rather than to individuals and partible inheritance (‘gavelkind’) was the norm, rather than male primogeniture, which had resulted in the atomization of

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landholding.2 Pastoralism, especially cattle farming, formed the mainstay of the local economy, with herds moved to high pastures during the summer months, a practice known as transhumance, or ‘booleying’. The early Stuarts regarded this redistributive economy as unsophisticated and aspired to nurture a more commercialized system that favoured settled patterns of farming and promoted urbanization and the development of nucleated settlements. The advantages of this for the peers were very real. Aside from becoming landed entrepreneurs, control over local towns afforded lords economic and political clout over who held office and represented a borough as an MP in the House of Commons. This chapter attempts to recover the relationships that this fluid economic environment spawned. It documents the new patterns of landownership and offers a broad overview of titled landholding in Ireland in 1641 and again in c.1670. It identifies who the largest landowners were and where they held their estates. (The productivity of these estates and the activities of the peers as landed entrepreneurs are discussed at length in chapter 13 below.) The importance of political geography and where a peer held his lands cannot be overstated. In the absence of a standing army and a trained bureaucracy the smooth running of the country depended on the ability of the Crown to secure the support of peers who owned lands in geographically remote and often hostile areas. At one level, a patchwork of seventeenthcentury lineages overlaid the lordships and sub-lordships that had predominated in medieval Ireland. Thus pre-1641 the Bourkes of Clanricarde and the O’Briens of Thomond and Inchiquin and their kin networks were the key power brokers west of the River Shannon, along with more recent ennoblements like Viscounts Mayo and Dillon of Costello-Gallen. Newcomers to the peerage – the MacDonnells of Antrim, together with other Scottish lords (the Hamiltons and Montgomerys) and a few native Irish ones (the Magennises of Iveagh and the Maguires of Enniskillen) – held sway in the remote regions of Ulster. In the far reaches of Munster, power and influence were shared between traditional lords and their kin, like the Barrys of Barrymore or the MacCarthys of Muskerry, and newcomers like the earl of Cork. Peers also dominated political and cultural frontiers, such as the Leinster–Munster border, where the wider Butler lordship ruled supreme. Established Old English peers of the Pale – the Fitzgeralds of Kildare, the Nugents of Westmeath and the Plunketts of Fingal – lorded it over the strategically important areas of Leinster, especially the outskirts of the Pale and the Leinster–Ulster border, along with recent ennoblements like Viscounts Ranelagh and Clanmalier. To some extent these men acted as overlords, much as their predecessors had done, and constellations of lower noble and gentry families arrayed themselves around them. The mid-century revolution in landholding modified particular elements of this general picture, especially in

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Leinster where more recent Protestant ennoblements displaced established families, but it also consolidated the position of the landed nobility who increased their holdings (discussed below and in chapter 11). Peers held lands in each of Ireland’s 32 counties, but more lords held lands in County Dublin, close to the seat of political power, than elsewhere, which suggests that a process of social centralization was occurring in Ireland (much as it was elsewhere in Europe) and explains why County Dublin is examined in considerable detail (see below). Space precludes a comprehensive study of all titled landholders. Instead this chapter analyzes the landholding of the ‘top 20 lords’ in 1641 and c.1670 and adopts a regional perspective by examining landholding patterns in the provinces of Munster and Ulster, both of which underwent extensive programmes of plantation and colonization. In these regions peers of all ethnic and religious backgrounds interacted in complex webs of economic and tenurial connectivity. The activities of lesser lords who owned smaller estates are often less well documented than those of the newcomers or those who lorded it over vast estates, but where the evidence allows the landed interests of the natives and smaller landowners have also been reconstructed. Detailed cadastral studies of the estates of leading peers – the earls of Antrim, Cork and Ormond – add some flesh to otherwise bare statistical bones and highlight the importance of undertaking comparable studies for other lords. The impact that the revolution in landholding associated with the mid-century confiscations had on titled landholding, and especially on the recusant peers, is fully discussed elsewhere (see chapter 11 below), but Catholic survivalism becomes apparent in the evidence presented in this chapter. Many lords resided on their estates and took a direct interest in nurturing their landed investments and acquiring additional lands through purchase, mortgage and more opportunistic windfalls triggered by rebellion and warfare.3 Estate papers – replete with letters patent specifying the creation of manors and the right to hold courts leet and baron along with markets and fairs – survive for many lineages. These – together with evidence of mortgages contracted and released, complex indentures establishing trusts, rent books and leases – vividly recapture the activities, at times frenzied, of individual families as they speculated on the fluid land market or connived to secure expropriated acres.4 As the printed calendars and extant transcripts illustrate, the patent rolls, which were sadly destroyed in 1922, contained a wealth of detail on who held land, where and by what tenure.5 Detailed analysis of these, along with extant estate papers, surveys, bonds, testamentary and other legal records, allows for the reconstruction of the complex layers of landholding within individual lordships/lineages. These gentry farmers and their subtenants paid a lord his rent and in times of crisis took up arms at his behest, yet frustratingly little is known of how these men interacted with a lord or his agents.

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Using the Books of Survey and Distribution, which provided the names of landholders in 1641 and in c.1670, together with details of the size and location of their holdings, Kevin McKenny has offered a fascinating statistical interpretation of the Cromwellian and Restoration land settlements. He suggests that the Protestant share of land increased from 30 per cent in 1641 to 67 per cent in c.1670, and that the percentage of land held by Catholics fell from 66 per cent in 1641 to 29 per cent c.1670, which revises J. G. Simms’s calculation that the Catholic share of land fell to 22 per cent.6 McKenny has also suggested that by the end of the seventeenth century the ‘top aristocracy’, including English peers who acquired lands at the Restoration in 1660, held about 20 per cent of the land and that if the lesser nobles are included this figure rises to around 40 per cent, which represented an increase of 10 per cent since 1641.7 Even if McKenny’s figures are inflated with acres held by non-resident peers, they nonetheless underline the importance of landholding and illustrate how the noble share of land increased over the course of the century. Titled Landholders in 1641 and c.1670 The Books of Survey and Distribution offer a unique glimpse of the lands held by 63 (out of 68) resident peers in 1641 and by 72 resident peers in c.1670.8 This was a pre-statistical age in which measurements were not standard, and so these data need to be handled with caution. Moreover, the figures given here should be seen as indicative of estate size rather than offering precise totals that accord with modern acreages. The fact that there are no data for Viscount Kinalmeaky (d.1642), Baron Docwra (d.1647) and Baron Esmond (d.1645), whose lines became extinct with their deaths, is not surprising, but the lack of information for Viscount Conway is strange. Similarly, there is no entry for Lettice Fitzgerald, baroness of Offaly, but a ‘Lady Fitzgerald’ is listed as holding 2,884 acres. In any event, on her death in 1658 these lands passed to the earl of Kildare. In all, 11 women who were the mothers or wives of peers were listed as holding acres, presumably jointure lands, in their own right, but their estates have been included in totals given for their husband or son. The most significant woman who held lands in 1641 was the heiress Elizabeth Butler, countess of Ormond, with 32,291 acres (her mother-in-law Lady Elizabeth Thurles held a mere 167 acres). The ‘Lady Iveagh’, who held 5,686 acres, could have been Sarah O’Neill, mother of the second viscount, but it is more likely that she was his wife, Mary Bellew. Similarly, ‘Lady Clanmories’, who held 1,881 acres, could either have been Catherine Brabazon, wife of the first viscount, who was still living in 1656, or Margaret Fleming, wife of the second viscount. ‘Lady Dunboyne’, who held 2,283 acres, was probably Ellen Fitzgerald (d.1660) who had

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married as her third husband, Edmund, third baron of Dunboyne. The remaining women – Ladies Aungier, Castle Connell, Caulfeild, Moore and Wilmot – held smaller parcels of land. Though the resident peers represented only a tiny fraction of Ireland’s total population, these men and their womenfolk held over 1,591,109 acres (not all of which were deemed profitable), representing nearly a fifth (18 per cent) of the country (Ireland comprised a total of 9,084,111 acres). In 1641 this land was divided almost equally amongst the Protestant (51 per cent, 814,744) and Catholic (49 per cent, 776,365) peers. Hardly surprisingly, the earls owned the largest share of the land (55 per cent, or 869,652 acres), followed by the viscounts (29 per cent, or 469,240 acres) and the barons (16 per cent, or 254,217 acres). As the figures in table 6 make clear, only nine men held estates of less than 5,000 acres. They included six newcomers to the peerage, Lords Aungier of Longford, Folliott of Ballyshannon, Fitzwilliam of Merrion, Castlehaven, Castle Stewart and Wilmot of Athlone; together with three established Catholic barons, Barnewall of Trimleston, Courcy of Kinsale and Le Power. The majority of peers (35 out of 63) held more substantial estates that measured between 5,000 and 20,000 acres. Of these 35 peers, 25 were new ennoblements and the remaining 10 came from established families (Barrys of Barrymore, Bourke of Castle Connell, Fleming of Slane, Butler of Dunboyne, Bermingham of Athenry, St Lawrence of Howth, Preston of Gormanston, Fitzmaurice of Kerry and Lixnaw, Plunkett of Louth and Plunkett of Dunsany). The newcomers included military speculators such as Lords Lambert of Cavan, Moore of Drogheda and Caulfeild of Charlemont, together with well placed administrators like Lords Mountnorris or Loftus of Ely, and landed adventurers like Lords Taaffe or Montgomery of the Ards. Nineteen lords held lands measuring over 20,000 acres across the four provinces of Ireland (see map 1). By far the largest landowner in Ireland was the earl of Ormond with estates of 224,087 acres, followed by the earls of Clanricarde (152,131 acres), Antrim (149,353 acres) and Thomond (120,230 acres). Of these men, only the earl of Antrim was a newcomer to the peerage. Viscount Muskerry’s holdings of 82,037 acres were also considerable, as were those of Dillon of Costello-Gallen (53,629), Cork (46,257), Claneboye (44,569), Kildare (41,935) and Westmeath (40,346). In the ‘top 20’ of titled landholders, peers of Old English provenance predominate (eight peers): Lords Ormond, Clanricarde, Dillon of Costello-Gallen, Kildare, Westmeath, Mayo, Fingal and Mountgarret. This comes as little surprise since the total Old English share of land was 50 per cent (see table 7). More remarkable is the extent of native Irish holdings, 19 per cent of land held by titled nobles, with six peers holding land over 20,000 acres: Lords Thomond, Muskerry, Clanmalier, Enniskillen, Inchiquin and Iveagh (the only native Irish peer not included here was Upper Ossory). The five remaining lords who held land

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Table 6.  Size of estates held by resident peers in 1641.9 Plantation acres

Number of peers

0–499

2

1,000–4,999

7

5,000–9,999

11

10,000–14,999

14

15,000–19,999

10

20,000–29,999

9

40,000–49,999

4

50,000–99,999

2

100,000+

4 63 (no data for 5 peers)

Table 7.  Ethnic breakdown of lands held by resident peers in 1641.10 New English (19 peers)

245,001 plantation acres

16%

Native Irish (7 peers)

299,433 plantation acres

19%

Old English (32 peers)

818,996 plantation acres

50%

Scots (4 peers)

203,107 plantation acres

13%

Welsh (1 peer)

24,572 plantation acres

2%

Total: 63 peers

1,591,109 plantation acres

100%

over 20,000 acres were all newcomers: two Scots (Lords Antrim and Claneboye), two Englishmen (Lords Cork and Ranelagh), and one Welshman (Baron Blayney). Given the small number of Scottish peers, their overall share of land was high, at 13 per cent (see table 7). What is surprisingly low, given the large number of New English lords (22 in 1641,19 for whom data are extant), is the overall share of land held by titled nobles (16 per cent), which, even when combined with the Welsh figure, did not equal the native Irish holdings. These figures can also be misleading since they do not capture the value of land. Ormond may have been the largest landholder in Ireland but his pre-war landed rental (approx. £8,000) meant that his estates would have been valued at £160,000 (the standard rate in England for the valuation of land was 20 years’ purchase). By the same measure Cork’s estates, which yielded an annual rental in 1641 of some £18,000, would have been valued

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Map 1.  Top 20 titled landholders in 1641 (based on the Books of Survey and Distribution). a combined dot indicates that Catholics and Protestants held land contiguous to each other 1. earl of Ormond 2. earl of Clanricarde 3. earl of Antrim 4. earl of Thomond 5. Viscount Muskerry 6. Viscount Dillon of Costello 7. earl of Cork 8. Viscount Claneboye 9. earl of Kildare 10. earl of Westmeath 11. Viscount Mayo 12. Baron Blayney 13. Viscount Clanmalier 14. baron of Enniskillen 15. Baron Inchiquin 16. Viscount Ranelagh 17. earl of Fingal 18. Viscount Mountgarret 19. Viscount Magennis of Iveagh 20. Viscount Roche of Fermoy (Catholics in bold)

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at £360,000.11 Towards the end of the century these figures had increased very significantly, thanks in part to the landed windfalls both men secured. By the 1670s the earl of Cork’s annual rental was £30,000 and his estates were valued at £600,000, and by the 1680s Ormond’s annual rental was £24,000 and his estates were valued at £480,000 (discussed in chapter 13 below). The Books of Survey and Distribution also record landholding for 72 peers and 12 of their womenfolk in c.1670 (see map 2 for the top 20 landholders).12 Apparently incomplete entries for Lords Chichester, Conway and Ridgeway highlight the challenges involved in using these data, but they nevertheless suggest that these 84 individuals held 2,348,703 acres (1,734,629 of which were deemed profitable, see table 8). Only one man, the earl of Mount Alexander, held land in all four provinces (his holdings spanned nine counties), and particular circumstances after the Restoration explain this (discussed in chapter 11 below). More commonly, as the figures in table 9 illustrate, peers held land in one province or two (26 men in each category), but 19 peers held lands in three provinces. More lords held land in the 12 counties that comprised Leinster, especially Counties Dublin, Meath and the rest of the Pale, than in any other province (see tables 9 and 10), but the total acreage of profitable land held by resident peers in Leinster was considerably less than in Munster. Munster’s six counties, especially Cork and Tipperary, also attracted a high number of titled landowners and was the province where the peers held the greatest number of acres. Less densely settled by peers were Connacht (with the exception of County Roscommon) and Ulster. Nonetheless they held considerable proportions of both provinces, albeit much of the land in Connacht was deemed to be unprofitable. When the data in table 9 are examined from a county perspective, only five peers (out of 72, or 7 per cent) held land in more than 10 counties: Lords Kingston (17 counties), Anglesey (16 counties), Ormond (11 counties), Cork (11 counties) and Ranelagh (11 counties). Relatively few peers (15, or 21 per cent) held land in five counties or more, and those that did represented an interesting mix of established lords (the earls of Clanricarde, Kildare and Thomond), early seventeenth-century ennoblements (the earls of Cavan, Donegal and Drogheda), and ‘new men’ (Lords Colooney, Massareene and Mountrath). Geographically widespread holdings were often associated with the land grabs of the early and mid-seventeenth century, as in the cases of the earls of Anglesey, Cork and Ranelagh, or with newcomers like Lords Kingston and Lanesborough, elevated to the peerage after 1660. The Connacht lands held by many Catholics (Lords Dunsany, Ikerrin, Netterville, Trimleston and Westmeath) harked back to the transplantation initiatives of the 1650s and usually signalled a failure to retrieve ancestral holdings at the Restoration. It was much more common for a peer to hold land in a single county (16 peers, or 22 per cent) or to spread holdings out over two or three counties (28 peers,

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Map 2.  Top 20 titled landholders in c.1670 (based on the Books of Survey and Distribution). a combined dot indicates that Catholics and Protestants held land contiguous to each other 1.  duke of Ormond 2. earl of Clancarthy 3. earl of Clanricarde 4. earl of Anglesey 5. earl of Thomond 6. marquis of Antrim 7. Baron Kingston 8. Viscount Mayo 9. earl of Cork 10. Viscount Dillon of Costello-Gallen 11. earl of Inchiquin 12. Viscount Clare 13. Viscount Kenmare 14. earl of Mountrath 15. earl of Clanbrassil 16. Viscount Massareene 17. earl of Kildare 18. Baron Colooney 19. earl of Carlingford 20. earl of Ranelagh (Catholics in bold, new peers in italic)

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Table 8.  Titled landholding, c.1670.13 Leinster

Munster

Ulster

Connacht

Total

# peers (72)

55 peers

32 peers

23 peers

27 peers

–

# ladies (12)

5 ladies

5 ladies

2 ladies

4 ladies

–

Unprofitable plantation acres

33,875

184,495

69,505

326,199

614,074

Profitable plantation acres

459,559

707,869

320,449

246,752

1,734,629

Total (plantation acres)

493,434

892,364

389,954

572,951

2,348,703

(The total number of peers is given in brackets.)

Table 9.  Geographic extent of titled landholding at provincial and county levels, c.1670. P[rovince]

P1

P2

P3

P4

Total: 72 peers

26 peers (36%)

26 peers (36%)

19 peers (27%)

1 peers (1%)

C[ounty]

C10+

C5–10

C4

C3

C2

C1

Total: 72 peers

5 peers (7%)

15 peers (21%)

8 peers (11%)

17 peers (24%)

11 peers (15%)

16 peers (22%)

or 39 per cent). In these instances counties often bordered each other and traversed provincial borders, which explains why so many peers held land in more than one province. At the top of the pyramid of nobles in Ireland, the power of certain families was truly immense. A few individuals, Lords Antrim, Cork, Ormond and Thomond, and after 1660 Annesley and Clancarthy, ruled over what were in effect private fiefdoms. Only in the cases of Antrim and Clancarthy were these vast family estates territorially consolidated and fully contiguous. A geographically compact estate of any size was difficult to create. The normal pattern was for peers to hold clusters of lands scattered across several regions and even different provinces. This reflected the way in which most great noble estates had been built up in stages and over an extended period of time. They were amassed through skilful marriages (see chapter 6 for details), fortunate inheritance, landed windfalls associated with the dissolution of the

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Table 10.  Intensity of titled landholding at the county level, c.1670. Leinster

Munster

Connacht

Carlow: 8 peers

Clare: 9 Peers

Galway: 13 Peers Antrim: 3 peers

Dublin: 20 peers

Cork: 14 peers

Leitrim: 6 peers

Armagh: 4 peers

Kildare: 11 peers

Kerry: 6 peers

Mayo: 9 peers

Cavan: 7 peers

Kilkenny: 11 peers

Limerick: 10 peers Roscommon: 15 peers

Donegal: 2 peers

King’s County: 11 peers

Tipperary: 13 peers

Down: 7 peers

Longford: 8 peers

Waterford: 6 peers

Sligo: 6 peers

Ulster

Fermanagh: 2 peers

Louth: 7 peers

Londonderry: 3 peers

Meath: 20 peers

Monaghan: 7 peers

Queen’s County: 10 peers

Tyrone: 6 peers

Westmeath: 10 peers Wexford: 11 peers Wicklow: 10 peers

monasteries, shrewd property dealings and, occasionally, donations of land by a grateful ruler. The disparate holdings of the Butlers of Ormond or Annesleys of Mountnorris (discussed below) were more typical. Though a significant proportion of these acres might lie close to the area where the family had originated and perhaps from where it derived its title, the obstacles to further consolidation were considerable.14 The combination of male primogeniture, together with the legal device of entail, led to the continuation and creation of large estates and ensured that landed wealth passed down through male heirs without individuals being able to dispose of landed assets. As Hamish Scott has noted, this was fundamental to an aristocracy ‘which depended upon the transmission of social and political power, together with the human and economic resources to support this, from one generation to the next’.15 An entail was an unbreakable legal trust that regulated succession to landed property, but it did give fathers some right to mortgage and alienate lands. Wills or marriage settlements frequently laid down entails whereby an heir held property in trust. During his lifetime he enjoyed the benefit of the property before passing it to his own heir, ideally

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in the condition in which he had received it. Numerous examples of this practice survive amongst the papers of the titled nobility, and the example of the Annesleys of Mountnorris is typical. In 1638 it was agreed that Arthur Annesley, son and heir of Lord Mountnorris and later earl of Anglesey, should marry Elizabeth Altham. Lands in Counties Wexford and Armagh were designated as their marriage portion. Two years later an indenture conveyed to Arthur all of his father’s lands, except his County Down estates, on the condition that Arthur paid to his father and mother a lump sum of £4,000 and an annual annuity of £900, and agreed to a separate provision for the Annesleys’ other children (three daughters and four sons).16 Only property not included in the trust could be demised to younger children, and provision for younger sons – and the creation of cadet branches of a lineage – became an important status symbol and a testament to the wealth of a lineage. Of course, inheritance depended on the ability of a lineage to produce a male heir, something that resident peers did with mixed success. In this they were typical of their continental counterparts where the direct male line died out after four or five generations and ‘from a quarter to a third of all lineages might become extinct every century’.17 This biological failure broke ‘the connection between a lineage and the land’ and resulted in the extinction of the title (see chapter 2 above).18 In the absence of direct male heirs, uncles, brothers and nephews became important ways of securing dynastic continuity and preventing lands from reverting to the Crown. Female inheritance happened rarely in Ireland, and in stark contrast with the previous century inheritance by illegitimate males occurred under exceptional circumstances and they had no legal rights to property. Titled Landholding in County Dublin The complex landholding patterns in County Dublin illustrate the predominance of the titled nobility as landowners (see table 11 and map 3). Situated on a fertile coastal plain in the heart of the Pale, County Dublin enveloped the city of Dublin, seat of political and administrative power. An observer described Fingal in the north of the county as ‘a little place, but very well husbanded, ever the garner and store-house of this kingdome, so great [a] store of corne it yeeldeth every yeare’.19 As map 3 and the figures in table 11 indicate, 14 peers held lands there in 1641 and twenty in c.1670. Only a small number actually resided in the county, though a number did rent or acquire property in Dublin city (see chapter 12 below). The St Lawrences of Howth, who held estates in the barony of Nethercross and around the port of Howth in north Dublin, were an established family of Old English provenance who embraced Protestantism during the early decades of the seventeenth century. In 1615 Sir Henry Power, later Lord Valentia, received a grant

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Map 3.  Titled landholding in County Dublin in 1641 (based on the Books of Survey and Distribution and William Smyth, Map-Making, Landscapes and Memory: A Geography of Colonial and Early Modern Ireland c. 1530–750 (Cork, 2006), pp. 237, 240.)

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Table 11.  Titled noble landholders in County Dublin in 1641 and c.1670 (in plantation acres). Surname

Title

Total 1641 Co. Dublin 1641/1670

Barnewall

Trimleston

3,938

Barnewall

Kingsland

8,789

Barry

Santry

2,933

1,841/550? Balrothery, Coolock, Nethercross

Brabazon

Meath

8,754

519/1,151

Rathdown, Uppercross

Butler

Ormond

224,087

1,044/3,314

Balrothery

Fitzwilliam Merrion

2,761

2,761/2,923

Balrothery, Rathdown, Castleknock

873/1,963

Nethercross, Newcastle

566/550

Baronies Rathdown

5,790/5,875

Balrothery, Coolock, Nethercross

Jones

Ranelagh

20,977

Moore

Drogheda

15,191

Netterville

Netterville

6,685

Nugent

Westmeath

O’Brien

Thomond

Plunkett

Fingal

20,627

35/35

Plunkett

Dunsany

8,116

188/178

Castleknock

Power

Valentia

10,792

354

Castleknock

Preston

Gormanston

10,211

679/677

10,422

5,248/5,090

St Lawrence Howth

250/? Coolock 73/35

Balrothery

40,346

380/0

Coolock

120,230

2,578/2,578

Balrothery Balrothery

Balrothery Balrothery, Castleknock, Coolock, Nethercross, Uppercross

Catholics listed in bold

to lands and the town of Chapelizod in the barony of Castleknock, and built a ‘ffayre mansion house’ of brick with 15 chimneys, a courtyard, outhouses and entrance gate, and grand gardens.20 The core estates of the Catholic Fitzwilliams of Merrion were in the west and south of the county (in the baronies of Castleknock and Rathdown). The Barnewalls, including the houses of Trimleston and Kingsland (whose title dated from 1646), were the most important Catholic landholders in County Dublin. Non-residents also

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held land: Lords Meath, Moore, Ormond and Ranelagh owned small parcels of the county, as did the Catholic Lords Dunsany, Fingal, Gormanston, Netterville and Westmeath. The Thomonds had acquired, through marriage, large estates in the barony of Balrothery. In 1641 Catholics held 60 per cent of the land in County Dublin and clung on to it with remarkable tenacity. Though some of the holdings of the Catholic lords did decrease or in the case of the earl of Westmeath were lost, the entries in the Books of Survey and Distribution for c.1670 capture this survivalism and suggest that 40 per cent of rural properties in County Dublin remained in the hands of the Catholic elite. Some families, the Barnewalls of Kingsland and the Fitzwilliams of Merrion, increased their landed holdings (see table 11).21 These men, like the four peers who acquired relatively small parcels of land in the county after the Restoration,22 did so at the expense of Old English gentry (the Barnewalls, Dillons, Plunketts and Prestons). Established (but non-resident) Protestant landowners – Lords Meath, Ormond and Ranelagh – also increased their holdings. Eager to secure a county seat close to the city, the duke of Ormond bought Chapelizod in 1660 and asked William Dodson to renovate the mansion. Dodson did so at a cost of £3,000 and created a sumptuous viceregal lodge. From 1665 Lady Ormond lived there, preferring it to Dublin castle (as did her sons), and laid out gardens in the ‘Dutch fashion’.23 An extant inventory illustrates how the couple furnished Chapelizod in great style. There was an impressive library.24 In the dining room there was a suit of gilt leather hangings, two dozen gilt leather chairs, three gilt leather carpets, two Spanish tables, an ornate set of fire irons and a landscape painting over the chimney. Five magnificent tapestries depicting the story of Samson adorned the duke’s bedroom, which was dominated by a great four-poster feather bed, a large mirror, gilt chairs and a carpet from Tangiers.25 Few could match the conspicuous consumption of the Ormonds, though families like the Fitzwilliams of Merrion did try (discussed in chapter 14 below). Tenure In theory, land was feudally held and there were two types of tenure by which it could be held from the Crown. Land could be held in free and common socage or by knight’s service (in capite tenure). Settlers much preferred to hold lands in common socage because of the feudal dues, especially wardship, involved in holding lands in knight’s service. Where possible, enterprising landlords also aimed to hold land in fee simple (i.e. rent free and in perpetuity), rather than by a lease for lives or at a fixed rent or in fee farm (i.e. forever but at a fixed rent). Written leases became widespread as did a growing awareness of the rights and responsibilities of landlords and tenants. Though

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aimed primarily at English audiences, pamphlets like Charles Calthrope’s The relation between the lord of a mannor and the copy-holder his tenant would probably have enjoyed a significant readership in mid-seventeenth century Ireland. In it Calthrope, a judge, offered a basic guide to landholding and explained clearly the functions of a manor, court baron and a steward along with the various types of land tenure and lease.26 For its part, the Crown wanted both to maximize its financial return and to increase the profitability of Ireland, and to use land tenure as a means of civilizing the country and securing the allegiance of the titled nobility. In practice, these matters proved unimaginably complicated. During the early decades of the seventeenth century a land-grabbing frenzy gripped Ireland as the Crown rewarded loyal followers, including the peers, or sold chunks of Irish land to the highest bidder. The greediest speculators were often members of the Dublin administration who enriched themselves, invariably at the expense of the Crown.27 The lengths to which adventurers were willing to go to secure good title to their lands, the level of concealment and the scale of corruption amongst the Dublin administration, horrified Lord Deputy Wentworth. In August 1633 he reported back to London: I find this kingdom abandoned for these late years to every man that could please himself to purchase what best liked him for his money, and consequently all the crown revenue reduced into fee farms, all defects of title either through fraud or error in drawing assurances from the crown industriously made valid in law by new grants upon a commission formerly awarded by King James for defective titles, so as . . . there is little left either to befit the kings servants or to improve their own revenues by.28

During his brief tenure as lord deputy, Wentworth sought to reverse this trend and attempted – unsuccessfully and with disastrous long-term results – to plant with English colonists parts of Clare, Connacht and the lordship of Ormond.29 Whatever the nature of the title, the significance of these tenurial changes cannot be overstated. Royal patents for manors ‘converted a landowner into a landlord with power over his tenants’ and provided the basic legal framework within which an estate could be managed and developed, and conflicts resolved.30 As the century progressed, the peers also extended their authority to include control over recently founded towns (though not the established ones, where the townsmen fiercely guarded their independence and privileges). There are numerous examples of this below, so a single example illustrates what occurred all over Ireland during an era of intense urbanization (discussed in chapter 13 below). In September 1668 the Crown awarded the manor of Longford to Lord Aungier, who was anxious to plant and settle it

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‘in the hands of our English and Protestant subjects’. He was given the right to enclose 600 acres, to establish baronial courts and to appoint a clerk of the market. The Crown also made the county town of Longford ‘a free borough and corporation . . . consisting of a sovereign, two bailiffs and twelve burgesses’, and with the privilege of returning two burgesses to parliament.31 Plantations Demands for more formal colonial enterprise and expropriation of native lords dated from the later Middle Ages. However, only after the Desmond rebellion of the 1570s did wholesale plantation win widespread acceptance. These windfalls, much like the dissolution of the monasteries in the 1530s and 1540s, provided the Crown with an opportunity to hand out vast swathes of Irish land to its favourites or to reward with acres those who supported its wider civilizing agenda. Further rebellions, especially the Nine Years War (1594–1603) and the Confederate Wars (1641–52), focused attention on the treachery of the Irish. Edmund Spenser, in A view of the Present State of Ireland (written in 1596 but not published until 1633), called for the destruction of the existing Gaelic order and the systematic colonization of Ireland with English settlers who were to be made responsible for the erection of the political, economic and social framework that was considered the necessary support of a civil life and of the Protestant faith. The greatest seventeenth-century exponent of ‘civilization’ through conformity with the Church of England and, above all, plantation was Lord Deputy Thomas Wentworth. He believed that the settlement of English colonists remained the best means of enriching the English government and for ‘civilizing . . . this people, or securing this kingdom under the dominion of your imperial Crown’. He continued that ‘plantations must be the only means under God and your majesty to reform this subject as well in religion as manners’.32 Or in the words of Raymond Gillespie, plantations ‘aimed at creating a social framework drawing on English models and using the law and the church . . . to provide the infrastructure for social engineering’.33 The titled nobility were also a key element in this ‘social framework’. Early attempts at plantation in Ireland during the 1550s, on the lands belonging to the O’Connors, O’Mores and O’Dempseys in King’s and Queen’s counties failed. Similarly in Ulster, efforts in 1571–2 by Sir Thomas Smith (in the Ards) and the earl of Essex (in Claneboye) to establish private military settlements, which would provide bulwarks against the destabilizing influences exerted by the MacDonnells, ended in disaster.34 However, after the outbreak of the Munster rebellion, plantation became an instrument of royal policy and private enterprise was put to work for the purposes of state. In 1585, shortly after the first abortive English attempt to colonize the New

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World, the government announced an ambitious scheme that aimed to recreate the world of south-east England on the confiscated Munster estates of the earl of Desmond. The unfolding of the Munster plantation is discussed in detail below but grants of land, ranging from 4,000 to 12,000 acres, were awarded to 35 English landlords (or undertakers) who agreed to introduce English colonists and to practise English-style agriculture based on grain growing. By the end of the sixteenth century roughly 12,000 adult settlers were actively engaged in farming. In the wake of English victory at the end of the Nine Years War (1603), Ulster met a similar fate. The unexpected departure of leading native Irish lords to the Continent (1607) and the revolt of Sir Cahir O’Doherty (1608) enabled the state to confiscate vast tracts of Ulster (encompassing present-day Counties Armagh, Tyrone, Fermanagh, Londonderry, Cavan and Donegal). In particular, the Flight of the Earls presented the government with an opportunity, as one astute contemporary observed, ‘not only to pull down for ever these two proud houses of O’Neill and O’Donel, but also to bring in colonies of the English to plant both countries, to a great increase of His Majesty’s revenues, and to settle countries perpetually in the Crown’.35 The Ulster plantation is discussed at length later in this chapter, but it is important to note that the unofficial and unregulated plantation of the non-escheated counties of Down and Antrim, by private entrepreneurs, proved particularly successful in attracting settlers and promoting ‘civility’. In addition to formal policies of plantation, the Crown sought to tame ‘those rude parts’ – while at the same time enriching itself – by interfering in land titles. In 1606 James VI and I established the Commission for the Remedy of Defective Titles which, on pain of fine or forfeiture, required all Irish landowners to prove their title to their land. Many failed and this resulted in the redistribution of land in Counties Wexford, Leitrim, Longford and parts of the Midlands between 1610 and 1620. This contributed to the outbreak of civil war in Ireland almost a decade later in much the same way that the Edict of Restitution (1629), which aimed to recover church lands for the emperor, alienated many German princes and helped to transform the Thirty Years War (1618–48) from a German religious war into an international struggle.36 The Munster Plantation The earl of Desmond’s confiscated lands that formed the basis for the Munster plantation comprised much of County Limerick, a corner of County Tipperary, a corridor of land in County Kerry stretching from Dingle in the west to the Limerick–Cork county border in the east, and swathes of south and north Cork and west Waterford, especially along the fertile Blackwater valley (see map 4). There was additional English settlement outside the

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1. Barrymore 2. Shannon 3. Cork 4. Broghill 5. Castleconnel 6. Brittas 7. Ormond 8. Dunboyne 9. Ikerrin 10. Cahir 11. Coursey of Kinsale 12. Roscommon 13. Kildare 14. Kerry 15. Muskerry 16. Thomond 17. Inchiquin 18. Valentia 19. Power 20. Roche 21. Kilmallock 22. Castlehaven (Catholics are in bold)

Map 4.  Titled landholding in Munster, 1641 (based on the Books of Survey and Distribution).



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official plantation area in the south-west of County Cork. Of the 35 successful undertakers originally allocated Desmond lands only Thomas Butler, twelfth earl of Ormond, who received 3,000 acres in the seignory of Swiffin in County Tipperary, was a member of the Irish peerage. Francis Annesley, the son of Robert, another undertaker, who received 2,599 acres in the seignory of Rathurde south-east of Limerick city (which he quickly sold), later became Baron Mountnorris. Within a relatively short period of time other titled nobles, aware of the rich pickings, acquired lands in Munster.37 Officials in the Dublin administration, headed by Richard Boyle, later earl of Cork, were particularly well placed to secure Munster lands at bargain prices. Between 1598 and 1611, 11 of the Munster plantation seignories changed hands. Donough O’Brien, fourth earl of Thomond, bought one (Knockainy seignory) in Limerick and later acquired an adjoining one (Fedamore seignory). Thomond transformed his vast Munster patrimony, which by 1641 comprised 120,230 acres (49,749 of which were unprofitable) and made him the fourth largest landowner in Ireland. The core of the Thomond estate was in County Clare, in the baronies of Bunratty and Tulla, with additional acres in neighbouring Counties Limerick and Tipperary and the more far-flung Counties of Carlow, Dublin, Westmeath and Queen’s. Thomond’s magnificent seat was at Bunratty castle, ‘a noble ancient structure’ with a large deer park, situated on the banks of the River Shannon near Limerick (see plate 17).38 During the midseventeenth century the papal nuncio held Bunratty to be ‘the loveliest of any place of any kind that I have yet seen [in Ireland]’ and ‘worthy of a king’, particularly the gardens ‘the likes of which put Italy’s to shame’ and the deer park that allegedly held 3,000 stags.39 An inventory of Bunratty castle, dating from August 1639, recorded how the castle and its farm buildings were ordered and furnished, and how the castle stood at the centre of a vibrant agricultural enterprise. Its public rooms were furnished with great splendour. Eleven pairs of tapestries hung in the dining room, which could accommodate 40 people seated around eight tables. A large Turkish carpet covered the floor. The master bedroom, dominated by a bed hung with dark orange velvet trimmed with gold and silver loops, and matching stools and cupboard cloths, also had rich Arras carpets and tapestries.40 The castle courtyard, with its kitchen, laundry and outhouses, was the hub of domestic activity. The two-storied stables held up to 60 horses. The confederates removed many of the more valuable household items, the livestock and ‘thoroughbred horses’ of Thomond’s heir, when they captured the castle in July 1646. The Munster plantation attracted titled newcomers, whom many regarded as upstarts. In 1605 Sir Dominic Sarsfield, chief justice of Munster and later Viscount Kilmallock, bought the seignory of Carriglemlery in Cork, and in 1641 the family held County Cork estates of 10,919 acres. Sir Thomas

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Roper, later Viscount Baltinglass, had a life interest in the seignory at Castleisland in Kerry, which actually belonged to Sir Edward Herbert who was elevated to the Irish peerage but never resided in the kingdom. Baltinglass later transferred his interests from Kerry to the coast of west Cork. In the 1610s and 1620s he established fisheries at Skull, Crookhaven and Bantry, which attracted settlers and, together with his other industrial ventures, prospered. Another ex-soldier, the Catholic George Touchet, eleventh Baron Audley (later earl of Castlehaven), bought lands in north and west Cork, including those around Castlehaven.41 In 1641 the earl held in the region estates of 2,380 acres. The First Earl of Cork The most avaricious and best documented Munster speculator of all was, of course, Richard Boyle, later first earl of Cork, and a close examination of his tenurial activities provides a glimpse of what other titled men on the make were doing across Ireland, albeit not on the same scale. The second son of a Kentish squire, Boyle had been educated at Cambridge and the Inns of Court. In 1588 he arrived in Ireland virtually penniless and thanks to the patronage of Sir Geoffrey Fenton, who presided over the Munster confiscations and whose daughter Boyle later married, he secured the pivotal position of deputy escheator. This office provided Boyle with endless opportunities to identify, value and lease confiscated lands, including those he secured for himself or allocated to his allies.42 Boyle was clerk of the presidential council of Munster when in 1602 he bought for £1,500 Sir Walter Raleigh’s three and a half seignories in Counties Cork and Waterford. Boyle went on to purchase six seignories plus portions of four others in Counties Cork and Waterford. Wherever he could he also bought up lands from native Irish owners or secured them by mortgage, which meant that the former owner effectively became his tenant and he charged rent at 10 per cent of the amount of mortgage.43 Mortgaging land was endemic and a single example illustrates the wider trend. On 1 November 1637 Cork lent £700 to Ulick Roche, who offered as collateral lands in the barony of Fermoy. Cork took possession and immediately leased back the land to Ulick at an annual rent of £70 (or 10 per cent of the capital borrowed). In June 1640 Ulick borrowed an additional £200 and his rental increased to £90.44 Having accumulated a vast territorial empire in Munster (36,008 acres by 1641), the earl consolidated the Boyle network by a series of astute marriages with local settlers and established families like the Barrys of Barrymore (discussed in chapter 6 below).45 The earl of Cork, like the other Munster planters, was fortunate in that he had bought land cheaply in the aftermath of a decade of destructive warfare. Even without investment and improvement, land prices increased

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significantly during the peaceful decades of the early seventeenth century. Conditions for landlords proved favourable and the plantations prospered with the majority of tenants holding relatively short leases (21 to 31 years) at economic rents, usually paid in cash (but some were in kind). For example, on 26 May 1638 Cork signed a 31-year lease with Gerrot and Thomas Russell, who paid a fine of £40. Their annual rental was ‘two hogs, 2 muttons, 4 hens’, and Cork required the Russells ‘to enclose the lands with quicksets and build an English house of lyme and stone, slatted within 5 years’.46 Longer leases were only granted in special circumstances. Improving leases, which included provisions for building a house and enclosing land, were common, as was a requirement to support the militia and another that prevented subleasing land to Irish tenants. An extant rent roll for the Boyle estates for Lady Day 1637 recorded rents paid on 1,267 individual leases, all but 42 for the core Boyle estates in Munster. ‘The most striking feature of the rental,’ Nicholas Canny noted, ‘is the fairly even spread of tenants throughout Cork’s properties.’47 Many of these tenants were English. They in turn attracted English subtenants who also built stone or timber houses and improved their holdings. These men and women brought with them the English language, dress, social customs and agricultural practices. They helped to make parts of Munster English. Cork himself embarked on an ambitious construction programme. His main seat was at Lismore castle in County Waterford (see plate 18), which adjoined the medieval cathedral and boasted one of the finest ‘polite’ gardens in Ireland with its raised walkway and terraces.48 He also built mansions at Bandon and Youghal, together with schools, churches, hospitals, almshouses, roads and bridges. In his 1642 will Cork made provision for the masters and free schools at Youghal and Lismore, together with the almshouses there.49 He also left money to build a ‘substantial bridge of Lime and Stone with my Arms Cutt in Stone’ over the River Bandon at Bandonbridge. He planned for the repair and upgrading of Bennet’s Bridge in the county of Kilkenny, which he believed to be ‘a Work of great Charity much Tending to the Ease and Safety of Travellers’, and hoped to replace the wooden bridge over the River Blackwater near Fermoy with ‘a very gracefull and substantial Bridge’.50 For his heir, Lord Dungarvan, he bought a vast estate at Mallow with gardens, an orchard and deer park (which cost him £15,000), and probably intended to restore the earl of Desmond’s castle as Dungarvan’s residence. For his son-inlaw, the earl of Barrymore, he funded (at a cost of at least £2,500) ‘the re-edifying and new building’ of Castle Lyons, and spent £500 buying up the surrounding land to prevent men moving in who ‘might be offensive and prove an unpleasing neighbour’. As his other sons reached maturity he planned mansions for Lord Broghill at Broghill, near Charleville, and for Francis, later Viscount Shannon, at Macroom.51 These grand mansions with

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their gardens, orchards, deer parks and neighbouring model villages stood as powerful testaments to Cork’s status, wealth and power, and of his commitment to making Ireland English. A fellow English planter later claimed of Cork that ‘no subject in 40 years hath done or will do so much in building, enclosing and planting with English and altogether after the English fashion, insomuch that all his lands are English colonies, even in the midst of Irish countries’.52 Of course, Cork combined public service with private gain. Having acquired his cheap land, often by dubious means, he needed to secure a legal title to it by obtaining a new patent from the king either through surrender and regrant or through a process of composition with the Commission for Defective Titles. Cork pursued both options and as he did so ensured that the bureaucrats who processed the issue of his grants and regrants (and blocked the applications of his opponents) were his clients. He aimed to hold as much of his land in free and common socage (rather than by knight’s service) and in fee simple (i.e. rent free and in perpetuity), and over the course of the early seventeenth century proved remarkably effective in securing this, much to the disgust of Lord Deputy Wentworth who after 1635 challenged his titles at every opportunity. The Roches and MacCarthys New English speculators with close contacts to the Dublin administration were ideally placed to subvert tenurial processes to their advantage. Those excluded from government were more vulnerable. Yet as map 4 highlights, continuity of landholding amongst established members of the titled nobility is striking, even in those counties that formed part of the Munster plantation. That said, the fortunes of these families – the Barrys of Barrymore, the Courcys of Kinsale, the Fitzmaurices of Kerry, the MacCarthys of Muskerry and the Roches of Fermoy – were mixed as they interacted, often reluctantly, with the newcomers and struggled to adjust to the new economic order that took hold of Munster as the plantation became established (table 12). Consider the specific examples of the Roches of Fermoy and the MacCarthys of Muskerry. Of Old English provenance, the Roches were elevated to the peerage in 1461 (and styled viscounts from the mid-sixteenth century). David, who became seventh viscount in 1600, had served the Crown during the Nine Years War and had proclaimed James VI and I as king in Cork when the mayor refused to do so. The king rewarded his loyalty by awarding, in a surrender and regrant agreement, his father’s estates at Castleton Roche in the barony of Fermoy, north of Cork city.53 Though the details are obscure, the Roches appear to have alienated some of their lands, possibly through

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Table 12.  Titled landholding in Munster in 1641.54 Name

Title in 1641

County

Munster acres [total Ireland]

Barry

Barrymore

Cork

18,401 [18,401]

Boyle

Shannon

Cork

107 [107]

Boyle

Cork

Clare, Cork, Limerick, Tipperary, Waterford

36,008 [46,257]

Boyle

Broghill

Cork, Kerry, Limerick

11,838 [11,838]

Bourke*

Castleconnel Limerick, Tipperary

7,786 [7,786]

Bourke

Brittas

Limerick, Tipperary

5,196 [5,196]

Butler*

Ormond

Tipperary, Waterford

6,6571 [224,087]

Butler

Dunboyne

Tipperary

7,382 [13,937]

Butler

Ikerrin

Tipperary

12,611 [12,882]

Butler

Cahir

Limerick, Tipperary, Waterford

13,694 [13,694]

De Courcy

Kinsale

Cork

1,913 [1,913]

Dillon

Roscommon

Tipperary

1,328 [17,353]

Fitzgerald

Kildare

Limerick

2,044 [39,051]

Fitzmaurice

Kerry

Kerry

9,978 [9,978]

MacCarthy

Muskerry

Cork

82,037 [82,037]

O’Brien

Thomond

Clare, Limerick, Tipperary

112,592 [120,230]

O’Brien

Inchiquin

Clare, Limerick

21,007 [21,007]

Power

Valentia

Waterford

80,48 [10,792]

Power

Power

Waterford

400 [400]

Roche

Fermoy

Cork

18,656 [18,656]

Sarsfield

Kilmallock

Cork

10,919 [10,919]

Touchet

Castlehaven

Cork

2,380 [2,380]

Includes lands belonging to a wife or mother Catholics indicated in bold Those involved in the Munster plantation indicated in italics

mortgages, but also acted as improving landlords. During the early years of the seventeenth century the Roches attracted English Catholic settlers to their north Cork estates.55 In December 1612 Viscount Fermoy secured a licence to hold three weekly markets and three annual fairs.56 By 1641 the family held 18,656 acres of largely profitable land in the baronies of Fermoy and

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Orrery-Kilmore (see map 4). Tensions between the Roches and the English migrants manifested themselves in sporadic outbursts of violence between their followers and tenants, and the authorities regarded the viscount’s son, Maurice, later eighth viscount, with suspicion. Yet over time natives and newcomers appeared to establish a modus vivendi. The seventh viscount, a committed Catholic, nevertheless developed a close friendship with Protestant grandees, including the earl of Cork, who attended his daughter’s wedding. Cork lent him money and the viscount mortgaged lands to the Percivals, local Protestant planters. Debts and mortgages aside, the Roches appear to have prospered, as did their kinsmen, the MacCarthys of Muskerry.57 Descended from the ancient noble Gaelic line of MacCarthy Mór, Charles MacCarthy, first Viscount Muskerry, had married Margaret, a daughter of the earl of Thomond, and taken as his second wife Ellen, widow of Donell MacCarthy Reagh, and daughter of David, seventh Viscount Fermoy. Charles’s second son and heir, Donough, married Eleanor, the eldest daughter of Thomas Butler, Viscount Thurles, and twin sister of James, later duke of Ormond. The family thus enjoyed a formidable range of kinship ties that included the Butlers of Ormond and Cahir and the houses of Thomond, Fermoy, Buttevant, Courcy of Kinsale, and Kerry. Like Viscount Roche, Muskerry enjoyed a close friendship with the earl of Cork and stood as godfather to one of his younger children. Muskerry lorded it over vast estates (82,037 acres, only 1,181 of which were unprofitable) in the baronies of Cork, Muskerry and Barrets in County Cork (see map 4). Blarney castle, just north of Cork city and situated on a limestone outcrop overlooking the junction of two rivers, was ‘a place of great strength’ and the family’s principal residence. It was an unusual L-shaped medieval defensive structure that had been renovated in the sixteenth century when large windows had been added.58 They also resided at Macroom castle in mid-Cork, which was described in 1645 as ‘strong in situation and of almost impregnable construction’.59 Thanks to prudent management (and unlike so many of his Irish neighbours), the family finances were healthy and the estates unencumbered with mortgages.60 An historian of the Munster plantation attributed Muskerry’s success to the fact that he ‘had a great deal of land to start with, an unusual tribal control over the whole barony, advantages which were denied the newcomers, but he developed his resources with acumen’.61 Though Muskerry retained the traditional customs associated with Gaelic lordship, he also acted as an anglicizing speculator, loaning money and securing lands through mortgages, and as an improving landlord who encouraged English settlers to his estates and especially his main town of Macroom, in mid-Cork.

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The Butlers The Butlers were the greatest landholders in the unplanted parts of Munster (see table 12 above), and from the mid-fourteenth century they had dominated County Tipperary and County Kilkenny in the neighbouring province of Leinster. The strategic position of the Butler estates, which formed a corridor along the Munster–Leinster border, underpinned their political power within the region and ensured that the Crown did everything possible to secure their cooperation.62 By the mid-sixteenth century Thomas, ‘Black Tom’, tenth earl of Ormond, was one of the most influential and wealthy of Elizabeth I’s nobles. He and his lineage dominated lands spread across 78 parishes, controlled 25 castles and assembled a formidable network of clients that included the leading mercantile and civic figures in the region. The Ormond estates increased significantly in size thanks to accidents of succession, the tenurial bonanza associated with the dissolution of the monasteries, fortuitous marriages along with prudent purchases. Black Tom’s rentals from his lands in Counties Waterford, Wexford, Carlow, Kilkenny and Tipperary grew accordingly: in 1574 he received between £1,500 and £1,750, and by 1610 this figure had grown to £3,000.63 Much of the Butler land, especially the midland basin, was fertile and agriculturally productive and by the midseventeenth century Kilkenny was the fourth largest county in grain production (wheat, oats and barley) in Ireland with fifteen mills operating within a four-mile radius of the city. The Butler lands were relatively densely populated, with a number of major walled towns that the Butlers worked hard to develop. Kilkenny, the largest city in the region and its administrative centre, was home to 4,000 people, while Callan and Thomastown each had about 1,100 inhabitants. More modest were the towns at Inistioge and Gowran in County Kilkenny, and Nenagh, Thurles, Roscrea, Clonmel, Carrick-on-Suir, Fethard and Cashel in County Tipperary. A network of navigable rivers (the Nore, the Suir and the Barrow) facilitated internal communications and provided access to the ports of Waterford and New Ross, which linked the entrepreneurial Kilkenny merchants to overseas markets in England and continental Europe.64 According to the Books of Survey and Distribution, by 1641 the Butler peers held 154,640 acres in Counties Tipperary and Kilkenny (map 5). Viscount Mountgarret’s estates to the north of County Kilkenny, 18,139 acres concentrated in the baronies of Fassadinin and Galmoy, fronted the former Gaelic zone. A patent of 1621 listed the lands, castles and three mills that comprised Mountgarret’s four manors and which he held ‘in capite, by military [knight’s] service’, along with his rights to the former ‘priory and convent at Kenlis’ and ‘the dissolved friary of Augustine friars of New Rosse’. It empowered him to establish ‘courts-baron’ and ‘courts-leet’ and ‘to appoint

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Map 5.  Butler landholding in Counties Tipperary and Kilkenny, 1641 (based on the Books of Survey and Distribution and William Smyth, Map-making, Landscapes and Memory: A Geography of Colonial and Early Modern Ireland c.1530–1750 [Cork, 2006], pp. 284, 317).

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seneschals and other officers, to have jurisdiction in all actions of debt for any sum under 40s sterling’, along with the right to set up a market and fairs.65 The holdings of the other cadet branches of the family, Lords Cahir, Dunboyne and Ikerrin, formed patchworks across County Tipperary. The ethnic composition of tenants on the Butler estates varied. For example, the head tenants on Viscount Ikerrin’s estates in eastern Tipperary (primarily the baronies of Slievardagh and Ikerrin) were of Old English provenance, whereas many of the head tenants on Baron Cahir’s more compact holdings in the barony of Iffa and Offa in south Tipperary were of native Irish extraction. While the bulk of the Butler lands were concentrated in Kilkenny or Tipperary, Viscount Mountgarret held 2,217 acres in Bantry barony in County Wexford and Pierce Bulter, later Viscount Galmoy, held 5,015 acres there as well (Galmoy only secured lands in County Kilkenny after the Restoration). Marriages may explain the acquisition of Butler holdings in Counties Limerick, Meath, Sligo and Wexford.66 Without a doubt the most significant Butler landowner in 1641 was the twelfth earl (and first duke) of Ormond who lorded it over an empire of 191,626 acres, stretching from County Mayo in the west (where he held 68,922 acres, much of which was deemed unprofitable) to Counties Dublin and Meath in the east. Most of Ormond’s lands were located in the southeastern counties of Tipperary (35,733 acres), Kilkenny (41,485 acres), Carlow (20,118 acres) and Waterford (17,166 acres). His countess controlled an additional 32,291 acres, mostly in Counties Tipperary (13,505 acres) and Kilkenny (17,357 acres). Ormond was one of the great beneficiaries of the Restoration land settlement and by c.1670 his territorial empire had increased to 259,329 acres (for details see chapter 11). Ormond ran his vast patrimony from his magnificent castle in Kilkenny, which had been modernized in the 1580s when the great gallery was added, and his Tudor mansion house at Carrick-on-Suir in south Tipperary.67 Thomas, tenth earl, had built the H-shaped, two-storied mansion house at Carrick in c.1565. Aside from a few gun loopholes it had no defensive features and large bay windows formed a central aspect of the long gallery on the first floor. A frieze panelled ‘with intermediate fluted pilasters’ and ‘full-length female figures with tablets inscribed IVSTICIA or EQVETAS, within an arched surround, alternating with wreaths enclosing either a bust of Queen Elizabeth in crown and ruff, and initials ER, or the royal arms’ adorned the long gallery. In the same room there were two elaborate stone chimney pieces, one inscribed with the date ‘1565’. With its 30 chimneys, oriels, grand mullioned windows, richly moulded plaster ceilings and friezes, and oaken wainscots, it rivalled any country house in Elizabethan England.68 Grand though the mansion was, by 1635 an English visitor to Carrick felt that the town had been neglected but believed that ‘If his [Ormond’s] land

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were improved and well planted, it would yield him great revenue; for it is said he hath thirty-two manors and manor-houses, and eighteen abbeys.’69 According to 1621 figures, Ormond’s personal lands were worth more than £2,000 per annum in rent alone; with agricultural income this would have risen well beyond £3,000.70 Cash strapped, Ormond was very conscious of the economic potential of his landed resources. Having first reunited his patrimony by marrying his cousin, Elizabeth Preston, Ormond set out after 1633 when he acceded to his earldom to improve and commercialize his estates by reducing the number of long leases held by his tenants and introducing newcomers who were willing to pay high rents. He did this against the backdrop of the plantation of the lordship of Ormond, which had been mooted in government circles at court and in Dublin since the death in 1614 of the Protestant tenth earl.71 In the event Lord Deputy Wentworth, Ormond’s ally in Dublin, oversaw the royal seizure of the territories of Idough in north-east Kilkenny and of Upper and Lower Ormond in northern Tipperary. Idough passed to Wentworth’s confidant and political crony, Sir Christopher Wandesford, who wanted to establish an English plantation based around Castlecomer. Initiatives such as this effectively facilitated the demise of the Ormond lordship and the displacement of traditional tenants and clients.72 The fact that Wentworth did this with Ormond’s connivance really rankled with his Butler kin. Traditionally the earls of Ormond had behaved as feudal overlords and exercised considerable power over their own lands as well as those of the wider Butler clan. As Ormond forsook traditional obligations of overlordship he severed these feudal bonds. A recent study has shown how at home in Kilkenny he turned his back on the local catholic gentry and associated himself instead with Protestant New English officials and colonists. On the Ormond estate he replaced some of his family’s old Catholic clients with Protestant newcomers, and he engaged in a spate of evictions and money-making schemes that made his New English friends rich and alienated the established supporters of his house.73

Little wonder that Ormond’s kinsmen and former clients and allies rose in rebellion against him in December 1641. The insurgents included his influential kinsman Richard, Viscount Mountgarret, who was held to be the natural successor of Walter, eleventh earl, and thanks to a series of astute English marriages enjoyed influence at court at a moment when Ormond was particularly vulnerable.74 The political damage of Ormond’s ‘improving policies’ was very real, but in the short term the reorganization of Ormond’s estates brought financial reward. An anonymous chronicler noted how during the 1630s Ormond ‘by

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good husbandry and carefull management of his estate, [managed] to free himself from ye great incumbrance he had contracted for his own and his ladys wardship; and to ease himself of some other debts his grandfather had incurred’.75 Rentals for 1639 from his estates in Counties Waterford, Wexford, Carlow, Kilkenny and Tipperary suggest a landed income of approximately £5,000.76 In 1640 the Ormond estates in Counties Carlow, Dublin, Kilkenny, Tipperary and Waterford were valued at £7,489; nothing is said of his lands in Meath, Mayo, Wicklow and Wexford. The 1640 valuation listed 24 chief tenants, including established figures who had probably held land from the family for generations (Theobald Butler, William Cleary, Sir John Dongan, Nicholas Everard, Edmund Fitzgerald, Richard Lawless, John Meagher, Darby O’Donnell, Teige and Edmund Ryan, James Sall, and James and William Walsh), as well as newcomers, Sirs William Flower, John Temple, Robert Parkhurst and Hardress Waller.77 In 1641 Ormond’s landed income (of between £5,000 and £8,000 per annum) was comparable to that of Thomond (approx. £7,000) but not to that of Cork (approx. £18,000).78 The outbreak of war in 1641 totally disrupted his attempts to pay off his debts and improve his estates but, as David Edwards has noted, provided him with a political lifeline and, perhaps ironically, secured his position as Ireland’s premier peer.79 The Ulster Plantation In his Basilikon Doron, James VI had expressed the hope that the Western Isles of Scotland would be tamed by planting ‘colonies among them of answerable inland subjects, that within short time may reform and civilize the best inclined among them: rooting out or transporting the barbarous and stubborn sort, and planting civility in their rooms’.80 The same held true for Ulster. During the early decades of the seventeenth century, members of the titled nobility played a key role in promoting ‘civilization’ as part of the plantation of Ulster, just as they had in Munster.81 Some concerned themselves more with the informal settlements of Counties Antrim, Down and Monaghan whilst the remainder became involved in the formal plantation of the six escheated counties of Armagh, Cavan, Donegal, Fermanagh, Londonderry and Tyrone.82 The peers involved in the Ulster plantation need to be divided into those men whose Ulster holdings were of secondary interest to their other landed concerns and those whose estates and interests centred primarily on the northern province. In the first category were twelve peers, six of whom were Catholic, who held estates (all of which were less than 10,000 acres) in Ulster but as part of a wider territorial empire. The case of George, sixteenth earl of Kildare, was unusual in that his holdings in the barony of Lecale in County

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Down predated the plantation. Kildare’s principal estates were in Queen’s County and Counties Kildare and Westmeath, but through marriage the family had acquired lands in County Down. The Kildare letter-book recaptures the lengths to which the earl went during the 1630s to secure his grip on his northern holdings and to fend off encroachments from newcomers. Local tenants importuned Kildare for leases. One promised to ‘build and repair the house of Ardglass’ and ‘to plant the town and lands with Protestants’.83 Another undertook to make ‘a brave plantation here’. The tenant continued that ‘I have already planted 3 English protestant families upon your land and this gent[leman] is one of them, and have pulled down a mass house that was built upon your Lordship’s land to the great terror of the papistical tenants’.84 According to a local factor, ‘the Lecale soil [is] a great deal better, for though your land be richer at Maynooth, yet Lecale is a more firm pasture and a quicker and a nimbler air, which will cause your horse to be more finely headed and I think the world hath not a finer place for your stud to run in than your manor hath here in Lecale.’85 The Catholics with secondary landed interests in Ulster were, with the exception of Lord Audley, later earl of Castlehaven (discussed below), of Old English extraction: the Flemings of Slane, the Nugents of Westmeath and the Plunketts of Dunsany, Louth and Fingal. The Old English lords held their acres in the non-escheated county of Monaghan (Lords Slane and Louth) or in the confiscated county of Cavan, where the proportion of the county allocated to servitors and natives was much higher than elsewhere. Old English servitors – including Lords Slane, Westmeath, Dunsany and Fingal – held 14 per cent of the county, particularly lands in the baronies of Clanmahon and Castlerahan.86 In 1614 the Crown rewarded another Old English lord, Christopher St Lawrence, ninth baron of Howth, who intermittently conformed, with acres in County Monaghan for his support during the Nine Years War, and by 1641 this represented 41 per cent of his total landed patrimony.87 It would seem from the Books of Survey and Distribution that all of these lords of Old English provenance (with the possible exception of the earl of Westmeath) retained their Ulster holdings after the Restoration. The other peers with secondary interests in Ulster had served the Crown as soldiers and bureaucrats: the Annesleys of Mountnorris, the Brabazons of Meath, the Moores of Drogheda, the Powers of Valentia, the Touchets of Castlehaven and the Wingfields of Powerscourt. One of the most entrepreneurial was the Munster planter Sir Francis Annesley, later Baron Mountnorris, who was a client of Lord Deputy Chichester and the duke of Buckingham and later fell foul of Lord Deputy Wentworth. During the 1610s Annesley acquired lands in Counties Armagh, Tyrone and Down, which equated to 36 per cent of his total holdings in 1641 (the rest were in Wexford, discussed below).88 Mountnorris later inherited additional acres in County Armagh

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1. Balfour of Glenawley 2. Blayney of Monaghan 3. Caulfeild of Charlemont 4. Chichester of Belfast 5. Conway 6. Cromwell of Lecale 7. Hamilton of Claneboye 8. Hamilton of Strabane 9. Folliott of Ballyshannon 10. Lambert of Cavan 11. MacDonnells of Antrim 12. Magennis of Iveagh 13. Maguire of Enniskillen 14. Montgomery of the Ards 15. Annesley of Mountnorris 16. Brabazon of Meath 17. Fitzgerald of Kildare 18. Fleming of Slane 19. Moore of Drogheda 20. Nugent of Westmeath 21. Plunkett of Dunsany 22. Plunkett of Louth 23. Plunkett of Fingal 24. Power of Valentia 25. St Lawrence of Howth (Catholics in bold)

Map 6. Titled landholding in Ulster in 1641 (based on the Books of Survey and Distribution and Philip Robinson, The Plantation of Ulster: British Settlement in an Irish Landscape, 1600–1670 [Dublin, 1984]).

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from Viscount Valentia. Letters patent, conveyances, leases, mortgages and staple bonds relating to the manor and castle of Mountnorris in the barony of Orier, County Armagh, survive and recapture how over the course of the early seventeenth century the O’Hanlons and other native landowners mortgaged and sold properties to Annesley.89 Another Munster planter, George Touchet, Lord Audley and earl of Castlehaven, was a neighbouring planter in the barony of Orier.90 He was awarded lands in the barony of Omagh, County Tyrone, and built the plantation castle of Ballynahatty (south of the town of Omagh), eight miles from Castle Curlews, the seat of his son-in-law, Sir John Davies, the attorney general of Ireland.91 In December 1612 Sir Josias Bodley described Ballynahatty: very near finished a dwelling house of lime and stone of 40 feet long and 20 broad (as part of a great work, which he there intended) [which] was much hindered and cast behind by a violent storm of thunder, lightning and tempest, which overthrew part of the said building, slew one of his workmen, and hurt divers others. The same he is now again re-edifying and purposeth to encompass with a bawn of good circuit. It is situated within the woods in a plain of some 2 acres which he (purposeth to make) the best seat for security of that part of the said precint.92

Audley also oversaw the construction of Davies’s two residences, at Castle Curlews and Castlederg. In 1615 the king noted Audley’s efforts in planting the ‘most barren and rough land in all that country’, settling English and Scottish tenants (by offering low rentals without fines), introducing English cattle to his estate, investing £2,000 in buildings and developing a market at Castlederg.93 The following year he rewarded him with his earldom. By 1619 there were 64 tenants on Castlehaven’s estate and twenty Irish ‘gentlemen’, who lorded it over 3,000 ‘souls of all sorts’.94 Within a generation, however, the family had divested itself of its Ulster holdings and Davies’s allocations in the baronies of Omagh in Tyrone and Liscoole in Fermanagh passed to his daughter, Lucy, who married Ferdinando Hastings, later sixth earl of Huntington. The Huntingtons never resided in Ireland and a series of agents managed their estates, the archives for which are remarkably complete and extant in the Huntington Library in California. Despite their non-residence the estates appear to have prospered in the pre-war years. The 1629 rental listed 21 English individuals with freehold of 21-year leases and seven Irish tenants with shorter leases (of seven, nine and eleven years); and 18 Irish tenants with one-year leases. The 1638 rental highlights the favourable long leases with low rents offered to ‘British’ settlers. In fact, it seems (from the 1633 rental) that Lady Huntington expended more

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(£525 8s 10d) on her Irish interests in Counties Fermanagh and Tyrone than her agents collected in rentals (£523 5s 0d). Her disbursements included the purchase of livestock, pursuit of legal cases, payment of agents and rent collectors, king’s rent, together with the improvement of property – the construction of a tuck mill, lime kiln, buttery, dairy, and introduction of ditches and whitethorn quicksets.95 What then of the ‘planter peers’? In all there were 16 titled nobles who were directly involved in the king’s plans to colonize and ‘civilize’ Ulster. In terms of estate size the most significant Ulster landholders in 1641 can all be associated with the plantation: Lords Antrim, Claneboye, Blayney, Maguire of Enniskillen and Magennis of Iveagh (see appendix I). Between them these five men, three of whom were Catholic, held 261,006 acres and were amongst the most significant landowners in Ireland, never mind Ulster. The holdings of the other ‘planter peers’ ranged from reasonably sized estates of roughly 15,000 acres (Lords Chichester, Montgomery and Lambert) to more modest holdings of fewer than 10,000 acres (Lords Londonderry, Castle Stewart, Folliott of Ballyshannon and Hamilton of Strabane). A detailed examination of the estates and ‘civilizing’ activities of those who were involved in the informal settlements of Counties Antrim, Down and Monaghan, together with an analysis of those who served as undertakers and servitors or were involved in the plantation of the remaining six escheated counties as ‘deserving Irish’, begins to capture the complexities of the plantation process and the endless compromises inherent in it. The extent to which members of the titled nobility operated as political, economic, social and cultural brokers also becomes apparent. The Earls of Antrim A cadastral study of the MacDonnells of Antrim provides insights into how one ‘new’ aristocrat exploited the circumstances in Ulster. Though the geographic context and the family’s experiences were particular, the Antrims appear to have been emblematic of a wider process that was underway across Ireland. With an estate of nearly 150,000 acres, the earl of Antrim was the largest landholder in Ulster and amongst the top three in Ireland (see appendix I). MacDonnell connections with east Ulster predated the formal plantations. A devout Catholic, Randal MacDonnell, first earl of Antrim, was a descendant of Somerled, first Lord of the Isles. The MacDonnells, whose hereditary estates were in Kintyre and Jura, settled permanently in County Antrim, occupying by the early seventeenth century much of the Route and the Glynns of Antrim.96 The Antrim estate, ‘thirty miles of territory and vast estates with several castles’, was bounded by the River Bann in the west, the Giant’s Causeway and the coastal towns of Coleraine and Ballycastle in the north, and

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the ports of Cushendall, Glenarm and Larne in the east.97 According to the Books of Survey and Distribution, in 1641 the second earl of Antrim held 149,353 acres (108,915 of which were deemed to be profitable) spanning five baronies: Dunluce (40,293 acres), Cary (29,545 acres), Kilconway (40,334 acres), Glenarm (30,406 acres) and Toome (2,119 acres) in County Antrim, and 6,656 acres in Coleraine in neighbouring County Londonderry.98 Patches of bogland littered Antrim’s baronies, which were in places barren, mountainous, wooded or inaccessible, but this was offset by fertile coastal plains suitable for tillage, especially along the north-east coast.99 Despite the first earl’s attempts to improve the roads and build bridges, internal communications remained poor and only two roads, one of which was impassable in winter, linked the Antrim estate with the outside world.100 Nevertheless this sprawling, isolated territorial base on the periphery of Stuart Britain made its owner one of the greatest landholders in Ireland, third only to the earls of Ormond and Clanricarde who, according to the Books of Survey and Distribution, held 191,626 acres and 152,131 acres respectively.101 The first earl of Antrim’s meteoric rise within the peerage was largely due to his enthusiastic support for James VI and I’s schemes for the plantation of Ulster. The earl would have been familiar with this concept because he had been fostered on the Scottish island of Arran (hence his name Randal Arranach) and thus exposed to James’s unsuccessful attempts to ‘plant’ the troublesome Highlands with Scottish Lowlanders. In fact, one scholar has suggested that the earl formed an important human link between the Irish and Scottish plantations.102 Antrim recognized the economic advantages of the English system of landlord–tenant relations and of a commercial economy, both of which were introduced with these plantations. His patents included the right to hold two annual fairs and three weekly markets. In 1617 he was admitted as a free burgess to the town of Ayr and in 1630 to the town of Coleraine.103 Between 1609 and 1626 he leased considerable amounts of land to lowland Scots and within a relatively short period of time there was a thriving colony of Scottish Protestants living in the baronies of Dunluce and Glenarm.104 Certainly the town of Dunluce consisted ‘of many tenements, after the fashion of the Pale, peopled for the most part with Scotsmen’.105 The earl’s far-sighted policies soon paid off and in 1629 it was noted that he ‘hath good tenants and is very well paid his rents’.106 By 1630, there were 814 Scots and 142 Englishmen of military age living on the Antrim estates. Half of these families were in the barony of Dunluce, on the fertile lands of the Route, with most of the rest in the town of Glenarm or along the coast of County Antrim. At least half of Lord Antrim’s chief tenants, together with many smaller lessees, were Irish or highland Scots.107 He also developed the town of Ballycastle – a market house dating from the 1620s has recently been identified – and its neighbouring saltpans.

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In addition to progressive economic and agrarian policies, the earl of Antrim improved his property by building castles at Kilwaughter, Ballygalley, Glenarm and Ballycastle. He also refurbished Dunluce castle, which overlooked Scotland and was within easy striking distance of towns of Coleraine and the corporate plantation at Londonderry.108 Though the outer walls at Dunluce were defensive in character, the inner great house, ‘a good house of stone with many lodgings and other rooms’, was more like an English manor house with three mullioned, two-storied bay windows and leaded, diamondshaped panes of glass, and an ornately carved sandstone fireplace in the main hall.109 Craftsmen and builders working on the nearby plantation town of Londonderry, including William Parrat, carried out at least part of the work. A mid-century inventory provides a sense of the style in which the earl lived in Dunluce. In the living quarters there were over 30 Turkish or Persian carpets, tapestries, ornate and exotic cabinets of ebony and ivory, delicately crafted folding screens, gilt-framed pictures, attractive wall hangings and other exclusive items of furniture – 12 armchairs, 63 chairs and 17 beds – upholstered in the most exquisite, expensive fabrics. There was also a library of over 50 books and an opulent collection of miscellaneous items such as mirrors, maps, abacuses, a telescope and globes.110 During these years the first earl also constructed a Scottish baronial gate tower and extended the outer castle courtyard to include a series of workshops, built additional quarters for entertaining and a simple church for his Protestant tenants close to the castle. Immediately outside the castle walls Antrim also commissioned an elaborate formal garden, planted an orchard and laid out a bowling green. Recent archaeological excavations of the town of Dunluce reveal the full extent of the plantation town nurtured by the earl. Wide (approx. 10–12 metres) cobbled streets, ideal locations for markets and fairs, linked the castle to the court house, church and townsmens’ dwellings. The remains of dozens of large, two-storey houses (15 × 8 metres), with their allotment gardens, have survived; some were built in stone, some in timber, and some were a combination of both. Scottish coins (dating from 1614), a Polish coin, which was probably worn as an amulet, together with clay pipes, pottery remains and evidence of a glass works have been uncovered in or close to one stone house, which probably belonged to one of the Scottish merchants who settled in Dunluce during these years. Despite the fact that there was no natural harbour near the town, Dunluce briefly prospered and provided a focus for the diverse elements of rural society until the Irish insurgents burnt it down early in 1642.111 The elaborate nature of the settlement and the scale of the first earl’s investment in Dunluce were a tribute to private enterprise. The precise details of how Antrim funded this and other plantation initiatives are not clear, but the expenditure must have been very considerable indeed. Yet it does not appear

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to have stretched the resources of the richest man in Ulster whose wealth in 1635 (on the eve of his death) was estimated at £10,000 in land and £3,077 in goods (discussed in detail in chapter 13 below).112 The Dunluce development also represented a powerful political statement about the importance of supporting royal policies of plantation and promoting ‘civility’ in a particularly remote corner of Ireland. On numerous occasions the king thanked the first earl for ‘his services in improving those barren and uncultivated parts of the country, and planting a colony there’.113 An early seventeenth-century poem records the change in the Ulster landscape at this time, with ‘the mountain all in fenced fields; fairs are held in places of the chase; the green is crossed by girdles of twisted fences’.114 Extant leases, dating from a major re-leasing in 1637 (the year after Randal, second earl, succeeded his father’s earldom), capture the nature of the transformation and offer insights into how the earl exploited his vast landed resources.115 The provisions in each of the 123 surviving leases were remarkably consistent and are typical of leases signed elsewhere in Ireland. First came the name of the townland (or quarter of land) being let, together with the amount of rent to be paid bi-annually in cash to the earl, the amount due to the king and to the receiver who executed the transaction, followed by a provision for distraint if the rent was not paid or if the terms of the lease were not upheld. The earl retained his rights to the estate’s natural assets, which included all mills, waterways, mines or quarries, together with all fishing, hawking and gaming. He insisted that the lessee should grind grain at his mill and seek justice at the manor courts of Glenarm, Dunluce, Oldstone or Ballycastle.116 The tenant was also obliged to offer his best beast or a fine in lieu as heriot (tribute), and to improve the land either by fencing or digging ditches and by planting trees (although no fine was levied for failing to do so). Some – but by no means all – of the leases included a clause obliging the tenant to contribute to ‘all risings and general hostings and other public services that will require to be done in or by the inhabitants of the said County of Antrim’.117 Leases were, however, mutual contracts. The quid pro quo was that the landlord agreed to provide his tenant with land for a fixed period of time and to protect and safeguard his legal, physical and financial interests.118 The duration of these leases from 1637, as table 13 illustrates, varied: 39 (or 31.7 per cent) of those which survive ran for 21 years (expiring in 1658) and 70 (or 56.9 per cent) ran for 41 years (expiring in 1678). On the one hand, the notable absence of short leases (under 10 years) suggests a stability and continuity of tenantry on the Antrim estates, while on the other it indicates that the earl was prepared to forego any immediate financial reward in return ‘for capital investment by the tenants in improving their properties’.119 Moreover, the surviving leases from 1637 indicate that Antrim

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Table 13.  Antrim leases (1637): type of lease granted. Lease

Glenarm

Dunluce

Fee farm

6

2

21 years

8

41 years

Kilconway

Cary

Total

1

3

12 [9.75%]

14

17

–

39 [31.7%]

16

35

14

5

70 [56.91%]

Other

1*

–

–

  2 [1.63%]

Total

31

51

8

123

1† 33

* The length of this lease was not stated † This lease was for 31 years

leased the bulk of his property – at least 80 per cent – either to ‘gentlemen’ or to substantial ‘yeoman’ farmers who were presumably better able to husband it. For in a society where land was abundant and where good tenants were in constant demand, long improving leases to well-established individuals enabled a landlord to retain better tenants and prevent neighbours from poaching them.120 Presumably the Catholic small farmers later volunteered to take up arms at Antrim’s brequest and the Protestant ones helped to secure his estates for him during the landed upheavals associated with the 1650s (see chapter 10). Antrim also encouraged a select handful of tenants, almost 10 per cent according to the surviving leases, to participate in developing his property by leasing land in ‘fee farm’ (that is, in perpetuity) at fixed rents.121 Naturally, the earl was well aware of his own achievement and proudly reported to Dublin in August 1637 that ‘I have compounded my affairs here with my tenants wherein I was not so inward to my [own] profit as to the general good and settlement by binding them to plant [trees] and husband their holdings so near as may be to the manner of England’.122 The Informal Plantations The Crown cultivated other native lords such as the Magennises of Iveagh. In 1584 Elizabeth I awarded Sir Hugh Magennis the lands of Iveagh in County Down and the lord deputy suggested he be elevated to the peerage, being ‘the civilest of all the Irishry in those parts’.123 It was 1623 before Sir Hugh’s son Arthur Magennis purchased the title Viscount Magennis of Iveagh for the sum of £2,000 and acquired ‘in capite by knight’s service’ a formal title to 20,161 acres in the baronies of Upper and Lower Iveagh. Despite this, the Crown regarded the first viscount and his son, Hugh, later second viscount, as potentially subversive, thanks in part to their links with the earl of Tyrone,

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and insisted that Hugh be educated under the care of the archbishop of Canterbury.124 The validity of the Magennis land titles later came under close scrutiny. In 1637–8 the second earl of Antrim intervened on behalf of the second viscount, whom he described as his impoverished cousin ‘germain’, and asked Lord Deputy Wentworth that Iveagh ‘be admitted to composition [before the commission of grace] as other men are’ and requested that ‘no part of that which he now possesses be diminished or taken from him’.125 On Iveagh’s death in 1639 the earl immediately importuned the king for the wardship of Iveagh’s eldest teenage son (by Sarah O’Neill, one of Tyrone’s daughters). Wentworth resolutely opposed this and referred the matter to the court of wards with the recommendation that the youth be educated under the king’s supervision, so that ‘he might easily be set straight in his religion, and civilized in his education for I do not take the earl of Antrim to be so good at breeding up of children’.126 But the king ruled in Antrim’s favour on the rather unpromising grounds that ‘the youth [now 16] had but little time to be in wardship and was soured already’.127 When rebellion broke out a few years later the young viscount was quick to take up arms on behalf of the Catholic cause and attack his Protestant planter neighbours, including Thomas Cromwell, first Viscount Lecale. Viscount Lecale’s father, Edward, had settled in Lecale in 1605 after creditors had seized his Leicestershire manors. Edward was awarded lands belonging to one of the local Irish chieftains, Phelim McCartan, on condition that he educated and provided for McCartan’s son in his household. The king also made him governor of Lecale with the power to exercise martial law. His son, Thomas, later first viscount, had served in Ireland and in 1625 assumed command of a regiment in Ernst von Mansfeld’s abortive expedition to the Palatinate.128 Yet his military training did little to help him defend his settlement against Iveagh’s attack in 1642.129 The great proponents of plantation in East Ulster – James Hamilton, first Viscount Claneboye, and James Montgomery, first Viscount Montgomery of the Ards – also suffered a rebel onslaught in 1641. Both men came from Ayrshire, the former the son of a minister and the latter the son of a local laird. Favourites of the king, they dominated the informal plantation of County Down. In 1605 they carved up the estates of Con O’Neill, lord of Upper Claneboye and the Great Ards, in a tripartite agreement with O’Neill. Lord Deputy Chichester took umbrage on the grounds that ‘all is given in free and common socage, whereby his majesty’s tenures are lost’.130 Con’s portion was in the north-west at Castlereagh, while the newcomers settled in the north-east of County Down, taking control of the sea coasts along the Ards peninsula and effectively creating a ‘Scottish Pale’. Their plantations quickly prospered and by 1630 their estates in north Down could muster 2,718 men, the majority of them Scots, ‘or a settler population of 4,509’.131 According to

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the Montgomery family chronicler, Scottish colonists, including tradesmen, settled and within a short period of time: everybody minded their trades, and the spade, building, and setting fruit trees, &c, in orchards and gardens, and by ditching their grounds. Now the golden peaceable age renewed, no strife, contention, querulous lawyers, or Scottish or Irish feuds, between clans and families, and sirnames, disturbing the tranquillity of those times; and the towns and temples were erected, with other great works done.132

In 1611 plantation commissioners who visited the Claneboye estates commented on the ‘fayre stone house’ and the town of Bangor, which ‘consists of 80 newe houses, all inhabited with Scotyshmen and Englishmen’.133 They also noted that Montgomery’s town, Newtown, contained 100 houses, all inhabited by Scots. In 1625 Claneboye commissioned the cartographer Thomas Raven to draw maps of his estate. Raven’s exquisitely detailed, coloured maps provide a vivid snapshot of the varied nature of the land (meadow, pasture, moor), how it was farmed and divided (the name of the holder is given), and show the location of roads, castles, deer parks, orchards, houses, cottages, mills, the harbours and the prospering towns of Bangor (with 70 houses), Killyleagh (with 75 houses) and Newtown, together with other natural features, especially bogs and woods. The depiction of Killyleagh castle, the Scottish-style tower house built in c.1610, is particularly vivid. In 1635 Claneboy’s estimated wealth was £3,750 in land and £1,154 in goods; Montgomery’s was £2,000 in land and £615 in goods.134 By 1641 Claneboye’s estates in the baronies of Ards, Castlereagh and Dufferin totalled 44,569 acres (nearly all of them were profitable). Montgomery held 16,001 acres in the baronies of Ards and Castlereagh (15,495 of which were described as profitable). Greed for additional acres by both planters alienated the native population and ensured that the two neighbours quickly became embroiled in lengthy and expensive litigation with each other, largely over boundaries.135 Hostility reached such a pitch that Claneboye threatened to disinherit any of his heirs who ‘shall marry with any of the posteritie of Sir Hugh Montgomery’.136 Only the outbreak of rebellion in 1641 forced an uneasy reconciliation between the two families as they scrambled to resist the onslaught from local insurgents, many of whom had been dispossessed as a result of their plantations. Lord Claneboye also disputed boundaries with another neighbour, Edward, Viscount Killultagh, who was more commonly known by his English title, Viscount Conway. The Conway family held lands in England (at Ragley in Warwickshire), Wales (Conway castle in Caernarvonshire), and near Lisburn along the border between Counties Antrim and Down. Their archive is

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exceptionally rich. Extant correspondence vividly recaptures their activities as landed entrepreneurs and improving landlords. During the late 1620s the first viscount refurbished his house at Lisnagarvey. He populated his deer park with animals that Lords Antrim and Chichester provided and stocked his farms with mares and horses brought over from Ragley.137 He built churches on his estates and a local school, and promised to appoint a master if the school prospered (in the interim the local minister ran it).138 Writing back to London in 1630, Conway appeared pleased with his lot, describing his new home as a ‘curious place’, full of contrasts. No two faces were alike; the weather varied from great storms to periods of great calm; the terrain was boggy in parts and pleasant in others. He continued ‘rivers [are] full of fish, full of game, the people in their attire, language, fashion, [are] barbarous; in their entertainment [they are] free and noble’.139 In July 1634 an English traveller passed through Lord Conway’s estates en route from Belfast to Dublin. He observed that the town of Dromore in County Down ‘belongs to my Lord Conoway [sic], who hath there a good handsome house, but far short of both my Lord Chichester’s houses, and this house is seated upon an hill, upon the side whereof is planted a garden and orchard, and at the bottom of which hill runs a pleasant river which abounds with salmon; hereabouts my Lord Conoway is now endeavouring a plantation, though the land hereabouts be the poorest and barrenest I have yet seen, yet may it be made good land with labour and charge’.140 During the later 1630s Lord Conway and his factor, George Rawdon, worked hard to attract committed tenants and to introduce English ones from his Warwickshire estates, to import the best livestock and to make use of natural resources, especially timber.141 In April 1633 the annual revenue of Lord Conway’s ‘land in Ireland’ was estimated to be £2,000.142 War during the 1640s temporarily interrupted progress, but by the 1670s the estate had recovered its pre-war levels of prosperity (see chapter 13 below for details). The settlement patterns in County Monaghan differed from Antrim and Down in that five peers – Lords Blayney of Monaghan, Caulfeild of Charlemont, Fleming of Slane, Plunkett of Louth and St Lawrence of Howth – held lands there but only the Blayneys resided in the county. During the early decades of the seventeenth century, Sir Edward Blayney, a Welsh soldier who had served in Ireland during the Nine Years War, had held a variety of offices, including seneschal and later governor of Monaghan. In 1604 the king granted him 2,000 acres provided he built a castle for the ‘relief of Monaghan’.143 Within a decade Blayney had built his castle, fortified the town, developed a commercial infrastructure of weekly markets and annual fairs, established ‘courts leet and baron’, added substantial acres to his initial grant, and secured the region for the Crown. In 1614 he even received a licence to sell ‘strong waters’ (i.e. whisky) in Monaghan.144 Gaelic land

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ownership persisted longer in Monaghan than in other Ulster counties, yet Blayney’s estates continued to grow as the family speculated in land and by 1641 they amounted to 24,572 acres centred on the baronies of Cremore, Dartree and Monaghan.145 The family had prospered during these years, a fact illustrated in a deposition Lord Blayney made to the authorities in Dublin following the outbreak of the 1641 rebellion. On 11 July 1643 Blayney claimed that he had lost his castle at Blayney, together with goods and riding horses worth £237; plate (£500); linen (£500); and beasts, cattle and sheep (£925). There was ‘More howsholdstuff in his 2 howses worth at least 1,000 markes, ready money £296, due debts £400, a library of bookes worth £500’, besides other things he could not recall. In all, Blayney estimated that the insurgents had inflicted £13,873 8s 4d worth of damage on his property, goods and livestock, and that he had lost an annual rental of £2,250.146 The Formal Plantations The unregulated colonization of Antrim, Down and Monaghan, led by these peers, proved hugely successful in attracting settlers to Ulster and merits comparison with the informal colonization of Orkney and Shetland by planters from Fife, which resulted in the extension of Lowland practices to the Northern Isles. Less successful was the colonization of the forfeited Isles of Lewis and Harris with adventurers from Fife (there were three failed attempts, in 1595–1602, 1605 and 1609) and this, together with experiences of the Munster plantation, influenced the king’s attitude towards the formal plantation of the escheated Ulster counties. After 1610 land was allocated in relatively small parcels (ranging from 1,000 to 2,000 acres) to three classes of grantees: undertakers, servitors and native freeholders. The chief responsibility for plantation fell to the 100 Scottish and English ‘undertakers’ and about 50 ‘servitors’ (largely English army officers who had settled at the end of the war, together with servants of the state) in the hope that they would create a British type of rural society. The undertakers were to take possession of their holdings by late 1610 and were obliged to plant 24 adult males (English or lowland Scots), representing at least 10 families for every 1,000 acres they held. Undertakers, who were to be resident for five years, and their tenants were to take the oath of supremacy and no land was to be leased to any Irish or to any person who refused to take the oath (this changed in 1622 when the Irish were permitted to become tenants on one-quarter of the undertakers’ holdings). All articles concerning building, planting and residence were to be fulfilled within five years. The servitors received land on the same conditions as the undertakers but could let land to Irish tenants since there was no requirement to plant. The third group of grantees, the native

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Irish freeholders (or ‘deserving Irish’ who had served the Crown during the Nine Years War), held their land in the same precincts and on the same basis as the servitors but were required to farm in accordance with lowland practices.147 The most important titled undertakers were James Balfour, first baron Balfour of Glenawley; James Hamilton, first earl of Abercorn and later baron of Strabane; and Andrew Stewart, first baron of Castle Stewart and Lord Ochiltree. Balfour of Glenawley, an adventurer from Fife, was the largest planter in County Fermanagh. He was the second son of Sir James of Pittendriech and brother of Michael, Lord Balfour of Burleigh, an undertaker who received lands in County Fermanagh, which he later sold to James. According to the Books of Survey and Distribution, by 1641 the Balfour estates comprised 8,275 acres, 7,520 of which were profitable, in the baronies of Knockninny and Magherastephana.148 Development of the estate progressed slowly, partly because Balfour spent too much time in Dublin, and in 1619 ‘most’ of his tenants were Irish.149 Nevertheless he oversaw the construction of Castle Balfour and the neighbouring village of Ballybalfour (now Lisnaskea), which by 1622 had 40 mud houses inhabited by ‘Britons’, 17 of whom were freeholders or leaseholders.150 An extant rent book from March or April 1632 lists 90 tenants, living in two manors; 52 were Irish and 38 had English and Scottish surnames, and they would have leased lands to an unknown number of sub-tenants. The ‘British’ settlers lived primarily in or near Ballybalfour or along the main road to Dublin and by the 1630s appear to have formed a stable community that sustained itself through farming, especially wool and corn production (there was a mill near Ballybalfour).151 An inquisition held after the first baron’s death in 1634 highlights the extent to which the costs stemming from lengthy and acrimonious legal disputes, especially with Lord Blayney and the bishop of Clogher, and other liabilities associated with his three marriages, had left his estates encumbered with debts.152 Desperate for cash, he alienated in July 1634 much of this estate to his brother Sir William Balfour, keeper of the Tower of London, for £3,328.153 One of the most successful and wealthiest planters was a royal favourite, James Hamilton, first earl of Abercorn, from Renfrewshire, who in 1611 received estates in County Tyrone along the River Foyle.154 In addition to fulfilling his conditions as an undertaker by attracting roughly 180 Scottish settlers, he developed the market town of Strabane, which had 80 houses in 1618 and returned burgesses to the Irish parliament with Scottish surnames. He also built a castle, 100 houses, a mill, ‘a sessions house and market cross’, together with a gaol.155 Freeholders and leaseholders on the Abercorn estate lived in stone houses. For example, William Lynne, Abercorn’s agent, was granted a freehold lease in the manor of Dunnalong in 1614 and agreed to

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build within four years a ‘good and sufficient house of stone and lime or stone and clay with windows and chimneys after the form of Scottish buildings’.156 Abercorn’s early death in 1618 and a period of minority interrupted the pace of settlement. The year before his son and heir, James, had been created first baron Strabane, but in 1633 James resigned his peerage in favour of his brother, Claude. According to the Books of Survey and Distribution, his heir, James, third baron of Strabane, held 7,069 acres in the barony of Strabane in 1641. In 1610 the king assigned lands in Mountjoy barony to another favourite, Andrew Stewart, first baron of Castle Stewart and Lord Ochiltree, who hailed from Ayrshire. This was presumably his reward for leading a ‘fire and sword’ expedition as part of the failed attempt to colonize the Western Isles in 1608. Despite being plagued by debts that forced him to sell his Scottish estates and title in 1615, Castle Stewart quickly introduced settlers to his estates, which were on prime land bordering Lough Neagh, built a castle and developed an urban settlement at Stewartstown. According to a 1622 report, 50 ‘British’ families lived on his estates (approx. 100 males), along with 84 Irish.157 By 1641, according to the Books of Survey and Distribution, the family had increased its holdings to include 2,116 acres in the barony of Dungannon, as well as 3,000 plantation acres in Mountjoy. For its part, Stewartstown had become a proto-industrial settlement and home to 30 leaseholders who formed a diverse community of tradesmen, craftsmen and a schoolmaster.158 In addition to three titled undertakers, there were at least five servitors who later acquired peerages: the Caulfeilds of Charlemont, the Chichesters of Donegal, the Folliotts of Ballyshannon, the Lamberts of Cavan and the Ridgeways of Londonderry. Lord Deputy Chichester was the most important. In 1603 James VI and I granted him in free and common socage significant properties in the south of County Antrim, including Belfast castle. A series of wily land deals allowed him to increase his estates in south Antrim and to acquire additional acres in north Down. Large portions of O’Doherty’s Donegal lands fell to Chichester in the aftermath of his 1608 rebellion, and in 1611 the lord deputy secured a grant to lands in County Tyrone that included the town of Dungannon.159 It was one thing to grab a vast estate and quite another to populate it with suitable tenants. Eager to attract English settlers, many of whom were his kin or soldiers who had served under him, Chichester offered farms with low rents and long leases (60 years) but with improving and building clauses. In a few instances he alienated larger tracts of land in return for sizeable cash payments. Thus in 1618 Moses Hill, an ex-soldier, acquired for 99 years much of Island Magee in return for a single payment of £600. Despite this, the annual rental from the Chichester estates was roughly £4,000 in c.1630. Lord Chichester made a considerable capital investment in his estates.160 At Carrickfergus, Chichester renovated the ramparts and constructed in

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c.1618 Joymount, an elegant English mansion house that also boasted French architectural influences (see plate 15). An English visitor, William Brereton, described Joymount in 1635 as a very stately house, or rather like a prince’s palace, whereunto there belongs a stately gate-house, and graceful terrace and walk before the house, as is at Denton my Lord Fairfax’s house. A very fair hall there is, and a stately staircase and fair dining-room carrying the proportion of the hall; fine garden and mighty spacious orchards, and they say they bear good store of fruit. I observed on either side of his garden there is a dove-house, placed one opposite to the other in the corner of the garden, and ’twixt the garden and orchards a most convenient place for apricots or some such tender fruit, to be planted against the dove-house wall, that by the advantage of the heat thereof they may be rendered most fruitful, and come sooner to maturity, but this use is not made thereof. Very rich furniture belongs unto this house, which seems much to be neglected and begins to go something to decay. It is a most stately building, only the windows and rooms and whole frame of the house is over-large and vast; and in this house you may observe the inconvenience of great buildings which require an unreasonable charge to keep them in repair, so as they are a burthen to the owners of them.161

Chichester also built a fort on his County Tyrone settlement at Dungannon and refurbished Belfast castle. He secured a charter and developed the commercial infrastructure for the town of Belfast, laying the foundations for its later emergence as an important economic centre.162 Brereton also visited Belfast. He noted: ‘At Belfast my Lord Chichester hath another dainty stately house (which is indeed the glory and beauty of that town also), where he is most resident, and is now building an outer brick wall before his gates. This is not so large and vast as the other [i.e. Joymount], but more convenient and commodious; the very end of the loch toucheth upon his garden and backside; here also are dainty orchards, gardens, and walks planted.’163 After the war both properties were refurbished. Chichester’s nephew and heir, the earl of Donegal, retained two ‘Polanders, that he hath kept at work this half-year making statutes and many fine things of alabaster’.164 In the 1660s both Belfast castle and Joymount were each returned as having 40 hearths, making them amongst the largest houses in Ireland.165 As lord deputy, Chichester used his public position to promote his private interests. Other servitors associated with the plantation of Ulster (and plantations elsewhere in Ireland) did likewise. Sir Toby Caulfeild, the younger son of a Shropshire gentleman, had distinguished himself in France and the Low Countries before serving in Ireland, first in Ulster and later at Kinsale. In 1610 he received a grant to 1,000 acres in the barony of Dungannon in

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County Tyrone. He bought additional acres in the barony, and by 1641 the family held over 5,000 plantation acres in County Tyrone and a further 6,251 in neighbouring County Armagh. He held the governorship of both counties, together with Dungannon and Charlemont where in 1623 he built a castle of lime and stone on a low hill overlooking the Blackwater river. Nicholas Pynnar’s fine coloured drawing of Charlemont depicts a square, four-storey stone mansion house with numerous large windows, chimney stacks and an elaborate tower. External, trace italienne fortifications, a drawbridge, a substantial wooden bridge over the river and adjacent houses are also shown (see plate 16). Situated six miles west of Armagh and four miles south of Dungannon, Charlemont occupied a key strategic position in terms of defence of the Pale.166 Little wonder it was a prime target for the insurgents in October 1641. Caulfeild also built a fine H-shaped, three-storey dwelling at Castle Caulfeild, which was fired in 1642. It was a mansion 80 feet long and 28 feet wide, and in 1619 Pynnar described it as ‘the fairest building in the North’, with its thick stone walls, cut-stone mullioned windows, and its ornamental stone chimney flues.167 In 1620 Sir Toby was raised to the peerage. After outlining his service to the Crown during times of war, his letters patent recorded his contributions to the plantation: How much he has strengthened and improved a great part of Ulster by his just and firm discharge of the duties of a justice of the peace, by advancing and enlarging the plantation formed by his (the king’s) direction, to be the model, the salvation, the very life of that province, by propagating true religion, by uprooting the barbarous manners and customs of a rude and savage race; for he has brought many (and amongst them some of the higher ranks) to civility, and they have so continued.168

By comparison with Lords Chichester and Caulfeild the contributions made to the Ulster plantation by the other titled servitors were more modest. Oliver Lambert, baron of Cavan, had served with the earl of Essex in Ireland and helped to reduce the province of Ulster. He was rewarded with acres in the baronies of Clanmahon, Loughtee and Tullyhaw in County Cavan, together with other estates elsewhere in Leinster and Connacht.169 Henry Folliott, baron of Ballyshannon, had fought at Kinsale in 1601 and secured a small estate (2,895 acres) in west Donegal. Thomas Ridgeway, earl of Londonderry, was a Devon man who had served the Crown during the war before acquiring lands in Counties Monaghan and Tyrone.170 According to Lord Deputy Chichester, he brought to Ireland ‘12 carpenters, mostly with wives and families, who has since been resident, employed in felling 700 timber trees and preparing 400 boards and planks, besides stone for tenements, and timber ready for the immediate setting up of a water mill’.171 In 1616

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Ridgeway effectively ‘sold’ his 2,500 acres in County Tyrone to Sir James Erskine when he purchased his earldom and thereafter focused his efforts on his smaller settlement in Queen’s County.172 In addition to the newcomers, James VI and I and Lord Deputy Chichester felt it expedient to include key ‘deserving’ Irish families in the formal plantation. For as Sir John Davies, one of the plantation commissioners, observed: His Majesty did not utterly exclude the natives out of this plantation, with a purpose to root them out, as the Irish were excluded out of the first English colonies; but made betwixt plantation of Brittish and Irish, that they might grow up together in one Nation. . . . And this truly is the master-piece, and most excellent part of the work of Reformation.173

As a result Brian Roe Maguire, who had submitted to the Crown in a surrender and regrant agreement, received the barony of Magherastephana in County Fermanagh (22,351 acres, 13,372 of which were profitable), making him by a very considerable margin the largest landowner in the county and one of the main in the country. Yet Brian felt aggrieved. On the one hand, he had hoped for the award of the three baronies over which the Maguires had traditionally exercised influence, and on the other his ancestral seat at Lisnaskea (renamed Ballybalfour) had been assigned to Lord Balfour, one of the Scottish undertakers.174 In 1628 Brian became first Baron Maguire of Enniskillen. The marriages of his sons – Connor, later second baron, to Mary Fleming of Castle Fleming in County Cavan, and Rory, his brother, to Deborah Blennerhasset, the widow of a prominent local planter and Audley Mervyn’s sister – linked the Maguires to the established Old English families of the Pale and the Protestant newcomers.175 The second baron attained later notoriety as one of the leaders of the 1641 rebellion, along with his kinsmen and accomplices, Roger Moore and Sir Phelim O’Neill.176 Why did the baron become involved in rebellion when so many of his fellow peers shunned such a course of action (also see chapter 9 below)?177 First, he was deeply in debt, particularly to local creditors, and it is interesting to note that one of the first incursions undertaken by Rory Maguire on 23 October was to seize Castle Balfour and destroy the county records held there, including those relating to debt. During an interrogation in 1642 Lord Maguire attributed his action to the fact that he was ‘overwhelmed in debt’. Second, the plantation and ‘the smallness of my estate and the greatness of the estates my ancestors had’ left him feeling aggrieved, much as it had his grandfather.178 Third, he later alleged that the objective of the rising was to remedy Catholic grievances and to secure toleration of religion.179 Whatever his motivation, early intelligence of the attempt to seize Dublin castle enabled the authorities to arrest Lord Maguire of Enniskillen.180

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In 1645 an English jury found him guilty of treason against both the king and the state, and he was hung, drawn and quartered at Tyburn in London in a public execution on 20 February.181 He forfeited his title, though his son styled himself as ‘baron’, and his estates passed to Sir Henry Brooke, a planter from neighbouring Donegal, who took advantage of cheap land to create for himself a considerable territorial empire.182 Other Early Stuart Settlements After the apparent success of the Ulster plantation, James VI and I authorized a series of smaller plantations directed at the distinctively Irish areas of King’s County, Leitrim, Longford, Westmeath, Queen’s County, Wexford and Wicklow. For example, ‘under the commission for the plantation of the county of Leitrim’ the king granted in ‘common socage’ territory belonging to the O’Rourkes and other Gaelic landowners to Richard, earl of Westmeath, on the condition that he did not assume any customary titles (such as ‘the O’Rourke’), pay tribute, or divide land ‘according to the Irish custom of gavelkind’.183 Wexford, the first of these smaller plantations, has been the most fully researched.184 Unlike the Munster and Ulster plantations that attracted highprofile colonists from across the Stuart kingdoms, members of the Dublin administration dominated these small settlements which often formed the nucleus for later proto-industrial and urban development. After 1610 the Crown confiscated the baronies of Gorey, Ballaghkeen North and South, and the eastern portion of the barony of Scarawalsh in County Wexford, identifying the territories reserved for the plantation by the names of the Gaelic septs living there (the Kinshelaghs, MacMurrough Kavanaghs and O’Morchoes). Veteran servitors benefited the most, including three men who later acquired peerages: Sir Richard Wingfield, later Viscount Powerscourt, Sir Francis Annesley, later Baron Mountnorris, and Sir Roger Jones, later Viscount Ranelagh. These men were awarded grants of 1,000 acres of land ‘in free and common scouage’, together with permission to fell timber, on condition that they built a house and did not alienate land to the ‘mere Irish’.185 Wingfield had seen active service on the Continent and in Ireland before becoming involved in the plantation of Ulster.186 In February 1618 he received a patent for 1,700 acres in the territory of Kilcheele and later built Wingfield House at Ballynabarney. He consolidated his hold on his Wexford properties and increased his estates until by 1641 his heirs owned 2,350 acres in the baronies of Gorey and 400 acres in Scarawalsh.187 The largest English landowner in north Wexford was Annesley, who acquired lands through royal grant, mortgage and purchase. By 1641 he held 9,549 acres which, he later claimed, yielded an annual income of £4,000 (he also held Ulster estates,

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discussed above).188 In accordance with the conditions of plantation he built a defensible house, Castle Annesley, at Camolin, a structure 40 by 24 feet, reinforced by one or two flankers adjoining a walled court or bawn.189 Annesley’s son and heir, Arthur, lived there prior to the rebellion. He later wrote that ‘there never was more unity, friendship and good agreement, amongst all sort and degrees (or Roman Catholics and Protestants) . . . I remember very well the summer before the rebellion, the titular Bishop of Ferns coming on his visitation in the county of Wexford, where I then dwelt. At the request of the Popish priest, I lent most of my silver plate to entertain the said Bishop with, and had it honestly restored.’190 Servitors also dominated new settlements elsewhere. Letters patent, dating from 1618, provided ‘for the planting of Birnes County, Wicklow’ by Edward Brabazon, baron of Ardee and later earl of Meath, a leading figure in the Dublin administration. By 1641 the family held 7,608 acres in the baronies of Arklow and Rathdown, which yielded an annual income of roughly £3,000. His grandson later claimed that a capital investment of ‘near £10,000’ had been made in the plantation, which included the construction of ‘a faire stone built house’ and the development of local towns.191 The earl of Meath’s servant, Henry Williams, provided similar testimony for the earl’s losses in Counties Dublin and Wicklow, and for those of his eldest son, Lord Brabazon. He claimed that the earl had lost £700 in annual rents from his County Dublin lands, and the castles he held at Bray and Kinleston, along with other property, had suffered £900 worth of damage.192 In County Longford, Francis Aungier, master of the rolls and later first Baron Aungier of Longford, acquired estates which, by 1641, amounted to 3,390 acres in the baronies of Ardagh, Granard and Longford. In 1627 the English Privy Council granted him permission to import the lead he needed for his new house and buildings, deeming his ‘worke soe necessarie and profiteable both for the strength of those parts and good of that plantacion in generall’.193 The Aungiers remained a major presence in the region and developed the towns of Longford and Granard, along with the Forbes family from Aberdeenshire who had settled in Ireland in 1620 having secured plantation lands first in Leitrim and later in Longford (Arthur Forbes, who in 1675 became first viscount of Granard, was elevated to the earldom in 1684). A deposition dating from 1642 by Lady Jane Forbes provides a vivid snapshot of the family’s prosperity. She claimed total losses of £3,774 8s 4d, which included ‘beasts and cattle’ worth £540 0s 8d, horses and mares worth £182, sheep and hogs worth £331 8s 0d and household goods worth £154 3s 0d, plus an annual rental income of £541.194 According to the Books of Survey and Distribution, in 1641 her son, Sir Arthur, held 3,149 acres (only 1,778 of which were described as profitable) in the baronies of Longford and Granard in County Longford and in the barony of Mohill in County

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Leitrim.195 By the late 1670s the estate had trebled in size to 9,466 acres (7,573 of them profitable) and generated an annual income of £1,700.196 Conclusion The revolution in Irish landholding, which began with the plantations and ended with the Restoration settlement, was exceptional in its scale and in the fact that the processes were remarkably well documented. The ubiquity of warfare in the seventeenth century, however, ensured that windfalls in land appropriation occurred across early modern Europe, especially in Bohemia, Muscovite Russia, Sweden and Denmark.197 The parallels between Ireland and Bohemia are striking and worthy of detailed comparative analysis.198 In 1618 the more radical Protestant Bohemian lords rebelled in an attempt to recover their political privileges and secure their faith. Imperial forces defeated them at the battle of White Mountain in 1620 and the Habsburgs consolidated their position by passing a decree that made conversion to Catholicism a requirement for landholding. This resulted in large-scale expropriation and the sale of the estates of 700 nobles, many of them Protestants. By the midseventeenth century nearly one-third of landholders in Bohemia had acquired their property since 1620 and on the basis of primogeniture, rather than partible inheritance which had been common practice in the pre-war years. These massive transfers in landholding allowed the Habsburgs to create a Catholic service nobility, the majority of whom were newly ennobled men who were delighted to accept land, titles and office in return for their loyalty.199 Similarly, in Ireland the Crown used land to create a landed nobility, albeit of mixed ethnicity and faith. That said, Protestant peers with close links to the Dublin administration did particularly well, as did the lords of Scottish and Old English origin who enjoyed royal favour. Across Ireland and particularly in Ulster and Munster, these titled landholders adopted the Crown’s ‘civilizing’ landed policies with varying degrees of enthusiasm, but many did act as ‘improving’ landlords and promoted the new commercial economy so closely associated with the plantations (also see chapter 13 below). Their ‘civilizing’ initiatives reconfigured the Irish landscape. A frenzied programme of building – castles, fortified mansions, schools, churches, gaols, roads and bridges – together with extensive deforestation, the enclosure of lands and the planting of orchards and gardens transformed the physical landscape and resulted in new patterns of rural nucleated settlements and the emergence of major urban ones.200 In short, these developments not only enriched many individual lords but facilitated the anglicization of the Irish landscape and represented powerful physical manifestations of the Crown’s civilizing message. This leads to a second conclusion that also resonates with what occurred in Bohemia. Though it is difficult to calculate with certainty, it would seem

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that native Bohemian families secured over half of the confiscated lands (53 per cent) and newcomers received two-fifths (41 per cent), with the remainder passing to the Catholic Church and Habsburg monarchy.201 In order to avail themselves of the landed bonanza and to hold property the native nobles – 10 major families and roughly 20 lesser ones – had to convert to Catholicism, which they did not hesitate to do, though a number of younger lines remained Protestant, thus allowing the family to hedge its bets. Of the newcomers, some had prior links with Bohemia and others were pure parvenus, especially the military entrepreneurs and generals who had served the Habsburgs loyally during the Thirty Years War. In Ireland the proportion of established nobles who secured lands was probably as high or even higher. Certainly in 1641, 39 peers of Old English and Gaelic origin held 69 per cent of all land owned by nobles and 19 New English lords held 16 per cent, while the remaining 15 per cent were held by four Scottish peers and one Welsh one (see table 7 above). These established, native lords – only a few of whom converted to Protestantism – exploited the fluid land market, mortgages and the opportunities that plantation created to consolidate their position as property owners, much as the newcomers, most of whom had lived in Ireland since the late sixteenth century, used these windfalls to accumulate territorial empires that underpinned their upward social mobility. Thus from the early seventeenth century, power and property owning were inextricably linked, something that became stronger as the century passed and as the peerage increased its overall share of Irish land. Moreover, the number of acres a lord held broadly correlated with his rank within the peerage, a trend that occurred throughout early modern Europe. Finally, the political geography of an Irish estate was as important in 1685 as it had been in 1603, and the great aristocrats who held vast estates in remote regions prospered providing they remained loyal to the Crown. The medieval lordships of Bourke, Butler, Fitzgerald and O’Brien were recon­ figured into improving and commercially orientated lineages that operated alongside landed dynasties founded on the back of cheap or forfeited acres belonging to the Annesleys, Boyles, Cootes and MacDonnells. It is important to note the ability of recusant lords to retain their estates and to act as adventurers, entrepreneurs and speculators if it was in the interests of a lineage to do so. This should not suggest that religion was not important. It was. The significance of faith and particularly of Catholic survivalism is discussed fully in the next chapter.

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CHAPTER 5

Religion By 1641 loyalty to the person of the king, a shared sense of honour,

common landed and political interests together with social and economic interdependencies, held together a peerage of mixed ethnicity and faith. The Protestant earl of Anglesey later suggested that There never was more unity, friendship, and good agreement, amongst all sorts and degrees (except in the standing root of mischief, the difference in religion) then at this time [the summer before the 1641 rebellion], nor mutual confidence. I can say, being that time there, the sheep and the goats lived quietly together; and there was that intire trust in one another, as to all matters civil and temporal.1

In 1603 the vast majority of peers were Catholic, but a combination of conversions and new Protestant ennoblements during the early decades of the seventeenth century ensured that by 1641 the religious composition of the resident peerage had changed very dramatically indeed: roughly half were Catholic and the other half Protestant (table 14). The bulk of Protestant lords conformed to the Established Church and a very small minority espoused Presbyterianism. These proportions remained fairly constant throughout the course of the century (after 1685 the percentage of Catholic peers briefly crept up). In short, any attempt by the early Stuarts to establish a conforming peerage progressed very slowly and it was the early eighteenth century before the peerage in Ireland was predominately Protestant. The fact that half of the resident peers practised a religion different to that of their king flew in the face of the contemporary doctrine of cuius regio, eius religio and would not have been tolerated elsewhere. For example, Lower Austria was the only Austro-Bohemian territory that did not experience the religious repression which occurred particularly in Upper Austria and Bohemia where Protestant nobles where forced to espouse Catholicism on pain of exile.

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Table 14.  Religious breakdown of the resident peerage. 1603

1628

1641

1670

1685

Protestant

3

34

36

39

37

Catholic

24

31

32

37

38

Total

27

65

68

76

75

Even in Lower Austria, where by the late sixteenth-century 90 per cent of nobles were largely Lutheran, the Crown only advanced Catholic families, with the result that 60 per cent of Catholic nobles in 1620 served the Crown and only 10 per cent of Protestant lords did. In Bohemia only Catholics could hold land or serve the king, which resulted in mass conversions since this was the only means that the nobles had of surviving and demonstrating their loyalty. In other words, securing the lineage and its continued economic and political prosperity mattered more to most Bohemian nobles than their faith.2 The choices facing lords in Stuart Ireland were never that stark and as a result ambiguity flourished and religious pluralism was ubiquitous.3 Despite requiring office holders to take the oath of supremacy and securing conversions wherever possible, the Crown effectively tolerated the Catholicism of the established lords, elevated active recusants to the peerage and promoted the interests of these families at court. Nonetheless, religious tensions bubbled beneath the surface, especially in the pre-war years. The Catholic nobility, excluded from serving the king and holding high office, resented this discrimination and the fact that the Crown elevated Protestant upstarts in their place. At home and abroad they challenged and contested religious policies at every opportunity and consistently defied attempts on the part of the Crown and the Dublin administration to secure their conformity. In short, their faith was central to the identity of many of these Catholic peers and they believed that it in no way compromised their ability to serve their monarch. This chapter explores the relationship between the Stuarts and their Catholic subjects, and analyzes the dogged determination of the recusant lords to maintain their faith even when it resulted in the state questioning their loyalty to the Crown and depriving them of office. The second goal of this chapter is to analyze the composite religious and secular attitudes the peers had towards religion. On the one hand, it examines their relationship with the institution of the Church and the need many felt to protect and promote it, almost as an extension of traditional obligations associated with lordship. On the other, it attempts to probe how faith and a belief in providence helped to define the identity of individuals, and what faith actually meant to these lords and their wives.4 Finally, this chapter examines conversions and particularly the

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Crown’s use of wardship to secure converts to the ‘English religion’ as part of a wider civilizing mission. Catholicism and Kingship As the scholarship of Breandán Ó Buachalla and, more recently, Marc Caball has shown, the accession of James VI and I to the Crown of the three kingdoms in 1603 was a source of hope and joy to Irish Catholics (his mother was, after all, a Catholic). Contemporary poets recaptured this sense of optimism.5 A Donegal poet, Eoghan Ruadh Mac an Bhaird, celebrated his Irish lineage and held James to be Ireland’s legitimate monarch: Three crowns – ’tis fitting for him – shall be placed on James’s head; the utterance of the books is no secret, every seer confirms it . . .   That young Prince so high of mind, James Stewart, shall have Ireland’s wondrous crown – an honour, I know, he well deserves . . .   The Saxons’ land has been long – ’tis well known – prophesied for thee; so likewise is Ireland due to thee, thou are her spouse by all the signs.6

The adoption of James as Ireland’s spouse by the Irish learned classes is reflected most vividly in the work of the genealogists, who created an impeccable Irish ancestry for him (something James himself readily seized upon). Writing in the 1630s, Geoffrey Keating, an Old English priest from County Tipperary, provided in Foras Feasa ar Eirean an historical legitimation for the authority of James and his successors. Similarly, the ‘Annals of the Four Masters’, compiled by Franciscans in Louvain, recounted the annals of the ‘Kingdom’ of Ireland, a kingdom ruled over by ‘the Crown’. With these poems and works of prose a vocabulary of kingship – words such as ‘writ’, ‘sovereign’, ‘majesty’, ‘commonweal’, ‘crown’ – now entered the Irish language for the first time.7 But what was important to Irish Catholics, especially those of Old English provenance, was their relationship with the person of the king.8 How then could the Irish reconcile their very genuine sense of loyalty to James with their devotion to Catholicism? Drawing on the writings of the Jesuit theologians, Bellarmine and Suarez, the exiled Catholic archbishop of Armagh, Peter Lombard, struggled to find a satisfactory accommodation that distinguished between temporal and spiritual authority, making it possible for Irish Catholics to give allegiance, at least in temporal affairs, to a ‘heretical’ prince. Lombard’s new formulation was adopted and approved by the clerical synods held in 1614 in Drogheda and Kilkenny, and later in Armagh (1618) and Cashel (1624).9 The general principle was also laid down in the earliest catechisms translated into Irish. For example, the fourth commandment (‘Honour thy father and thy mother’) clearly stated that ‘Not only are we

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bound to honour our fathers and our mothers but we are likewise bound to give the same honour to every superior either of Church or State.’10 Thus the Catholic Church in Ireland gave James what he could live with: acceptance of his God-given authority and their temporal – if not spiritual – loyalty. For his part, James identified ‘three sorts of recusants’. In a letter to the Irish judges, the king categorized Catholics as follows: The first are they that for themselves will be no recusants, but their wives and families are. And they themselves do come to church but once or twice in a year, as is forced by law, but more false to God than the other sort. The second sort are they that are recusants, and have their consciences misled, and therefore refuse to come to church; but otherwise live as peaceable subjects. The third sort are practising recusants. These force all their servants to be recusants with them; they will suffer none of their tenants but they must be recusants; and their neighbours, if they live by them in peace, must be recusants also. These you may find out as the fox by the foul smell a great way round his hole.

The king concluded his letter ‘I can love the person of a Papist, being otherwise a good man and honestly bred, never having known any other religion.’11 Pragmatic though James may have been, the hope amongst Irish recusants that James would grant full toleration proved misplaced. That said, he did all he could to temper his Irish lord deputy’s anti-Catholic zeal, preferring to convince Catholics to conform, rather than coercing them to do so.12 During the early decades of the seventeenth century Catholic lords engaged in what the Dublin administration perceived to be subversive activities. They worshipped openly and sent their children abroad to be educated in continental seminaries. Their sons served in the armies of Catholic princes and their names became associated with plots and conspiracies. These recusant lords constantly tested the limits of royal authority as they sought to promote religious toleration and regularly took issue with penal legislation that in Ireland, unlike England, was aimed at the laity, rather than the clergy. In 1605 the lords of the Pale, led by Jenico, fifth Viscount Gormanston, Oliver, fourth Baron Louth, and Robert, seventh Baron Trimleston, petitioned the king, requesting the suspension of a proclamation that forbade ‘the private use of our religion and conscience’.13 Richard, Baron Delvin and later earl of Westmeath, along with Gormanston, led the recusant lords in opposing proposed penal legislation in the 1613 parliament.14 Negotiations in the early 1620s around a possible match with Spain provided Gormanston and Lady Kildare with an ideal opportunity to promote religious and political toleration for Catholics.15 The prospect of war with Spain shortly afterwards

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allowed Westmeath to broker religious concessions, known as the ‘Graces’ (discussed in chapter 8 below). Needless to say, the Dublin government constantly monitored these recusant peers whom they feared were subversive. In 1632 one official described Westmeath as ‘a vehement papist’. The fact that his son had married a daughter of the earl of Antrim, himself an influential recusant, alarmed them further.16 As it turned out, these fears were not without foundation. In September 1639 ‘Gilbertus Fulgentius’ Nugent, Westmeath’s younger brother, travelled to Madrid to secure Spanish support for an armed rising in Ireland. Ireland would become a Spanish protectorate in return for military support and an undertaking that any members of the Irish nobility involved in the rising would be provided with Spanish titles and lands if it failed. The earls of Westmeath, Antrim and Viscount Roche appear to have been involved in the plot, which fizzled out because Philip IV preferred to maintain strong relations with England rather than intervene in Ireland.17 Two years later another Catholic ‘plot’ did plunge the country into a decade of civil war (see chapter 9 below). Despite the fact that the Catholic confederates, the body that ruled Ireland for much of the 1640s, blatantly violated the king’s royal prerogatives and consistently refused to obey his instructions, they still referred to themselves as ‘loyal subjects’ and the majority operated ‘within the context of loyalty to the Crown’.18 After the restoration of the Stuarts, Irish Catholics reiterated their loyalty. In an attempt to clarify the nature of allegiance between the Protestant king and his Catholic subjects, Richard Bellings, former secretary to the confederation, drafted a remonstrance that paraphrased the 1606 oath of allegiance. By promising to ‘disclaim and renounce all foreign power be it wither papal or princely’, which in any way threatened ‘your majesty’s person, royal authority . . . the state or government’, it aimed to neutralize Protestant hostility by minimizing papal claims.19 Twenty-one peers, including the earls of Carlingford, Castlehaven, Clancarthy, Clanricarde, Fingal, Inchiquin and Tyrconnell, subscribed to the Catholic remonstrance.20 Peter Walsh, a Franciscan and an intimate of Lord Deputy Ormond, offered limited clerical support for this compromise.21 In The History and Vindication of the Loyal Formulary – addressed to the ‘British and Irish Catholics’ inhabitants of ‘this famous Empire of Great Brittaine’ – Walsh reassured the king and Parliament ‘of our steadfast and inflexible loyalty’. He beseeched them never to perceive the Irish ‘as men whose faith is faction, and whose religion is rebellion’.22 The remonstrance represented yet another attempt to mediate conflicting allegiances and obscure the complexities of the situation on the ground. This confessional ambiguity can be regarded as a means of co-existing with religious diversity and promoting some level of tolerance rather than being constrained by confessional boundaries. Certainly relative toleration

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characterized the 1660s and 1670s, something that the letters of Oliver Plunkett, archbishop of Armagh, illustrate. ‘The viceroy himself [John Berkeley, who had a Catholic wife and sympathies] treats privately with some of our clergy with great courtesy,’ he reported back to Rome, ‘urging them to live peaceably avoiding tumult or interference in affairs of state, attending only to their ecclesiastical functions. In return he promises them every protection, and there is every indication that this will not be wanting unless they fail to meet his requirements.’ The archbishop noted that ‘chief men’ in the government’s administration ‘are secretly Catholics’ including the ‘Protestant primate’, Micheal Boyle, archbishop of Armagh, who ‘is very favourably disposed to the Catholics’.23 Plunkett’s relationship with the Moores of Drogheda is particularly illuminating of attitudes towards Catholics. The Moores were a Protestant planter family that, thanks to a series of astute marriages, had prospered during the seventeenth century. In 1670 the countess of Drogheda, whose son-in-law was Baron Slane, a Catholic, invited the archbishop to dinner. He then reported back to Rome that Her husband [i.e. the earl of Drogheda], although a Protestant, has not a single Protestant in his whole estate, and he has handed over all the churches to my priests and Mass is said publicly. Similarly, the earl of Charlemont [William Caulfeild whose elder brother, Toby, had been murdered in 1641] treats me with great respect, so that I am able to appear publicly in every part of my diocese as in Dublin, unmolested. I have already written to you that the Protestant primate [Michael Boyle] gave me permission to have Catholic school teachers in my diocese.24

In another letter the archbishop added that the earl of Drogheda ‘allows me a public church with bells etc. in his estate, which are exempt from the jurisdiction of the royal ministers. Nine times I was accused before the viceroy’s court because of the schools and for the exercise of foreign jurisdiction. But this benign gentleman had always reserved the cases to himself, and thus they faded out.’25 The onset first of the Popish Plot and later the Exclusion Crisis temporarily soured the remarkably harmonious relations, and destabilised the modus vivendi that had operated since the early 1670s. The Catholic Church Apart from brief interludes of relative toleration and a decade of independence during the 1640s, the Catholic Church in Ireland operated as an underground and clandestine organization. There were 30 Catholic dioceses and in 1641 there were 15 bishops living in Ireland.26 It is not known how many recusant clergy ministered to the Irish population, the majority of which was

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Catholic. Estimates suggest that 800 secular clergy and 300 members of religious orders (largely Dominicans, Franciscans and Jesuits) were active in Ireland by 1623, and that perhaps one-third of these men had been educated in continental Europe in Counter-Reformation seminaries.27 By 1641 this number had risen to about 1,600 friars (around 1,000 Franciscans and 400 Dominicans plus other smaller orders). The number of diocesan clergy is unknown but there were insufficient priests for Catholic parishes (the estimates for the number of parishes range between about 2,500 and 8,000).28 In Dublin alone during the 1620s there were 14 Mass houses, together with religious houses associated with the Franciscans, Dominicans, the Capuchins, the Poor Clare, the Discalced Carmelites, the Augustinians and the Jesuits, mostly in the parish of St Audeons.29 On the eve of civil war seven religious communities had established themselves in the wealthy towns of Drogheda and Kilkenny.30 A government source claimed in 1613 that the Catholic Church had established an effective means of financing itself by ‘taxing’ the laity. For every marriage and christening they charged 2s 6d and 6d for the clerk; 10s was due to the church for a divorce, 10d for the administration of extreme unction, and 2s for a burial.31 ‘At every burial of any person of worth, the people yield offerings, which is divided betwixt the priests and friars, and part for scholars educated in seminaries beyond seas.’ Priests also charged for praying for the dead and for a range of other services.32 Many of these clergy, especially those trained in Counter-Reformation theology in the continental seminaries, were skilled and experienced preachers capable of offering sermons in both English and Irish on topics which were both spiritually instructive and sufficiently familiar to their listeners that the key messages could be remembered and repeated.33 For example, as Bernadette Cunningham has shown, the Munster priest and writer Geoffrey Keating in his sermons chastised those who renounced or hid ‘their Catholic faith for fear of displaying disobedience to secular authority’. Keating warned them ‘not to make an enemy of God for the sake of transient friendship on earth’.34 The literati poured particular scorn on the ‘church papists’ and on those who wavered, suggesting that all they cared about was how to make money.35 Initially, these priests focused on countering heresy but from the 1630s they also attended to education and moral reform, as well as ministering to the liturgical and sacramental needs of their flock.36 The bishops focused on creating an efficient parochial system, which allowed for greater hierarchical control even if it did cause tension between the regular and secular clergy. By 1641 the Church was resurgent. Networks of parishes extended across much of the country, with established communities often worshipping openly in Mass houses.37 During the 1640s, when the Catholic confederates ruled, the Church offered political and spiritual leadership and enjoyed a full complement of resident bishops, all of whom had been seminary trained. The

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purpose of the mission to Ireland between 1645 and 1649 of the papal nuncio, Giovanni Battista Rinuccini, was to build on these earlier developments and to transform the Church ‘into a fully articulated, post-tridentine, national church’.38 The 1650s were years of persecution and therefore priests either fled to the Continent or operated covertly. Fairly typical were the experiences of Father Barnaby Barnewall, commissioner general of the Capuchins in Ireland, who in May 1652 escaped from Kilkenny disguised as a common soldier and took refuge in the County Meath home of his kinswoman, Mabel Barnewall, a daughter of Nicholas, first Viscount Barnewall of Kingsland; Mabel had married Christopher Plunkett, second earl of Fingal. During the 1650s Father Barnewall clandestinely ‘performed excellent service to the whole neighbourhood over a wide area to the profit of a great many souls’.39 After a decade in hiding and exile, the Catholic Church appears to have flourished and after the Restoration had a number of talented bishops and roughly 1,000 secular and 600 regular clergy.40 In fact, the Catholic archbishop of Armagh complained to Rome in 1673 that the secular clergy was ‘too numerous’. He added ‘Every gentleman wishes to have a chaplain and hear Mass in his own room, under pretext of fear of the government. They compel the bishops to ordain priests, and then they turn the world upside down in order to get a parish for the priest who is dependent on them.’41 Too many priests was better than too few, but this also underscored the intimate relationship between the clergy and the recusant laity. Lay Patronage of the Catholic Church In 1613 a government source complained that the Catholic Church flourished because of ‘the great favour they find from the noblemen and gentlemen of worth . . . who continually harbour and maintain them’.42 Faithful members of the laity did indeed protect the clergy from persecution, took care of their material needs, offered their own homes as places of sanctuary and worship, and funded the education of young priests abroad. Powerful recusant peers could exclude sheriffs from exercising penal legislation on their estates, and in 1623 Lady Kildare demanded immunity for her tenants from religious persecution.43 Those living in urban areas were more vulnerable to prosecution. In 1616 the court of castle chamber fined and imprisoned Dermot, fifth Baron Inchiquin, for harbouring a Jesuit priest, Nicholas Nugent, who frequently said Mass for Inchiquin, his family and servants in the baron’s Dublin home.44 Despite the risk of prosecution many leading nobles retained personal chaplains and confessors. A list of priests dating from 1622 linked Lady O’Doherty (a sister of Lord Gormanston) with a Jesuit and another priest; Richard, earl of Westmeath, with two Jesuits (Nicholas Nugent and Robert

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Netterville) and his brother with another one; Lord Dillon with the Jesuit, Michael Chamberlain; Viscount Gormanston with James Dillon; Viscount Netterville with James Hussey; and the dowager baroness of Killeen with the vicar general, James Plunkett.45 William Sarsfield, second Viscount Kilmallock, took a learned friar as his personal chaplain and offered sanctuary to local clergy during the mid-century excesses. These clerics, many of whom had been seminary trained, formed part of the noble household and in addition to ministering to the spiritual needs of the family often assumed the role of educator, political confidant and business adviser.46 Priests moved between noble households and created transnational networks. For example, recusant English brides brought English priests to Ireland and thereby consolidated links with leading Catholic titled families in the two kingdoms. The Scottish Jesuits operating in Ulster during the 1620s moved from one aristocratic household to the next.47 A report by the earl of Cork dating from 1630 reflects the extent to which leading lords of the Pale sustained the Catholic Church. Cork had uncovered ‘ten houses of friars, nuns, Jesuits, and priests of several orders’. A daughter of the earl of Westmeath, who had arrived from Dunkirk, ran one convent while the daughters of Lords Fingal, Gormanston and Dillon formed part of other religious communities.48 He complained that Lady Kildare had founded a house for the Jesuits. The patronage that Elizabeth, dowager countess of Kildare, extended towards the Jesuits exemplifies the dynamic relationship between the laity and clergy. Elizabeth was the daughter of Mary Fitzgerald (herself a daughter of the eleventh earl of Kildare) and Christopher Nugent, third Baron Delvin and a sister of the earl of Westmeath. In 1600 Elizabeth married her cousin Gerald, fourteenth earl of Kildare, who died prematurely in 1612, and she devoted her widowhood to promoting the interests of the Jesuits. It seems likely that she was involved with the Jesuit sodality of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin founded in Dublin in 1628. Its extant membership roll records 23 male and 44 female members who took it upon themselves to promote Christian piety through the sacraments.49 During the later 1620s Lady Kildare supported Jesuit efforts to establish a seminary and university in the heart of the city. She provided the community with a splendid building, Kildare Hall, and ensured that the chapel was suitably and richly adorned and the library well stocked with books. By 1629 there was a staff of seven priests and eight novices. Stephen White, the great scholar from Clonmel, was probably the superior. Another likely teacher was Father Robert Nugent, later superior to the Jesuit Irish mission and Lady Kildare’s cousin, who was also a distinguished scholar, gifted musician and a fluent Irish speaker. Lady Kildare did her best to recover Kildare hall after the state seized it in 1630. In the interim the Jesuit community relocated to her estate at Kilkea in County Kildare, which she bequeathed to them on her death in

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1645, earning her the accolade of ‘truly the mother of our society in this realm [of Ireland]’.50 Further south, the Catholic Church flourished under the patronage of the Butlers of Ormond, including Thomas, tenth earl, who succeeded to the title in 1546 and converted to Catholicism on his deathbed in 1614, and especially his successor Walter, eleventh earl, whose personal piety earned him the nickname ‘Ualtéir na bPaidrín’, ‘Walter of the Beads and Rosary’. By the early seventeenth century the city of Kilkenny provided a base for 27 clergy, including three Franciscans, who built a new friary. The Cistercians inaugurated a novitiate (c.1618); by 1622 the Dominican community numbered eight; and the Discalced Carmelites set up a friary (c. 1635). By contrast, in 1615, only four Church of Ireland ministers operated in the town. In effect Kilkenny had become ‘the Catholic capital of Ireland’ and hosted two provincial synods (1614 and 1624). During his tenure as Catholic bishop of Ossory (1618–50), David Rothe resided openly in the city and organized a functioning diocese with a well serviced system of parishes. With the accession in 1633 of the Protestant James Butler to the earldom of Ormond, the Butlers of Mountgarret became the principal patrons of the Catholic Church and the viscount offered his cousin, Rothe, his protection when required.51 Catholic Butler connections stretched into Munster where the earl of Ormond’s twin sister, Helena, who had married Donough, Viscount Muskerry, maintained an exemplarily devout household. In 1645 Lady Muskerry entertained the papal nuncio at Macroom castle.52 The nuncio’s private secretary recorded their first meeting. ‘Kneeling down with her children and all the household the noble lady begged the nuncio’s blessing.’ He presented her with ‘some pictures and objects of devotion’.53 The first post-Reformation church opened in Cork in 1624 under the guidance of Bishop William Tirry (Viscount Kilmallock’s brother-in-law). Tirry’s attempts to restore order and clerical discipline to his diocese brought him into conflict with the regular clergy, particularly the Franciscans and the Dominicans. Robert Barry, a close kinsman of the earl of Barrymore and great supporter of Rinuccini, succeeded him as bishop of Cork in 1646.54 In the north a number of influential Catholic peers provided support for organized Catholic life. Noble patronage secured the Franciscan communities in the north of Ireland – in Antrim, Armagh, Cavan and Donegal – and at Multyfarnham in County Westmeath.55 In December 1629 the Protestant bishop of Derry reminded Claude, master of Abercorn and later second baron of Strabane, that his responsibilities as a planter included the promotion of Protestantism. Instead, thanks to his influence and that of his kinsmen and close business associates, Strabane had become a magnet for Catholics, especially Scottish ones and Jesuits. ‘The place is become’, lamented the bishop ‘the sink into which all the corrupt humours purged out of Scotland run.’56

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The bishop threatened to arrest and prosecute those who openly celebrated the Mass and warned Claude to embrace the reformed religion or to keep his own religion to himself and not to poison others with popery. Nonetheless, during the 1620s and 1630s the Derry diocese flourished and a network of parishes became established that allowed for the emergence of a remarkably stable Catholic community.57 Thanks to the patronage of the first earl of Antrim, the priest Brian McTeig held a church court in County Antrim in the mid-1620s. The earl entertained his kinsman, Bishop Magennis, during his visits north and in 1620 welcomed Patrick Anderson, of the Society of Jesus, who had been exiled from Scotland. At Ballycastle the earls of Antrim maintained a vibrant community of Franciscans, who ministered to great effect along the western seaboard of Scotland as well as in east Ulster.58 The Maguires of Enniskillen were equally devout and took particular care of the Franciscan community, despite the destruction of their convent at Lisgoole. Under Maguire patronage Michael O’Cleary, a compiler of the ‘Annals of the Four Masters’, wrote the ‘Book of Invasions’. It was here during the late 1630s that a team of scholars translated the ‘Annals’ from Irish into English.59 In 1633 Mary, Lord Maguire’s wife, donated a chalice to the Franciscans. The strength of conviction displayed by lords like Maguire was why the authorities worried about the vitality of the Catholic Church in Ulster and also Connacht. In 1621 the lord deputy reported to the earl of Clanricarde that in County Galway ‘priests and friars live with more boldness than in any part of the kingdom’. The earl’s abbey of Ross was full of friars, as were the other abbeys around Galway.60 Of course, one reason the clergy in Connacht flourished was thanks to the patronage that the earls of Clanricarde and their Bourke kinsmen afforded them. The fifth earl funded the repair of the Dominican friary at Athenry abbey and retained Dominic Bourke, prior of the abbey, as his confessor.61 Clanricarde described Bourke as ‘young, yet very exemplary both in life learning, and disposition’. During the 1640s Bourke invoked the wrath of the archbishop of Killaloe in the province of Tuam and of the Roman hierarchy by remaining loyal to Clanricarde, who had been excommunicated when he refused to take the oath of association.62 On the one hand, lay patronage of the clergy had helped to sustain the Church but, on the other, it created very real tensions at moments like this when secular patrons (and the clergy under their influence) refused to obey the wishes of the local bishop or the papal nuncio. During the 1640s the Catholic Church enjoyed a brief period of predominance and played a very significant role in setting up and then running the confederation of Kilkenny. Tensions between the clergy and between secular and ecclesiastical authorities periodically surfaced, especially during the later 1640s when the clerical faction, led by the papal nuncio, clashed with those who favoured securing a peace settlement with the king. Matters reached

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crisis point in the spring of 1648 when on 27 May Rinuccini excommunicated those who supported the truce negotiated between Lord Inchiquin and the confederates (20 May 1648). The confederate supreme council immediately appealed to Rome against the excommunication and a brief period of intense and bitter civil war followed which divided the Catholic political nation and the hierarchy (discussed in chapter 9 below). The excommunication provoked a major spiritual crisis for men like Thomas Preston, later Viscount Tara, who commanded the army of Leinster. According to Richard O’Ferrall, Preston on his deathbed in 1655 cursed Oliver Darcy, bishop of Dromore and chaplain to the confederate armies, for persuading him to support the Inchiquin Truce and thereby incur excommunication.63 James Butler, fourth Baron Dunboyne, who like Preston had supported the Inchiquin Truce, found himself in a similar situation. He, together with his Dominican chaplain (and the poet), Pádraigín Haicéad, cleared his conscience by seeking an absolution which the Pope granted in April 1651.64 Clerical Connections One reason why the peers protected and nurtured the clergy was because so many of their kinsmen and kinswomen had chosen to pursue religious lives.65 In the case of Thomas, the eldest son of Christopher, twelfth baron of Slane, he let his title pass to his younger brother, William, when he took ‘the habit’ as a Franciscan friar. Thomas had been educated at Louvain, along with his younger brothers, and remained there until he returned to Ireland after October 1641 and took an active role in the confederation of Kilkenny.66 Richard Nugent, heir to the second earl of Westmeath, was a Capuchin friar in France and appears never to have assumed the peerage.67 Other clergy returned to Ireland and pursued successful careers under the protection of their kinsmen. For example, many members of the Catholic episcopate during the 1640s were the sons of peers, including Archbishop Fleming of Dublin (Lord Slane), Bishops O’Dempsey of Leighlin (Lord Clanmalier), Magennis of Down and Connor (Lord Iveagh) and Plunkett of Ardagh (Lord Killeen, later Fingal).68 At times it seemed as if careers in the Church formed part of a wider family strategy. Consider the example of Sir John Taaffe, first viscount, who had 17 children, six of whom took up religious lives (the boys went to the Augustinians, Cistercians and Francisicans, and the girls to the Dominicans and the order of St Clare).69 Similarly, Matthias Barnewall, a son of Robert, seventh Baron Trimleston, became a Franciscan and appears to have served as a chaplain in the army of Flanders during the 1650s. His elder brother, John, had studied at St Anthony’s College in Louvain where he held the chair of theology before returning to Ireland in June 1630. In 1638 John became

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provincial of the order and helped to establish a convent in Drogheda with seven nuns from the community at Bethlehem near Athlone (see below).70 Theobald, first Viscount Dillon of Costello-Gallen, had eight sons, two of whom pursued careers in the Church, along with two of their sisters (discussed below). In 1629 the Francisian Louis Dillon was nominated for an appointment in Killaloe, being ‘the best man’ who was ‘well versed in theology and the canons’.71 In 1641 he was elevated to the Catholic see of Athenry, with a statement in his provision that his father and relatives would protect and help to support him in a manner befitting his episcopal dignity.72 His brother, George Dillon, was guardian of the Franciscan community which was forced during the late 1620s to relocate from Athlone to near Killinure on Viscount Dillon’s estates.73 During the later decades of the seventeenth century, Archbishop Oliver Plunkett of Armagh, himself related to the houses of Fingal and Roscommon, reported back to Rome that ‘the Irish Capuchins drew many of their members from the Anglo-Norman families of the Pale – the Nugents, the Barnwalls, the Plunketts, the Cusacks’.74 The daughters of Catholic peers, especially those of Old English provenance, entered religious life at home and abroad. The Poor Clare convent in Gravelines near Dunkirk, where dowries allegedly ranged from £250 to £750, included the daughters of Lords Fingal, Gormanston and Westmeath. The daughters of Viscount Dillon of Costello-Gallen, Eleanor and Cecily, also made their novitiate there. These women were particularly pious.75 In 1629 they returned to Dublin where Cecily was abbess of the Poor Clare convent on Merchant’s Quay. When the earl of Cork suppressed it in 1630, they established a new convent (Bethlehem) near Athlone under the watchful eye of their Dillon menfolk.76 During the later 1630s the duchess of Buckingham and the lord deputy’s wife visited the community and told the women ‘that it was noted how those who persecuted them out of Dublin, did never after prosper well’. During these years other Dillon kinswomen, including their nieces and the granddaughters of James, first earl of Roscommon, joined them to form a thriving community which grew so large (60 women, many of whom were Irish speakers) that they established another convent at Drogheda. There were other communities in Wexford, Waterford and Galway.77 Elsewhere Sister Honoria Bourke (aged 14) of the house of Mayo took the habit of the Third Order, St Catherine of Sienna, and lived a holy life at the Dominican convent at Burrishoole, County Mayo.78 Ormond’s half-sister, Frances Mathews, became a nun and lived in the Dominican community in Drogheda.79 Other Irish women took the veil abroad. The association between the Barnewalls of Trimleston and the convent at St Malo dated back to the 1580s when Margaret Barnewall fled there, and over the course of the seventeenth century the barons sent their daughters to the convent for an education.80 In

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1652 Lady Honour Bourke, the eldest daughter of the marquis of Clanricarde, was ‘so taken with’ the English Benedictine monastery in Ghent that she asked to remain ‘for her education’. The young woman was ‘most piously inclin’d not withstanding all distracted occasions’ and had ‘been bred most innocently’ and decided to take vows, something to which her mother, who was trying to arrange a match with a local noble, objected. As it turned out, the young woman died of plague, but not before she had taken the vows of St Benedict and made a bequest to the monastery.81 During the 1650s the nuns of Port Royal, near Paris, looked after the duke of Ormond’s sisters, and one of his nieces, Helen MacCarthy, a daughter of Viscount Muskerry, planned to join the community.82 When his ‘cousin Moll’ entered a convent in 1667, Ormond wished her well and made donations to Abbess Mary Knatchbell’s convent in Ghent, presumably for sheltering him during his exile.83 Presbyterianism and the Peers From the perspective of the Crown, the Presbyterians represented more of a political threat to domestic security than the Catholics, especially during the 1630s, 1640s, and again at key moments after the Restoration of 1660. With the exception of the English Presbyterian Sir John Clotworthy, later Viscount Massareene, none of the peers espoused Presbyterianism with enthusiasm (even if some of their wives did).84 The Stewarts of Castle Stewart had associations with reformed Protestantism, and John Knox’s son-in-law tutored Andrew, the second baron, while he was in France. Others toyed with Presbyterianism. In 1621 the Anglican archbishop of Armagh complained that Sir Hugh Montgomery had allowed ‘certaine factious and irregular puritans . . . intertayning the Scottish discipline and litergie’ to settle on his estates.85 Though he may also have offered refuge to persecuted Presbyterian clergy, James, first Viscount Claneboy, conformed and in 1639 signed the ‘Black Oath’ which condemned the Scottish Covenanters. As the 1640s progressed and the Covenanters became established in Ulster, the ‘Scottish peers’ came under considerable pressure to sign up for Presbyterianism in the form of the Solemn League and Covenant. As the royalist cause flagged during the later 1640s, Hugh, second Viscount Montgomery and later earl of Mount Alexander, flirted with Presbyterianism but he incurred the wrath of the local presbytery which excommunicated him having first instructed their people not to speak ‘favourably of him, or pay contribution towards the maintenance of his army’.86 At Mount Alexander’s funeral in 1663 George Rust, dean of Connor, excised any association with the presbytery and praised his ‘zeal and cordial affection for the Church of England’.87 During the 1650s Mount Alexander insisted that his own children attend ‘orthodox schools’,

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not tainted by Presbyterian, Puritan or Anabaptist doctrines.88 Despite his father’s best efforts, Hugh, the second earl, appears to have harboured Presbyterian sympathies and in 1704 secured £1,200 per annum for loyal Presbyterian ministers.89 The second earl’s Presbyterian inclinations might be linked to the influence of his stepmother, Catherine Jones, a daughter of Lord and Lady Ranelagh and a granddaughter of the first earl of Cork, who had married the first earl of Mount Alexander in 1661. Lady Mount Alexander’s commitment to the presbytery highlights the importance of female protection for nonconformists and the fact that, with the exception of Lord Massareene, the most active Presbyterians of noble rank during these years were women. In 1663 Lady Montgomery complained to Ormond of injustices inflicted on Scottish Presbyterian ministers in Ulster.90 Ladies Massareene, Chichester and Meath gathered as a community in Cook Street, Dublin, under the spiritual leadership of Edward Baynes.91 From the mid-1660s the young Presbyterian minister Daniel Williams served as chaplain to the countess of Meath. He preached regularly to a joint Presbyterian-independent congregation at Drogheda and in 1675 married a sister of Alice, countess of Mountrath.92 Though the details of her beliefs are unknown, Mary King, sister of Baron Kingston and wife of William, second Baron Charlemont, bequeathed £5 ‘to the silenced ministers’ of Charlemont in 1663, which suggests a sympathy with the dissenters.93 The government kept a particularly close eye on the Massareenes, especially during the 1670s when events in Scotland threatened to destabilize Ulster much as they had during the late 1630s. In 1678 Ormond quizzed the second viscount about ‘a meeting house, erected and frequented without and contrary to law’ in Antrim. He also chastised him for failing to attend the local church, preferring to worship at a ‘conventicle’ held in the home of his mother-in-law.94 Old Lady Massareene, a daughter of the first Viscount Ranelagh, took Ormond to task for the ‘resentment’ he had shown towards her son-in-law. In a letter to the duchess of Ormond she explained how age and infirmities forced her family to worship at home. On Sundays, her son and tenants joined her for a sermon (by a dissenting preacher) before they attended the local church.95 Massareene himself claimed that he had ‘persuaded her [the dowager viscountess] to have no more resort of such people to her house’.96 Ormond eventually lost patience with Massareene and in October 1683 dismissed him from office. ‘The plain and short truth of the matter’, he wrote to the earl of Arran, is that unless his lordship [Massareene] will solemnly under his hand undertake that he will entirely conform to the Church in what he enjoins, and absolutely and totally abstain from assisting at conventicles at home or

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abroad, he must not expect to continue a Privy Councillor or governor of any county or place. If his conscience will not suffer him to comply, his best course will be to lay down those and all other public employments and retire to his house, where if he give no scandal, nor call congregations to him, he may live unmolested for aught I know.97

The Massareenes’ commitment to Presbyterianism was unusual and the majority of Protestant peers conformed to the Established Church, often with real enthusiasm. The Church of Ireland and the Peers Writing in 1633 one Church of Ireland bishop informed William Laud, later archbishop of Canterbury, that the Protestant churches were ‘ruinous and sordid’, the clergy ‘irreverent’, pluralism was rife (‘one Bishop in the remoter parts holds twenty-three benefices’), and church lands had been alienated to the laity at low rents.98 By 1641 the Church of Ireland did, however, have a full complement of bishops who attempted, under the watchful eye of Laud, a root-and-branch reform of the fabric and personnel of the Church.99 It remained, however, woefully under-resourced with an insufficient number of ministers to service the Church’s approximately 2,500 parishes. Many churches lay in disrepair. After the Restoration, under the leadership of Archbishop Bramhall and thanks to the patronage of the duke of Ormond, the Established Church experienced a dramatic revival after its fortunes had hit a particularly low ebb during the 1640s and 1650s. By January 1661, 17 vacant sees had been filled and the restored episcopal bench, many of whom had close connections to Ormond, breathed new life into the Established Church.100 During the early decades of the seventeenth century the Protestant lords had an important role to play in helping the Church become established on their estates or in neighbouring towns. Many built or refurbished churches. Typical was Lord Balfour of Glenawley who offered his home as a venue for divine worship until the new church at Ballybalfour had been built. His chaplain, Geoffrey Middleton, officiated and also served as master, along with another minister, at the ‘free school’ which Lord Balfour built at Ballybalfour. Balfour was patron of the local parish church of Drumally in Fermanagh, but by 1630 it was described as ‘ruinous’ and a new church at Newtownbutler served the spiritual needs of the local settlers.101 Lord Conway built the church at Lisburn and over the course of the century his family determined who ministered there.102 His neighbour, Viscount Claneboy, provided £20 for the curates in Ballabalbert, Bangor, Dundonnell, Hollywood and Killyleagh. He also appointed seven schoolmasters in these parishes, along with Belfast and Whitechurch, providing each of them with £5 ‘besydes such

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monies as they shall have from the scholers for their teaching’.103 The viscount wanted to use the ‘tithes belonging to me, to be employed to goodlie [godly] and religious uses, for the service of God, manteyning of churches, breeding of scholers and preachers and for the poor, and charitable works’.104 His son, the earl of Clanbrassil, honoured these commitments and in his will of 1659 increased to £20 the allowances paid to the schools at Bangor and Killyleagh ‘for the masters, enabling of them to educate poor scholars’.105 Further south the earls of Thomond spearheaded the evangelical mission in the west of Ireland and rebuilt the parish church at Bunratty as well as providing glass and lead for windows in Limerick cathedral.106 The earl of Cork nurtured the development of the Church of Ireland throughout Munster and built free schools at Youghal and Lismore. In his will the earl left money for the refurbishment of the ‘Collegiate and parochiall Church of Youghall’.107 The earl and later his son took great care to fill vacancies with ‘Learned and Religious Ministers and Preachers of good Life and Doctrine’.108 From the 1630s the twelfth earl of Ormond offered his patronage to local Protestant churches and schools, especially the one at Kilkenny. Even though he resided primarily in England, the earl of Cork’s wealthy grandson, Viscount Ranelagh, left funds in his will of 1712 for the construction of four free schools, two in or near the towns of Killaloe and Roscommon, and stipulating that any residue should be put towards enlarging the parish church in Roscommon and the market house there.109 Viscount Powerscourt left a bequest in 1718 to found a ‘charity-school’ in Powerscourt.110 Whether in Dublin or on their estates, the lives of most peers and their families appear to have included church attendance as a regular spiritual and social event. There they listened to Bible readings and sermons, received the sacraments, interacted with the minister and the social elite, paid homage at the tombs of their ancestors, and were seen by their tenants and followers. Rank and influence determined the seating arrangements. For example, at St Peter’s church in Dublin, the earl of Longford, who had funded the construction of the church in the 1670s, held a pew in the middle of the gallery, close to others occupied by Lord Abercorn and the marchioness of Antrim.111 The ability of the minister to preach effectively was critical since sermons also contained important political, as well as spiritual and moral, messages.112 Raymond Gillespie has suggested that in the Church of Ireland preachers took ‘their lead in the choice of subjects and manner of preaching from their bishops’, who ‘emphasized moderation and sober preaching’ with the result that sermons ‘in the Church of Ireland tradition became rather arid and formalised affairs’.113 The wealthy also retained a personal chaplain who often schooled any children living in the household. The earl of Cork held his chaplain, Mr William Snell, to be a ‘Learned, Religious and well deserving man’.114 The

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second earl of Cork remembered his domestic chaplain, Mr Pynnye, in his will.115 In 1675 the earl of Donegal bequeathed £50 plus four years’ salary to ‘Mr Samuel Bryan my household chaplain as a testimony of my sincere love to him’.116 Donegal’s son-in-law, the earl of Longford, had Mr John Arthur from Oxford as his chaplain.117 Over the years the Ormond family employed numerous chaplains. In 1658 Lady Ormond requested that Mr Lesley, whom she described as ‘a persone learned, of peasebell [peaceable] and Seville [civil] conversatione’ and who had served her husband during the 1640s, minister to her spiritual needs in her home at Dunmore.118 In 1662 Ormond appointed two domestic chaplains, Richard Underwood, dean of Lismore, and William Chamberlain, rector of Callan.119 In 1679 the earl of Ossory recommended his chaplain, Mr Young, to his father, ‘for he is eminent both for preaching and good living, and not being troublesome. Besides, he is an Oxford man.’120 Rearing godly children was of central importance (also see chapter 15 below). In 1670 Anne, Lady Dungannon, noted that her son Lewis, later second viscount, wanted to learn to read but she found it difficult to find ‘a sober devine’ as his tutor.121 Lady Clanbrassil wrote to Ormond early in 1663 asking if he could suggest a learned, pious and orthodox tutor at Oxford so that her son ‘becomes a true son of the church’.122 In his will the earl of Cork reflected on how he and his wife had raised their children ‘to be most zealous and Constant in that undoubted true Protestant Religion now possessed and Established in the Churches of England and Ireland’. He urged his sons and daughters to ‘breed up their Children in the same true Protestant Religion’, something that they all did.123 According to the personal chaplain of Cork’s son, Roger, later earl of Orrery, the earl raised his children ‘in all vertue and piety, putting them upon the performance of religious duties in their early and most tender years’.124 Cork’s boys all went on a ‘grand tour’, which only served to deepen their attachment to Protestantism. During their travels their tutor read to them every evening two chapters from the Old Testament and offered ‘a brief exposition of those points that I think that they doe not understand’. They visited Geneva where the divines, according to the tutor, were ‘farr from puritanisme but very orthodoxe and religious men, and there is no danger heere, that ye yong gentlemen should haue any conuersation either with Jesuits’.125 When Orrery sent his sons abroad, he told their governor that ‘He had rather he should bury them beyond the seas virtuous, than bring them home vicious’, adding ‘That vice must be crish’d [crushed] in the egg, else twill soon become a serpent.’126 Great emphasis was also placed on maintaining a godly household. The earl of Orrery insisted that his servants attended family prayers twice a day. His personal chaplain, Thomas Morris, added that it would be a blessing ‘if all Masters did imitate him in this’, which would ensure that ‘there would be more

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religion amongst servants than I fear there generally is amongst a great many’.127 Orrery’s father, the earl of Cork, instructed his household servants to meet for prayer ‘every morning before dinner and every night after supper’. Whether these prayers were from the Book of Common Prayer or led informally is uncertain, but Cork’s domestic chaplain, Stephen Jerome, wrote scornfully of the ‘common Protestants’ who went in for ‘saying (rather than praying) prayers’, contrasting them with those who ‘dedicate and consecrate their very souls and spirits to the very God of spirits’.128 In 1632 a local minister chastised Viscount Conway for having three Catholic servants (the cook, butler and groom) and asked him ‘to part with them that they may not have a divided house at Lisneygarvey, prayers above in the drawing room and mass underneath in the buttery’.129 It is not clear that the family followed the advice. When the third viscount died in 1683, he left a bequest of £200 to a servant with an Irish name, ‘Constantine Megennis’, but it is possible that Conway had secured Constantine’s conversion before taking him into his household.130 Personal Piety A sense of providentialism permeated belief systems.131 Protestants and Catholics alike remained convinced that God was on their side.132 The absence of evidence frustrates the reconstruction of the devotional worlds of these peers or their wives. What is striking, however, is the enthusiasm and sincerity with which the majority of Catholic peers embraced their faith despite the prohibitions against it. For them their commitment to Catholicism was a matter of personal and family honour, and core to their identity. Individuals made donations to the Church of expensive, ornate silver chalices, which often bore their names, and other utensils associated with the celebration of the Mass.133 Pilgrimage sites became linked to individual lords. The Butlers of Dunboyne refurbished a bridge that led to a flourishing pilgrimage site at Holy Cross in County Tipperary. The bridge bore the Dunboyne coat of arms and an inscription celebrating the association with the site of James, second baron, and his second wife, Elizabeth O’Brien, a daughter of the earl of Thomond.134 On the Baronstown wayside cross underneath a crude image of St Peter runs the legend ‘I pray you, St Peter, pray for the soules of Oliver Plunket, Lord Baron of Louth and Dame Jenet Dowdal his wife’.135 At Brideswell in County Roscommon the first earl of Antrim erected the existing small limestone structure that included a plaque bearing his name and the year 1625, supposedly in gratitude for his wife’s pregnancy following a visit to the well. The first earl also built a house at St Patrick’s Purgatory and pensioned the prior there, and his son did everything possible to prevent the demolition of the pilgrimage site in the 1630s.136

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Testamentary records provide invaluable glimpses of the personal piety of many noblemen and their wives. Particularly insightful was the will drawn up in 1629 by Jenico Preston, fifth Viscount Gormanston, who had been educated at the Irish college in Douai and was one of the great champions of the Catholic Church in early seventeenth-century Ireland (discussed above). He bequeathed his daughters, Besse and Jane, ‘£200 apiece’ and an additional £300 ‘to purchase a place to build a house whereby they shall cause daily prayers to be said for my soul, and some masses’. He also left them his crimson cloak ‘to make some church stuff ’. He left £100 to his other daughters (he had five in all) with the proviso that ‘if any of them take a religious life, each to have £200 besides their entrance’. He also left £100 to the Franciscan friars ‘to say masses for his soul’. The chief mourners at his funeral were to receive ‘a ring worth 40s with the motto “Remember Gormanston” ’. Gormanston also requested that ‘4 or 5 pictures be drawn on canvas or otherwise’. One was to be placed near his tomb in his own chapel and the rest ‘in chapels of the Friars Preachers with these words under them, “Pray for Gormanston” ’. Finally, he asked that ‘the chapel of Strathmullen to be repaired and builded’.137 Donations like this to the fabric of the church were unusual. Bequests to specific communities or individuals were more common. Mathew Plunkett, fifth Baron Louth, died in 1629 and bequeathed £100 to the friars of Drogheda.138 His namesake and grandson, the seventh baron, who died in 1689, did likewise, leaving £100 for the clergy of Drogheda and Dublin, £40 for the Dominicans and £10 for Ambrose Fitzgerald, a Dominican friar who had studied at Holy Cross, Louvain and Rome, and was probably a kinsman.139 His successor, Oliver, eighth baron, was equally pious and when he drew up his will in November 1707 he stated ‘I am and will dy [sic] a member of ye holy Catholick Church in which I was brought up’.140 Donough, earl of Clancarthy, who died in 1665, made no provision in his will for pious uses but asked his wife and executor to distribute £100 to ‘satisfy the clergy’ and recommended to her ‘Francis Fitzgerald [a priest] who has been with me in the time of my sickness in London and in Moore Park’.141 Displays of overt Catholicism might delay the granting of probate and the speedy settlement of an estate, and so the wording of some Catholic wills could be rather vague. In 1610 Lady Mary, dowager baroness of Delvin, left money ‘for pious uses, as she will declare in a letter to her son the Lord of Delvin’.142 In 1682 Anne, a daughter of the second earl of Westmeath and a wealthy widow, asked that her nephew distribute £100 ‘to such poor Priests, poor Gentlemen and Gentlewomen of her relations, and such other objects of charity as he should think best, for the good of her soul’.143 Leaving money to ‘the poor’ could conceal the testator’s real aims.144 The politically astute first earl of Antrim made no mention of religious provisions in his will but

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asked that £120 ‘shall be distributed amongst the churchmen and the poor, att the time of my death . . . as it shall please my wife and the Lord Viscount of Dunluce’.145 The caution might be attributed to the fact that Antrim had already been admonished for ‘receiving Romish priests into his house’.146 The marquis of Antrim, like his father, worshipped openly and according to his own admission he wanted to see ‘the free exercise of the Roman religion, which I am devoted to and am engaged to maintain in duty to God and [in] respect to my future happiness and salvation’.147 His commitment to Catholicism attracted particular praise from one Scottish chronicler who described Antrim as ‘a true and lawfull son of the church, a professor of true religion, and hater of superstition [Protestantism]’.148 His first wife, the duchess of Buckingham, shared his convictions, something that is so vividly captured in her ‘Meditations’ which she composed during a visit to the English convent in Ghent in 1646.149 The six meditations provide rare and fascinating insights into the devotional world of a seventeenth-century Catholic aristocratic woman and Counter-Reformation piety. Mediations like these became, as one scholar has recently noted, ‘a means of struggling to cope not only with the difficulties of understanding God’s Word but also with the conflicts of emotion arising from such struggles’. Mediation enabled women to feel that they were contributing towards ‘their own passage along the road to salvation’.150 This sort of devotional writing also provides, to quote Margaret MacCurtain, ‘insights into the approaches women took in mapping out the paths of personal faith in a period when religion and politics were about power’.151 Raymond Gillespie’s pioneering research on reading has provided some invaluable insights into the personal piety of Protestant peers. According to Gillespie, the duke of Ormond was ‘conventionally pious’ and providential in his outlook. ‘The first duke’s library is that of a man interested in religious affairs (about a third of the books are religious) and most of these are conventionally Church of England in their origin.’ His own prayers are extant. They reflect his sincere conviction and reliance on God’s will, along with Ormond’s committment to duty and honour.152 A 1628 list of the 12 books owned by Lady Lettice Digby, including a French and Latin Bible and a Book of Common Prayer, suggests to Gillespie that she was a ‘formal reader with little delving into the biblical text’.153 Henry Leslie, archdeacon of Down, in his funeral sermon for Lady Rose Antrim reminded the mourners of her enthusiasm for reading the Bible and ‘extraordinary and exemplary piety and devotion’. She prayed three times a day and regularly received Communion (6 times a year when she lived in the country and between 12 and 15 times when she lived in Dublin). ‘She was’, Leslie noted, ‘a diligent and constant reader of the Holy scripture, obliging herself to great portions of it every day.’ According to her own account, Rose had been ‘taught to read the scriptures

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in my childhood’ and as she read other books she learned that all Christians ‘acknowledged the Bible to be the word of God’. On her death Leslie recovered her devotional writings and suggested that ‘Her meditations on the Life and Death of our saviour, and on the different manner of God’s dealing with his own creatures are most excellent and divine.’154 Others appeared to be less orthodox. Consider the devotional practices and the religious beliefs of the Annesley family of Mountnorris and Anglesey. A careful analysis of the correspondence exchanged between Francis, Baron Mountnorris, and his daughter Beatrice Zouche has led Patrick Little to suggest that Francis was a committed Calvinist.155 Mountnorris urged his daughter to pursue a godly lifestyle, to dress soberly, and to undertake a rigorous daily routine of prayer, meditation and Bible reading. She was to ‘shun idleness as the greatest enemy to grace’ and to focus on the ‘education of your children, or considering and ordering of domestic affairs, or reading the holy scripture and other godly books and taking notes and collections out of them for your better instructions and guidance in the ways of godliness’.156 The fact that ‘Mountnorris makes no reference to church attendance or preparation for taking Holy Communion . . . nor is there any mention of the use of fixed forms of worship, specifically the Book of Common Prayer’ provides, Little argues, additional evidence of his Calvinism.157 Whatever his father’s religious beliefs, those of his son, Arthur Annesley, first earl of Anglesey, are less clear cut, but when he died on 6 April 1686 he ‘expressed himself a son of the Church of England’.158 During the 1640s he toyed with Presbyterianism, perhaps out of political necessity. After the Restoration his wife attended congregational services, he employed a nonconformist chaplain and resolved on 31 August 1682 ‘to make a diurnal chronicle of nonconformity and ye nonconformists proceedings from the beginning of the reformation’.159 Others accused him of favouring Catholics, but as the earl of Anglesey pointed out, ‘I hate not the persons of any papists, but I am an enemy to Popery’.160 In other words, on a personal level he accepted Catholics but not the institution of the Roman Church, and he certainly drew the line at granting toleration to or sharing power with Catholics. Anglesey, like Ormond, was willing to accept that religious positions were matters of honour and should be respected, providing the individual was politically loyal. A close scrutiny of Anglesey’s diary for the last decade of his life reveals the earl’s very regular church attendance (every few days), the more interesting sermons he heard at Lincoln’s Inn, Kensington church, Whitehall, and in his own chapel, and the occasions that he ‘received the sacram[en]t of the Lord’s supper’. For example, on 19 May 1678 he took the sacrament in Kensington church and asked ‘the Lord grant that it may be sanctified to me to all those ends for wch it was instituted, that I may be thereby be nourished into

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eternall life . . . having all corruptions mortified and graces quickened that I may become a new man’. On 17 October 1675 he heard Mr Barnes ‘preach a strang sermon of the antiquity of the church and blind obedience’. On 17 June 1677 his personal chaplain, Mr De la Mote, ‘preacht very well’ on Romans 12:2 in Kensington church and the following month in ‘my owne chappell’.161 On 24 November 1678 Anglesey heard at Whitehall the dean of Bangor ‘make an excellent sermon on these characters of the catholick church ag[ains]t the roman’. On 18 December ‘Dr Sprat [preached] at Whitehall on Rom[ans] 2:13’ and on 25 December he heard Dr Tennison’s sermon on Hebrews 10:12 at St Martins.162 He always noted in his diary the anniversary of the outbreak of the Irish rebellion. On 23 October 1677, for instance, he recorded: ‘The lords name be praised for his deliverance of Ireland from ye horrid rebellion.’163 The auction catalogue for the sale of Anglesey’s considerable library, Bibliotheca Angleseiana, sive Catalogus Variorum Librorum (London, 1686), provides a glimpse of his extensive collection of theological works, and rigorous analysis of this might furnish a more nuanced understanding of Anglesey’s religious interests and his complex devotional world.164 Wardships and Conversions The central role that marriage (discussed in chapter 6 below) and wardship played in securing key conversions during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries cannot be overstated. Minors inheriting lands held under knight’s service in capite became wards of the royal court, which became responsible for their education and material welfare.165 This was a constant source of grievance, especially for the Old English community who tended to hold land by knight’s service in capite. Wardship accorded the king – or his nominee – the authority to educate and to manage, for his own profit, the estate of a young lord until he came of age (i.e. became 21). In 1619 Philip III of Spain received an account of Ireland which, among other things, condemned the policy of placing Catholic noble children in the care of English and Scottish guardians who often pressured the young man to ‘marry with the daughter or maid [of the guardian], or other of low fortune without lineage, nor quality of blood nor other nobility, in order that this fate will diminish the Irish nation and establish the English and Scottish heresy in the said kingdom of Ireland’.166 Time and again the Old English community complained that ‘Wardships are commonly granted to mean men and mere strangers to the heirs that are in the King’s ward, whereby the wards are not well nurtured or well bred, and their kindred secluded from any disposition of them.’ Lord Deputy Chichester responded that the king only granted wards to ‘the friends of wards or else persons of good quality’, and every grant

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included that the boys should ‘be brought up at the college near Dublin [i.e. Trinity], in English habit and religion’.167 The Crown was acutely aware that a high-profile conversion from Catholicism to the established faith could result in a cultural reorientation and the introduction of anglicizing initiatives into a region, especially if the convert tried to persuade immediate family members to switch faith and thereby add credibility to the lord’s conversion. By 1603 there were three prominent converts to Protestantism: Lords Thomond, Courcy of Kinsale and Ormond, who had been raised at court with Prince Edward. In the case of the O’Briens of Thomond, Henry VIII had elevated the Gaelic chieftain, Murrough O’Brien, to the earldom of Thomond in 1543, but it was not until the late sixteenth century that his great-grandson, Donough, the fourth earl (d.1624) embraced Protestantism.168 During the course of his lifetime, the fourth earl transformed his vast Connacht patrimony (discussed in chapter 4 above). He sent his sons to Oxford and attempted to convert his kinsmen to Protestantism by offering to educate them, and he encouraged members of his extended family to intermarry with Protestant planters. He ensured that his nephew Patrick Fitzmaurice, baron of Kerry, and his son-in-law, Viscount Muskerry, conformed.169 At the end of the Nine Years War (1603), the lord deputy held in custody Lord Kerry’s five-year-old son and heir, and only released him when Kerry submitted and had his lands restored in a surrender and regrant agreement (16 July 1604). From this point the Kerrys were ‘loyal’ and Protestant.170 This process of cultural reorientation was very real but it took time and even enthusiasts like the fourth earl of Thomond retained many of the vestiges of a traditional Irish lord.171 Yet, significantly, none of his successors shared the fourth earl’s concerns for his native followers. By the 1670s, Henry, the eldest son of the seventh earl (and great-grandson of the fourth), urged his own heir ‘to cherish the English uppon his estate and driue out the Irish, and specially those of them whoe are under the name of gentlemen’.172 Thus, 130 years after the original surrender and regrant agreement had been signed, the metropole had finally succeeded in anglicizing this leading native dynasty. A significant number of peers died in their twenties and thirties (see table 30 below), and if they had married usually left behind them a young family and an heir who was underage. The houses of Bourke of Castle Connell, Boyle of Orrery, Butler of Galmoy, Chichester of Donegal, Coote of Mountrath, Digby of Geashill, Dillon of Roscommon, Hamilton of Strabane, Magennis of Iveagh, Montgomery of Mount Alexander, O’Brien of Inchiquin and St Lawrence of Howth all had young heirs at some point over the seventeenth century. In the pre-war years these boys became wards of the Crown. The premature death of a father thus unwittingly facilitated the conversion to Protestantism of the heirs to the houses of Inchiquin, Kildare and Ormond,

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together with some lesser noble families. For example, when Viscount Thurles, the father of James, later duke of Ormond, died in 1619, James’s mother placed him in the Catholic school in Finchley, north London, run by Mr Conyers. The Crown removed young James to the care of George Abbot, Archbishop of Canterbury, who raised him as a Protestant.173 Lord Deputy Wentworth maintained that if Ormond had been reared ‘under the wing of his own parents’, he would have been Catholic like his brothers and sisters. ‘Whereas now he is a firm Protestant, like to prove a great and able servant to the crowne, and a great assistant . . . in the civill government; it being most certaine that no people under the sunne are more apte to be of the same religion with their great lords as the Irish be.’174 The rewards for conforming were also very real. For example, the king provided John De Courcy, thirteenth Lord Courcy, with an annuity of £150 ‘in consideration of his long services, the nobility of his ancestors’ and regranted it to his son and heir, Gerald, ‘in consideration of his willing conformity to the Christian religion and rites and constitution’ of the Established Church.175 Whatever the rhetoric, young titled wards were at the mercy of strangers. Dermot O’Brien, fifth Baron Inchiquin, died in 1624 when the eldest of his three sons, Murrough, was 10 years old (Dermot’s own father had died in 1597 when Dermot was two years and nine months old). Sir William St Leger, lord president of Munster, took charge of the young man and in 1635 married him to his daughter Elizabeth, having first secured his conversion to Protestantism.176 The authors of the Commentarius Rinuccinianus suggested that on his father’s death the youth had been dispatched to Dublin and ‘dragged forcibly in to a Protestant church’. Robert O’Connell used classical Latin poetry to invective purpose and depicted Inchiquin as a ‘catamite’ who had been abducted and ravished and who, in turn, betrayed Ireland.177 Pádraigín Haicéad felt particularly let down by those who had converted to Protestantism. In one poem dating from the 1640s he named two prominent converts: ‘ask if Inchiquin and Thomond/stay faithful to their own.’178 The heir to the house of Barrymore was another high-profile convert. In 1617 when his grandfather died, David Barry, Viscount Buttevant and later earl of Barrymore, was 12 years old. An orphan, the king passed his wardship to his aunt, Helena, dowager countess of Ormond who had married as her third husband in 1616 Sir Thomas, later Viscount Somerset of Cashel.179 In 1620 the earl of Cork secured the wardship and estates of the young Lord Barry and in 1621 married the 16-year-old to his 14-year-old daughter, Alice.180 In the instances of Inchiquin, Barry and many others, a period of wardship secured the conversion of the young men to the ‘English religion’. The most prestigious pre-war wardship was that of the house of Kildare. When Gerald Fitzgerald, fourteenth earl, died suddenly in 1612 he ‘left behind him a poor and woeful house, his child in his cradle, and not many

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friends of integrity and judgement to manage his estate or to have care of his education, in which consists the welfare of his house’.181 Lord Deputy Chichester suggested that the wardship of the infant fifteenth earl, also called Gerald, be awarded to a Protestant kinsman, the earl of Thomond, or to his uncle, Sir Francis Aungier, who had married Douglas, a sister of the late earl. He excluded the baby’s mother, Elizabeth Nugent, on the grounds that she was a fervent Catholic and great supporter of the Jesuits (discussed above). Elizabeth nevertheless secured his guardianship until the age of five when the king granted his wardship to his kinsman, the third duke of Lennox.182 In 1620 the young earl died at Maynooth and his title passed to his eightyear-old cousin, George, the third but only surviving son of Thomas Fitzgerald, second son of the thirteenth earl of Kildare, and Frances, daughter of Thomas Randolph, postmaster general and chamberlain of the exchequer to Queen Elizabeth. The king awarded the wardship of George, the sixteenth earl of Kildare, to the duke of Lennox. With Lennox’s death in 1624 the wardship passed to his widow, and in 1629 she discussed the possibility of marrying Kildare to one of the daughters of the first earl of Antrim, who also did his best to secure Kildare’s wardship. Lady Kildare warmly supported this match in the hope that the youth would then return to the Roman Church. However, Charles I was determined to isolate Kildare, ‘the first earl of our said kingdom’, from the influence of his Irish relatives and their Catholicism, and instead dispatched the youth in 1629 to Christ Church, Oxford.183 The king also approved the proposal of the earl of Cork to take over Kildare’s wardship (in return for a payment of £6,600 to the duchess of Lennox). Cork promised to revive the family fortunes and to ‘employ all my best endeavours, to reduce [the lineage] to its former lustre’.184 This and the subsequent marriage (15 August 1630) of Kildare to the earl’s daughter, Joan, should be seen as a component of Cork’s wider social, political and territorial ambitions to enrich his own pedigree, to consolidate his influence over Fitzgerald patrimonies in Ireland, and to tap into Kildare’s patronage networks at court. Lord Deputy Wentworth advised the young earl to listen to Cork, whom he felt was ideally placed to assist ‘in the managing of your fortune and repairing your house through his great wisdom and experience’.185 The letter-book of George, sixteenth earl of Kildare, provides a vivid snapshot of the complexities involved in running the Fitzgerald patrimony during a critical moment in the young earl’s life (1627–38) and illustrates the tensions between family members that a period of wardship engendered. By 1641 Kildare’s estate comprised 39,051 plantation acres (only 2,257 of which were unprofitable), which stretched from County Down in the north to County Wexford in the south and from County Limerick in the west to County Louth in the east. The core of the lands lay in eight baronies in County Kildare (21,804 plantation acres) and in the surrounding counties

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of Meath, Westmeath, and King’s and Queen’s Counties. From the 1590s the distinguished recusant lawyer William Talbot oversaw the management of the Kildare estates and ensured that ‘all writings’ and ‘deeds for the estates’ were well looked after.186 After 1629 Cork effectively dismissed Talbot and renovated (at a cost of £1,550) the earl’s seat at Maynooth along with the neighbouring chapel (completed in 1634). Cork provided the castle with expensive and exquisite furnishings, which the insurgents robbed after the outbreak of 1641 together with livestock, corn, hay, household goods, and a ‘library of great value’.187 He also began to redeem the numerous mortgages on the estate and challenged rival claimants to the Kildare patrimony (including Lady Offaly and the dowager countess of Kildare). Cork’s ‘improving’ initiatives caused consternation on the Kildare estates, just as those instigated by the earl of Ormond had alarmed the traditional followers of the house of Butler during the mid-1630s (see chapter 4 above). Writing in April 1632 his Ulster factor, Valentine Payne, implored Kildare not to hand over his Lecale lands to a local entrepreneur, a ‘malicious bloodsucker’, or to ‘neglect your tenants of Lecale’ who were ‘gentlemen of the English nation that would sacrifice lives in your Lordship’s just defence’.188 A few months later Lady Kildare asked him ‘to prefer your poor friends before strangers’ as he dispersed lands in the Kilkea lordship in County Kildare. As the resident of Kilkea castle she wanted ‘to improve the land of Kilkea and to make an orchard and garden and such other work the pleasure and benefit whereof shall redound to your Lordship’, and reminded him that ‘the lessees [should] come to the court and mill of Kilkea, otherwise your mill will be wasted’.189 The correspondence in the letter-book reveals Kildare’s continued affection and support for his Catholic kin and the members of the Fitzgerald lordship, despite his father-in-law’s best efforts to displace them. Here the experiences of the houses of Ormond and Kildare differed in that Kildare, despite his Protestantism, continued to take seriously the traditional responsibilities associated with lordship, whereas Ormond did not and rode roughshod over the interests of his gentry followers. Having lost Kildare’s wardship, the earl of Antrim did everything possible to secure that of his infant grandson, Theobald, third Viscount Dillon of Costello-Gallen, the posthumous son of Lucas, second viscount, and Mary MacDonnell. Writing in July 1629 Sir William Parsons, master of the court of wards, offered a candid assessment of the situation. He valued the Dillon estate at £1,500 per annum, but because it was encumbered with three jointures (a young widow, a mother and a grandmother), together with other allowances, only £580 remained to the ward. Parsons strongly recommended that the infant be given to a Protestant Englishman and after some jockeying the king nominated Lord Wilmot of Athlone, who promised to find the baby a good nurse, to educate him and to marry him well.190 Denied Lord Dillon’s

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wardship, Antrim did secure in 1629 those of his son-in-law, William Fleming, Lord Slane, and of another close kinsman, Hugh Magennis, second Viscount Iveagh.191 Acutely conscious of the power a guardian exercised, Antrim also took the precaution, in the event of his death, of transferring the wardship of his heir, Viscount Dunluce, from Lord Abercorn to the earl of Westmeath and Nicholas, Viscount Netterville.192 With the abolition of feudal incidents in 1662 the practice of wardship ended. Instead the king insisted that the guardians of underage peers be active Anglicans and that children in their care had to ‘be educated and brought up in the Protestant religion’.193 Recusant lords importuned men who were tolerant of Catholicism, like the duke of Ormond and his sons, to act as guardians for their offspring.194 The duke took a particular interest in his sister’s family, the Clancarthys, and in 1665 became guardian to the infant son of Charles Mccarthy, Lord Muskerry, who had died in battle.195 In the event the baby died the following year and his uncle, Callaghan, abandoned the priesthood to marry Elizabeth Fitzgerald, a daughter of the earl of Kildare, and became third earl. Their son, Donough, was only eight when his father died in 1676. His mother asked ‘to breed him up in the true Protestant religion’ but she feared (quite rightly as it turned out) that ‘her endeavours will meet with much opposition from the titular clergy and others of the Church of Rome, because his father and grandfather were both of that religion’. The king instructed Ormond to support her and to prosecute anyone who attempted ‘to inveigle or take him away from her or to pervert him in the principles of the Protestant religion’.196 Finally, Ormond stepped in as Donough’s guardian and sent him first for his education to Trinity College Dublin and then to Christ Church, Oxford.197 In the event Catholic influences, especially those of Donough’s uncle Justin, later Viscount Mountcashel, prevailed and the fourth earl espoused Catholicism and the cause of James II. In 1691 he was attainted and his vast patrimony, so assiduously guarded by his forebearers and Ormond, was forfeited leaving his mother, sisters and wife at the mercy of William III for the payment of their portions and jointures.198 Ormond also took on the guardianship of another Catholic kinsman, Almericus De Courcy, eighteenth Lord Courcy, whose mother, Ellen, was a younger sister of the first earl of Clancarthy and whose predecessors had flirted with Protestantism.199 Lord Courcy’s father had died of smallpox in 1667 and his elder brother, Patrick, also a minor, had died two years later leaving the four-year-old Almericus as heir. His family initially raised him as a Catholic before he was sent to be educated at Oxford. Like the fourth earl of Clancarthy he attended Christ Church, where the dean, Dr John Fell, regularly reported his progress (or lack of it) to Ormond. As a teenager Almericus was, according to Fell, ‘addicted to the tennis court, proof against all Latin assaults, and prone to kicking, beating, and domineering his sisters,

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fortified in the conceit that a title of honour was support enough, without the pedantry and trouble of book learning’.200 Over time the young man’s manners improved even if his academic abilities remained limited. He appears to have conformed, though without enthusiasm, and Ormond feared the influence of his ‘popish relations’, especially after the change of regime in 1685. In the event Lord Courcy hedged his bets and attended James II’s 1689 Parliament. In 1691 he was attainted but secured a reversal the following year and thereafter conformed. The vast majority of noble conversions from Catholicism to Protestantism arose as a result of the premature death of a father and of his heir being raised by and married to a Protestant. The case of Richard, Lord Dunkellin, heir to the earldom of Clanricarde, was different. He converted to Protestantism as an adult against the wishes of his father but with the support of his wife. Writing in May 1680 in the aftermath of the Popish Plot, the Anglican bishop of Clonfert took particular delight in reporting that Dunkellin had conformed.201 This represented a major coup for the state. The first surrender and regrant agreement with the family dated back to 1543, so 137 years had elapsed before the heir to this important lineage embraced the Established Church. The king immediately congratulated Lord Dunkellin on ‘being thoroughly instructed in the protestant religion as it stands established by law’ and on ‘having forsaken that of Rome’.202 The king rewarded him by inviting him to take his seat in the next Parliament, by making him governor of County Galway and by giving him command of a cavalry unit.203 Secretary of state Leoline Jenkins suggested that money be found to educate Dunkellin’s son at Oxford. ’Tis a consequence worth to that church and kingdom to have this young nobleman brought up in our communion.’204 In the interim and fearing that his grandfather would send the boy for his education ‘beyond the seas’, the English Privy Council ordered that he ‘be placed in the house of one of the bishops of that kingdom to be carefully instructed and bred up in the doctrine of the Church of Ireland’.205 As the bishop of Clonfert had predicted, the family retaliated. Furious, the earl of Clanricarde stopped his son’s allowance. The earl blamed his daughterin-law, whom Dunkellin had married against his wishes, for leading his son astray.206 When she died in 1684, concerns were expressed that Dunkellin might ‘quit the communion of the Church’ (i.e. convert back to Catholicism).207 Writing from Loughrea, Dunkellin reiterated his commitment to the Church of Ireland but also highlighted his total sense of isolation. He wrote that ‘my profession and condition allow me but few friends here and none amongst those that ought to be most dear to me, and therefore I must still be troublesome to my friends at Court to depend on their advice and assistance’.208 In 1687 Dunkellin succeeded to the earldom of Clanricarde. His son predeceased him and on his death in 1704 the earldom passed to his brother, John,

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who in 1689 had been created Baron Bourke of Bophin and was a recent convert to Protestantism. Bophin had been captured at the battle of Aughrim and in order to recover his estates he conformed and promised to educate his six sons ‘in the Protestant religion’ and to demonstrate his commitment to the ‘establishment of a Protestant interest’. By 1701 his two eldest boys had been ‘bred up in the Protestant religion’ and attended Eton.209 Finally, after nine generations, the Bourkes of Clanricarde had joined – like the earls of Kildare, Ormond and Thomond – the ranks of the Protestant ascendancy. The consequences of these conversions were profound for a variety of reasons, but at the very least they ensured that vast swathes of the country, especially the Pale, the west and south-west, formerly held by Catholics, were now owned by Protestants. Sincerity of Conversions The political advantages of conforming were tangible but as Lord Dunkellin also discovered, religious conversion could alienate family, friends and traditional kin bases. In Dunkellin’s case the sincerity of the conversion appears to have been genuine, especially given the resistance he faced from his father and immediate family. In contrast to this the conformity of his brother, John, was an act of political expediency. This was also the case for others. In the pre-war years Christopher St Lawrence, ninth Lord Howth, converted simply to secure political favour, as did the judge Dominick, Viscount Sarsfield of Kilmallock. What then of the other peers who embraced Protestantism during these years, and how sincere were they in their conformity? In the absence of conversion narratives, this is difficult to determine for the majority of converts. In other instances a peer’s actions, especially whom he married, how he educated his children, and how he chose to die and be buried, reveal the depth of commitment to his faith. The experiences of the most celebrated convert, the duke of Ormond, are well documented. There is no doubt that throughout his life he embraced Anglicanism with the zealousness of a convert. He married a Protestant woman, reared his children as committed Anglicans and died in the faith. Yet Ormond had five siblings and three half-siblings, all of whom remained staunch Catholics as did his wider Butler kin group. Despite this the duke remained close to his mother, Lady Thurles, and to his sisters, especially Lady Clancarthy. His mother urged him to return to Catholicism, as did Abbess Mary Butler who wanted him to die ‘as your glorious ancestors have done’.210 The Catholicism of his family did expose the duke to sniping from his political adversaries, especially at the height of the Popish Plot when he was chastised for being ‘very partial to the Papists’,211 allegedly receiving ‘the sacrament the Romish way at my sister Clancarty’s’, and for socializing with

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papists.212 An informer reported that Ormond and his son the earl of Arran allowed ‘most of the Irish nobility’ to come to Dublin, despite prohibitions against them living in the city. They had also transgressed by inviting Lords Clanricarde, Dillon, Dungan and Netterville into Dublin castle where they played cards until the early hours of the morning.213 In a long and revealing letter to his personal secretary, dating from November 1678, Ormond reflected on his Catholic heritage: My father and mother lived papists, and bred all their children so, and only I, by God’s merciful providence, was educated in the true Protestant religion, from which I never swerved towards either extreme, not when it was most dangerous to profess it, and most advantageous to quit it . . . . My brothers and sisters though they were not very many, were very fruitful and very obstinate; (they will call it constant) in their way. Their fruitfulness hath spread into a large alliance and their obstinacy has made it altogether popish. It would be no small comfort to me if it had pleased God it had been otherwise, that I might have enlarged my industry to do them good and serve them more effectually to them, and more safely to myself. But as it is I am taught by nature and also by instruction that difference in opinion concerning matters of religion dissolves not the obligations of nature; and in conformity to this principle, I own not only that I have done but that I will do my relations of that or any other persuasion all the good I can.

However tolerant Ormond may have been he, like James VI and I, would not tolerate political disloyalty. He made it very clear that should any of his kin rise in rebellion he would prosecute them ‘sooner than the remotest stranger to my blood’.214 For Ormond, as Raymond Gillespie has suggested, ‘institutional religious positions were . . . a matter of honour and duty’.215 Some struggled to persuade the authorities of the sincerity of their Protestantism. During the 1650s and early 1660s Pierce Butler, second Viscount Ikerrin, repeatedly claimed that he was a Protestant who had been educated at Magdalen College, Oxford, and dissociated himself from the wartime activities of his confederate grandfather. At his trial before the Court of Claims in 1663 and again in 1666, witnesses testified that he had indeed attended church, stayed for the sermons and taken the sacrament. Eventually, the court accepted this and restored him to his hereditary estates.216 Daniel O’Brien, third Viscount Clare, struggled to shake off accusations that he was a Church papist and somehow implicated in the Popish Plot. According to his detractors, his Catholic English wife, who allegedly harboured the local Catholic bishop, had been sent to a nunnery in France, his eldest son was in French service, his other children ‘all go to Mass’ and all ‘his servants were Papists’.217 On the one hand, Ormond sympathized with his situation. Early

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in 1681 he reminded his son the earl of Arran that Clare ‘is a man of known courage, conduct and intrigue, of a broken and indeed desperate fortune, burdened with a title very unsuitable to it. He is of a noble family, of great esteem and numerous dependances among the Irish Papists, and he is seated on the county of Clare side, a transplanted country, and therefore full of Irish.’ On the other, Ormond appreciated that the political geography of Clare’s estates, ‘upon the mouth of the river of Limerick, the most proper place in Ireland to introduce an enemy and their fleets’, and his ‘present ostentation of zeal to the Protestant religion’, aroused intense suspicion.218 The Catholic Church did everything possible to secure the deathbed conversions of those who had embraced Protestantism. Thomas Butler, tenth earl of Ormond, allegedly died a Catholic. James Dillon, third earl of Roscommon, had been raised and lived his life as a Protestant but as he lay dying Catholic clerics entered his bedchamber and somehow reconciled the unconscious Roscommon to Rome and prepared to bury him according to Catholic rites.219 According to the authors of the Commentarius Rinuccinianus Charles McCarthy, Viscount Muskerry, who died in London in May 1640, converted on his deathbed and his son secretly buried him according to Catholic rites. An account left by Father Cyprien de Gamache, a Capuchin priest associated with Queen Henrietta Maria who attended the viscount when he died, added that it was a coffin full of stones that was officially buried in Westminster Abbey the next day.220 Even at death the decision to switch from the religion of the majority to that of the minority was a significant one; others opted to do this in the prime of their lives. Despite spending a year at Trinity College Dublin, under Lord Deputy Wentworth’s watchful eye, and having a Protestant mother, William Bourke, fifth baron of Castle Connell, married a Catholic and took an active role in the 1641 rebellion.221 Similarly, under the pressures of war and rebellion, Miles Bourke, second Viscount Mayo, and his heir, who had been reared a Protestant and had also wed one, reverted to Catholicism.222 However, their spouses refused to convert and a Protestant minister remained in the Mayo household during the 1640s, much to the fury of the local Catholic archbishop who chided the viscount for ‘maintaining two religions in his house’.223 One particularly prominent convert was the great parliamentary commander in Ireland, Murrough O’Brien, Lord Inchiquin (or Murrough of the Burnings as he was dubbed, thanks to the role he played in the sack of Cashel in 1647 and other atrocities committed in Munster), who reverted to Catholicism in 1657. A personal crisis associated with a serious illness appears to have triggered his conversion, the sincerity of which was not questioned even by hostile commentators. Father Cyprien de Gamache, the Capuchin priest who had served as Muskerry’s confessor (see above), later claimed that Inchiquin

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‘opened his heart to me and desired some direction for his conscience’ and later made ‘his profession of the Catholic faith’ and realised ‘the obligation to pass the rest of his days in the faith of the Romish Church’.224 Inchiquin’s wife was furious and tried (unsuccessfully as it transpired) to prevent her husband raising their younger sons as Catholics.225 After the Restoration in 1660 the family prospered and in September 1674 Inchiquin died, aged 56, a devout Catholic, and in his will he left £20 to the Franciscans at Ennis and £20 ‘for the performance of the usual duties of the Roman Catholick clergy, as also for other pious uses’.226 His heir, however, conformed and the lineage remained Protestant. The reconversion of Thomas, Viscount Dillon of Costello-Gallen, is documented and was equally significant given the high profile of his family. In 1630, aged 15, Viscount Dillon abandoned the Catholic faith, but on 6 December 1646 in the church of the Blessed Virgin in Kilkenny the papal nuncio ‘reconciled him to the Catholic Church by the Pontifical Roman Rite, in the presence of a great number of people’. The nuncio then invited him to a feast to celebrate very publically his rebirth and encouraged him to secure the conversions of his wife and children.227 Sir Richard Bellings noted in his history that God brought the viscount ‘back to the flock of St Peter and the fold of the Roman Catholicke church (out of which the severity of the laws against wards, when he was yet very young, had drawn him)’.228 Like Inchiquin, Dillon lived out the rest of his life a committed Catholic, something that did not disadvantage him after the Restoration. The family remained Catholic until the late 1760s.229 Conclusion Whether Protestant or Catholic, God and providential belief were of fundamental importance to the majority of seventeenth-century peers and their wives. The personal investment that lords made in the fabric and personnel of the church, together with their devotional practices, reflect their commitment to their faith. Confessional conviction in turn shaped their sense of who they were and how they were represented. The recusant peers played a very significant role in sustaining the Catholic Church and its clergy in urban but particularly in rural areas where the Church of Ireland lacked the physical and human infrastructure needed to become a serious alternative to the Church of Rome. Institutional religious belief was closely aligned to notions of honour, the glue that bound noble society together, and as a result many lords respected the faith of their fellow peers even if they felt that they were misguided. By maintaining this respectful distance the peers muted some of the very real confessional animosities and sectarian hatreds that otherwise characterized this century. In short, even when it came to matters of faith, the

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peers managed to co-exist and operate as a community of honour. This in part reflected the pragmatic attitude that the Stuarts – all of whom married Catholics and two of whom died Catholic – adopted towards religious diversity, preferring to convince, rather than coerce, the peers to conform. Of course, the state used every opportunity and a variety of devices – especially education, wardship and marriage – to convert lords to the ‘English religion’ and did so with considerable success. By the end of the seventeenth century most of the leading aristocratic lineages – Clanricarde, Inchiquin, Kildare, Ormond and Thomond, along with a number of lesser lords like the Courcys of Kinsale, Dillons of Roscommon, Plunketts of Dunsany or the St Lawrences of Howth – had espoused the Established Church and joined the ranks of the Protestant ascendancy. Many, however, chose not to. Catholic survivalism is striking especially in the years after 1649 when a timely conversion might have been politically expedient. It is worth remembering that the numbers of Catholic and Protestant peers remained roughly equal throughout the seventeenth century, until the severe penal legislation of the post-1690 years left the Catholic lords no alternative but to conform.

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CHAPTER 6

Marriage Several years before he died in 1689, Robert Barnewall, ninth Baron

Trimleston, a lesser Catholic peer of Old English extraction whose family had risen to prominence in the fifteenth century, wrote a long and touching letter to his 16-year-old son, Matthias, who was then living in France.1 Only a fragment of Lord Trimleston’s letter, dating from September 1686, survives but it nevertheless encapsulates the family’s successful strategy for economic and political survival. It began by encouraging Matthias to ‘Serve God, your king and your country, all that possibly you can. Be just and honest in all your dealings; for that is the way to prosper in this world.’ Matthias was to take particular care of the family estate and to live within his means, to provide for and nurture his five younger siblings, to avoid debt, to keep good company, and ‘not to addict yourself too much to hunting or hawking; for such of my ancestors as affected them minded not their other affairs’. Above all his father wished his son to marry: for in that will consist all your worldly happiness. My advice to you is to marry as soon possibly as you can. Do not marry in England; for such a marriage will prove your ruin. Most part of her portion you may be forced to spend with herself, besides going with her, often, backwards and forwards, to see her relations. There have been some good Catholic wives had in England; but now it is a great venture. Never bring a Protestant wife into your family. Marry in your country as all of your predecessors have done.2

Clearly anticipating his own demise and concerned about leaving behind him a young family and an heir who was still a minor, Trimleston also established a trust. In this he temporarily put his estates into the care of his politically powerful brother-in-law, William Dungan, who had recently been elevated to the earldom of Limerick, and another close kinsman, Nicholas, Viscount Netterville.

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The baron’s letter of advice to his son clearly articulated the family’s marriage strategy which aimed to secure the financial well-being of the Trimleston dynasty: marry young, marry an Irishwoman, marry an equal and marry within the faith.3 The issues that troubled Lord Trimleston – the problems of identifying a suitable bride, anxieties about her ethnic and religious background, and the economic and political significance of marriage – were widely shared and are discussed in detail in this chapter. One grandee perceptively noted ‘Marriage is the greatest game man plays all his lifetime, his whole [life] there lies at stake, fortune, joys, comfort, and whatsoever else is dear unto him, ‘’tis that which makes him completely happy or for ever miserable.’ For a marriage to work, he added, it was essential that the bride brought to the union ‘a considerable ready portion’ and was ‘a lady nobly extracted, an honourable lady, a beautiful lady, and – which crowns all – a good lady’.4 Not only was marriage a key event in a person’s life cycle, it was quite literally the lifeblood for any titled family and a marriage could raise or ruin a dynasty.5 A good marriage could bring a family immediate financial benefits (in terms of cash and lands), as well as providing access to influential political and patronage networks and to prestigious social circles. Above all, the right wife would provide a lineage with a male heir to continue the line. Contemporaries were also conscious of the extent to which marriage served as a means of anglicization and ‘civilization’. This is a recurrent theme in this chapter. Writing in the early 1670s, Sir William Petty suggested that marriage between Irish men and English women would facilitate ‘the transmuting one People into the other, and the thorough and lasting union of interests upon natural and lasting principles’. Petty suggested the exchange of women would, as one historian has observed, ‘prevent a generation of poor Irish men from marrying poor Irish women, substituting English brides in their place’. This would allow the Irish men to embrace English women who would then raise their children, teach them the English language, culture and manners, and ideally impart the ‘English religion (though this mattered somewhat less)’.6 In short, these women and strategic marriages could, in theory at least, help to make Ireland English. Predictably the practice, as shall be shown below, did not always match the rhetoric. Despite the obvious importance of carefully calculated marriages to the future survival and prosperity of a family, this is a subject to which historians of Ireland have paid remarkably little attention.7 There are, of course, exceptions. Donald Jackson, Intermarriage in Ireland 1550–1650, offers a useful, if somewhat fraught, study of intermarriage between colonists and indigenous families.8 There are a number of important articles in the collection of essays edited by Art Cosgrove, Marriage in Ireland, and others in Women in Early Modern Ireland (edited by Margaret MacCurtain and Mary O’Dowd).9 Nicholas Canny, in The Upstart Earl, drew attention to the marriage strategies

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of Richard Boyle, first earl of Cork, something that Patrick Little explored further in a number of excellent articles.10 Eleanor O’Keeffe’s superb doctoral thesis teases out the marriage strategies of James Butler, first duke of Ormond, and deftly links these to ‘political issues of identity and motivation’.11 Anthony Malcolmson’s The Pursuit of the Heiress offers a fascinating analysis of the economic significance of marriage in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, but much of his argument can be applied to the earlier period.12 Collectively, these works mark important inroads, but clearly much remains to be done. The peers are the obvious social group to study given the survival of a range of sources: genealogical, testamentary and legal records, marriage settlements, literary accounts, together with a smattering of correspondence and letters of advice like Lord Trimleston’s. Certainly marriage contracts, which were growing ever longer and more complex, focused on material matters, and the high survival rate of these documents in family archives points to their financial significance. Women in Stuart Society Attitudes towards women and marriage in seventeenth-century Ireland were profoundly different from the previous century. In native society in medieval Ireland there was no need for a public ceremony, which led to clandestine marriages, and it was a society in which concubines had the status of wives. These attitudes towards marriage, which were widespread across Ireland, stemmed from the fact that the legitimacy of children did not determine inheritance. What mattered was the acknowledgement of paternity. A tradition of cohabitation and desertion developed, which were commonly regarded as marriage and divorce, something that lingered on into the seventeenth century. This often occurred alongside English practices that placed a premium on primogeniture, where the legitimacy of the marriage and therefore any offspring was paramount.13 For example, Laurence, Lord Esmond, married the sister of Morrough O’Flaherty, but after the birth of their son, Thomas, she returned to her family fearing the child would be reared a Protestant. Reminiscent of medieval Gaelic practices, Esmond repudiated his O’Flaherty wife, without a formal divorce, and married, before December 1628, Elizabeth, a grand-daughter of the ninth earl of Ormond.14 In a similar vein, a dispensation was requested in 1630 to release Edmund Roe Butler, Viscount Mountgarret’s eldest son, from his marriage. It was claimed that the couple had uttered the ‘words of the contract’ but parted ‘without any carnal copulation’. A suitable dowry had not been agreed and as a result the young man had married another woman, Dorothy Touchet, a daughter of the earl of Castlehaven.15 Presumably the need to demonstrate the legitimacy of the heir of the house of Mountgarret lay behind this request for a dispensation.

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Clearly the early decades of the seventeenth century were years of transition. The marriages of the Bourkes of Clanricarde reflect the changing power structure. Richard, second earl of Clanricarde (d.1582), was legally married (i.e. according to English practice) three times but probably took between five and six wives according to Gaelic custom. Things began to change with Ulick, third earl (d.1601), who married only once (his union lasted 35 years) but had many mistresses, one concubine and fathered four illegitimate children. His son, Richard, fourth earl, married the eldest daughter of Sir Francis Walsingham, a great Tudor statesman, and unlike his predecessors was apparently uxorious, as was his son, Ulick, fifth earl and first marquis. The marriages of the sixteenth-century earls aimed to forge local alliances and to consolidate power in western Ireland, and those of the fourth and fifth earls reflected the importance of primogeniture and the need to secure patronage at court and to emphasize the family’s Englishness.16 The English marriages of the Clanricardes during these years were typical of the Irish aristocracy (discussed below), and this union of bodies, hearts and minds undoubtedly helped to anglicize some of the premier lineages in Ireland, as it did leading Scottish courtiers who decamped to England after 1603.17 Though women enjoyed limited legal rights under Brehon law, the customary legal code which predominated before 1603, Gaelic society was as patriarchal and hierarchical as Stuart society. It was the responsibility of the husband and father to maintain order in his household, the primary building block of Stuart society, and to exercise authority over his wife and children who, for their part, were to be submissive, loyal and orderly.18 Charles I put particular emphasis on order in the public and private spheres. English common law, which predominated in Ireland from the early seventeenth century, treated a wife as the personal property of her husband who had absolute rights over her body, children and property (in Gaelic law a woman could own property). From birth noblewomen were conditioned to operate under the ultimate restraint of male authority. A wife was expected to behave in a manner that was appropriate to her rank and position in society. Marriage was regarded as an honourable activity that made a person socially complete, and women brought to it their virtue and sexual purity. Many, like Sir Thomas Ridgeway, later earl of Londonderry, believed that ‘none . . . be properly in the world till they be married, before which time they only go but about the world’.19 A wife was required to be civil, loyal, modest, obedient, pure, respectful and virtuous, and to conduct herself honourably. Scandalous behaviour and sexual misdemeanours were to be avoided at all costs, for if a wife (or daughter or sister) behaved or spoke inappropriately she brought shame and dishonour to her husband, his and her families, and risked damaging her reputation. Even if some cynics argued that ‘Every man who believes that his honour depends upon that of his wife is a fool’, attitudes towards women in Ireland

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were no different from the rest of early modern Europe.20 This was an age in which, according to one leading social historian of early modern France, ‘religious and social ideologies were mutually supportive [and] women were placed under the constant surveillance of fathers or husbands within the patriarchal family system. Women were the gates of entry to the maledominated domain of the family, socially by marriage and physiologically by sexual relations.’21 That said, it should not be suggested that women were without power but they often exercised it informally, through personal and familial relationships and the dispensation of domestic and, very occasionally, cultural and political patronage. Periods of warfare or wardship or the economic necessity of running an estate pushed many from the private into the public domain (discussed below).22 Published tracts, such as the one by Francis Boyle, Viscount Shannon, entitled Discourses useful for the vain modish ladies and their gallants, re­­­ inforced social codes and attitudes towards women.23 He argued that ‘a wife, who is truly virtuous, and truly desires to be esteem’d such, is as much concern’d in honour to keep a good name, as she is bound in conscience to lead a good life’. He continued that it was for the woman to ‘satisfy all persons as to her vertue’. Interestingly, Shannon advocated romantic love as the basis for a good marriage even in the instance of an arranged match where ‘the husband is often the gift of a Father, and sometimes forced by him, and not chosen by her’. He believed that ‘a wife’s liking and loving a husband, must depend solely upon her own free choice, and not upon her father’s will. . . . Vertue may make her a good wife, but love can only make her a fond one.’24 Presumably Shannon drew on his marital experiences. In 1638 he had married Elizabeth Killigrew but by the later seventeenth century the couple appear to have become estranged, with Elizabeth living in some luxury in London (she owned properties in Pall Mall and Turnham Green) and her spouse lording it over his County Cork estates. She died in 1681 and did not even mention him in her will (he died in 1699), leaving her considerable fortune instead to their sons and daughters.25 Shannon also probably looked to the marriages of his many siblings which, with the exception of Katherine, Lady Ranelagh, and Lettice, Lady Goring, appear to have been exceptionally happy. Lady Warwick confided to her diary her great passion and love for her husband.26 Richard, second earl of Cork, had married Elizabeth Clifford in 1634. On 3 July 1654 he noted in his diary that it was their twentieth wedding anniversary ‘and I praise God for it, [we] have lived as happily with one another as any two, I think, ever did’.27 Orrery’s 1641 marriage to Margaret Howard, a daughter of the second earl of Suffolk, had proved equally blessed. The earl’s chaplain later described her as a woman ‘of great piety, prudence and reserve . . . she was beautiful in her person, very moderate in her expenses, and plain in her garb, serious and

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decent in her behaviour, careful in her family and tender of her lord’.28 Contemporaries concurred. Writing to Orrery in 1672 the earl of Anglesey observed that ‘you have by marriage of one of the most noble and vertuous ladyes’.29 In fact, Shannon had dedicated his pamphlet to Lady Orrery’s sister, Elizabeth, countess of Northumberland, and in the preface extolled her ‘virtuous life, exemplary piety, and . . . extraordinary charity’, adding these qualities were ‘an honour to your name [and] a credit to your sex’.30 Courtship Contracting the right marriage often proved complex and involved three stages. First, it began relatively informally by gathering information about the prospective bride, making general enquiries to her family, and securing permissions to proceed (often from the king) with more formal discussions. Second, the two families, sometimes using a broker, negotiated the financial arrangements, especially the bride’s dowry and jointure, and secured the signing of marriage articles and the settlement of estates. It often took months to complete this stage since it invariably involved the exchange of sensitive information relating to rentals, along with details of debts, mortgages, liabilities, and general income and expenditure. Finally, the ceremony of marriage took place followed by the consummation of the marriage, which was delayed if the couple were particularly young. Of course, the match-making customs and practices varied in detail from family to family and over time but the majority did adhere in broad outline to these three stages. The earl of Anglesey, who had matched his second son, Altham Annesley, to Alicia, the eldest daughter and heir of Charles Leigh of Leighton Buzzard, captured the various stages of the matching process in his diary. On 3 July 1678 he told Charles II of his intentions to marry his son to ‘a lady of good estate’ and asked that his son be granted ‘a title of honour in Ireland’ (he was created Baron Altham of Altham in 1680). On 8 July the earl visited the Leigh family and found Alicia ‘well bred’. Both parties indicated in writing that they wished to continue the negotiations and the earl presented Alicia ‘w[i]th 200 guinys in 2 purses . . . that she might please her owne fancy in buying jewells’. The young woman had clearly met with the earl’s expectations and he noted how ‘she carryed herself with great modesty and discretion and gave me satisfactory expressions of observance and obedience as her parents had also before’. On 23 August a lawyer, Mr Birch, drew up the marriage settlement (in return for a fee of 10 guineas and £5). On 3 September the couple married at Leighton church. That evening Anglesey brought his son to the bride’s bedroom, where ‘she carried herself wth that innocent modesty and yet unconcerned assurance’. Delighted with the proceedings and convinced of the bride’s virtue, the earl left them ‘to the consumating joys of marriage’.31

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Whether the couple were well suited is unknown and six years later Alicia died of smallpox, aged 24, and childless. On 5 June 1684 the earl noted in his diary the passing of ‘a most excellent woman now w[i]th god’.32 From beginning to end Anglesey, though keen to secure the consent of the couple, exercised total parental control and carefully orchestrated the match according to a set of accepted protocols. This was the normal practice in a society that regarded family discipline as a guarantee of public order and in which young men and women depended on their fathers for their living allowances.33 For example, in September 1614 Thomas, tenth earl of Ormond, objected to the uninvited and ‘distasteful’ overtures made to his only daughter, Elizabeth, who had been recently widowed, by the fourth earl of Thomond and his second son, Barnabas, later sixth earl. Thomond’s persistence left Ormond feeling ‘abused and dishonoured’ since he felt the match ‘might breed destruction to her, and dishonour to himself, in regard of his engagement to His Majesty, from which he never purposes to digress’. If his daughter defied his wishes by seeking an ‘unfit match’ with Barnabas he threatened to ‘forget her to be his daughter’.34 Predictably, Ormond had loftier plans for Elizabeth and shortly after this exchange she married in January 1615 the court favourite Richard Preston, later earl of Desmond, while Barnabas had to make do with Mary Fermor, the younger daughter of an English grandee. The Butler–Preston union immediately produced one daughter, Elizabeth (she was born in July, seven months after her parents wed), who, aged 13, was orphaned but not before her father had betrothed her to a nephew of the duke of Buckingham. Yet her father’s untimely death in October 1628 meant that Elizabeth, unlike so many of her contemporaries, married the man of her choosing, her cousin, James Butler, later twelfth earl and duke of Ormond. A royal favourite and Scottish kinsman, Patrick Wemyss, who also managed Elizabeth’s Irish estates, played cupid. He agreed to ‘be an instrum[en]t of endeavouring an happy union’ between the young couple and chaperoned Elizabeth during her clandestine meetings with James in a London church or at her home when he called allegedly disguised as a pedlar. ‘The young couple liked one another so well’ that they married in August 1629, ‘notwithstand[in]g ye circumspection, and strict guards’ of her guardian, the earl of Holland and his wife.35 The couple went on to have ten children together, five of whom survived into adulthood. Securing suitable partners for her children and then her grandchildren preoccupied Elizabeth for much of her later life. For as she, then duchess of Ormond, later explained, ‘strengthening our family by the best alliances’ was the best way ‘to fortify it against the malice of mean and little people that has [sic] laboured all they could to ruin us’.36 A father’s determination to secure the bloodline and to maximize financial return meant that most sons, especially heirs, had little freedom in choosing a life partner. Though daughters rarely married against the wishes of a father,

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the increased use of marriage settlements, which provided portions for future daughters at the time of their mother’s marriage, allowed girls limited freedom of choice. During the late 1670s Mary Rawdon, daughter of Sir George and a niece of the earl of Conway, considered proposals from Lords Barrymore, Coote of Colooney and Forbes of Granard. The earl of Barrymore, using the earl of Ranelagh as his broker, offered ‘a much better settlement than Lord Coloony’ and intended to settle an estate worth £2,400 per annum on his son after his death, and until then to provide him with an annual allowance of £700. Barrymore also promised to secure on Mary a jointure worth £800 and in return expected a portion of £5,000.37 More importunate still was Lord Granard, who ‘forced a present of a good diamond ring from his lady and put it on her [Mary’s] finger’. According to her father, Mary had a preference for Granard’s heir but did ‘not to admit of any motions’ until the paper work had been finalized.38 Finally, in January 1679 the 18-year-old Mary married Arthur, later second earl of Granard, who was five years her senior. The suitors she rejected also went on to marry. Richard Coote, later earl of Bellamont and governor of New York, opted in 1680 for the daughter of a Worcestershire squire.39 As for Laurence Barry, later third earl of Barrymore, he developed ‘a fierce amour’ for his cousin Katherine Barry, Lord Santry’s daughter. Laurence’s father was furious with his son for ‘embarking himself in fresh amours without my consent, since on his well marrying depends the raising or ruining of the family, which is really the truth’. The ‘unhappy match’, as his father dubbed it, went ahead. Disgusted, Barrymore maintained that his son was marrying beneath him. The Barrys of Santry were of merchant stock, new to the peerage, and their money derived from the baron’s legal practice rather than land.40 More practically, this union with a ‘poor cousin’ did little to boost the flagging Barrymore fortunes and to secure the wider dynasty. Laurence and Katherine Barry clearly knew each other well, but in many instances the bride and groom were virtual strangers when they married, having been allowed no more than a few hours in each other’s company before the ceremony. Relatively little is known of the religious service but, given the premium placed on producing legitimate offspring, it was critical that it occurred publically and was valid in the eyes of the law. Priests officiated at Catholic weddings and Protestants married according to the rites set out in the Book of Common Prayer. Problems arose when couples married across the religious divide. The proposed marriage alliance of the earl of Clancarthy to the earl of Orrery’s niece, Lady Elizabeth Boyle, was threatened by ‘scruples’ concerning ‘the manner of doing it’. The duke of Ormond, who wrote to Orrery for assistance in the matter, said ‘my sister [Lady Clancarthy] is made to believe she cannot consent it should be by a priest of our church without sinning, and my Lady Elizabeth is as much persuaded she shall offend if she shall consent to be married by a popish priest. I am not able to remove the

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scruple from my sister and I am not willing to endeavour to do it with Lady Elizabeth.’41 Orrery concurred and felt that if a priest officiated the marriage would be ‘questionable’, and he pressed for a service ‘celebrated to the form prescribed in the book of common prayer’.42 When Clancarthy insisted on being married by a priest, Orrery sought a compromise noting that ‘there have been many marriages for protestants and papists. My sister Barrimore married Jack Barry; she was a firm protestant and he a firm papist, and yet no scruple did arise.’43 Other mixed marriages are discussed at length later in this chapter. Hardly surprisingly, the Catholic Church developed firm views on marriage. Synods, beginning with the 1614 Dublin synod, decreed that marriage should be consensual, rather than contractual, be public rather than clandestine, and be conducted before a parish priest. Banns were to be published to avoid later disputes regarding any impediments. Increasingly, the Church also promoted sexual morality and condemned pre-marital sex.44 It was not unusual to have a private religious ceremony in the evening but most occurred in public, followed by a feast and dancing, which trumpeted the importance and status of the families that were being united. Sexual consummation completed the union. Writing in 1610 Thomas Ridgeway, later first earl of Londonderry, offered a vivid account of the wedding of his daughter Lady Cassandra and Sir Francis Willoughby in Rathfarnham castle, home to the Loftus family on the outskirts of Dublin. He began his account by noting that Cassandra ‘is a married, nay a bedded wife; your Francis hath lain with a wench’ and then related how the groom had acquitted himself: He plighted his faith to his wife in the public congregation, cheerfully; had her given to him by the viceroy [Lord Deputy Chichester], honestly; was led down to the marriage by two fair virgins, gracefully; armed up again by two great ladies, gravely; kissed the sword and kneeled at his knighting, devoutly; waited at his wedding dinner, with many of us more, diligently and hungrily; danced with his bride, civilly; was well wished unto by many great lords and ladies and other good friends, heartily; graced by maskings, feastings, fireworks and presents, plentifully; was ungartered, unpointed, not disappointed, and went to bed, and rose again, comfortably and contentedly.45

A text of the ‘maskings’ (masques) performed at the wedding has survived and it vividly recaptures the dignity and splendour of the celebrations, which continued well into the early hours.46 Grander still were the weddings that took place at court. On 24 October 1638 the first earl of Cork attended the nuptials of his fourth son, Francis, later Viscount Shannon and author of Discourses useful for the vain modish ladies and their gallants, who married Elizabeth Killigrew, one of the queen’s maids of honour and stepdaughter of his great friend Sir Thomas Stafford. The king

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himself gave the bride away ‘and made a great feast in court for them, wherat the kinge and queen were both presente’. Cork sat with his three daughters at the royal table ‘amongst the great lords and ladies’. The king took the bride to dance and then led her to the bedchamber where the queen helped to undress her. The royal couple and Cork then stayed with the couple until they were in bed.47 Detailed accounts of the nuptials of his other children are not recorded in Cork’s diary but the court poet, Sir John Suckling, wrote ‘Ballad upon a Wedding’ on the occasion of the nuptials of Roger, Lord Broghill, to Margaret Howard at Lord Aubigny’s house, Covent Garden, in January 1641.48 The austerity associated with the 1640s and 1650s meant that the marriages of Ormond’s elder sons were conducted without public display. It was a very different story when Ormond’s second daughter, Mary, married the politically influential William Cavendish, first duke of Devonshire and master of Chatsworth House. Charles II presided over their betrothal ceremony on 5 March 1661. The couple married on 26 October 1662 at Kilkenny castle in a private ceremony, but the lavish wedding feast attracted a large gathering.49 The English poet and playwright Katherine Philips (‘the matchless Orinda’) dedicated a poem to Mary that celebrated the Butlers as Ireland’s premier lineage (‘your high extraction’), the loyalty of her father, the virtue of her mother, and the joy of her union with one of England’s great aristocratic families.50 Philips also dedicated a collection of poems to her dear friend Anne Lewis née Owen when she married (as his second wife) Mark Trevor, first Viscount Dungannon, in 1662. Philips, who had accompanied Anne to Ireland, wrote of their mutual affection: You are so happy in each others love, And in assur’d protection from above, That we no wish can add unto your bliss, But that it should continue as it is.

Her concluding lines encapsulated what every noble family wished for: Whilst you produce a Race that may inherit All your great stock of Beauty, Fame, and Merit.51

In short, the happiness of the couple was important, but it was the wider welfare of the Dungannon dynasty that really mattered. Frequency of Marriage The necessity of securing ‘a race’ and producing a male heir made it compulsory for eldest sons to marry and only a very few made a conscious choice not

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to do so. The selection of a suitable bride for an heir therefore became a priority for any family, since it was the women who perpetuated the family line and infused it with new blood. A detailed analysis of 348 resident peers suggests that the vast majority (70 per cent) married, a significant number (20 per cent) married twice, and a few (4 per cent) married three times or more (table 15). These figures accord broadly with comparable ones for early seventeenth-century Scottish marriages with the notable exception that a higher number of Scottish peers (32 per cent) married twice.52 The focus here is on the marriages of the eldest son and heir, but it is important to note that the peerage in Ireland did not practise restricted marriage and it was usual for younger sons also to marry, despite the financial burdens of establishing a household that this brought.53 In addition to enhancing the collective status of a family the marriages of younger sons also helped to secure the continuity of many dynasties, as the title passed to the son of a younger brother when it failed in the main line (see chapter 2 above for details). The need to produce a male heir usually ensured that a peer remarried quickly if his wife died. The single example of Edward, earl of Conway, vividly illustrates this.54 In 1651 he married Anne Finch, the talented philosopher and daughter of Sir Heneage and half-sister of the English lord chancellor, the first earl of Nottingham.55 In 1660 their two-year-old son died of smallpox, leaving the couple childless. Stricken by chronic ill-health for most of her adult life, Anne finally died on 23 February 1679. In December Anne’s confidant and younger half-brother, Sir John Finch, wrote to Conway from his embassy in Constantinople instructing his 56-year-old brother-in-law to remarry immediately: I am for her sake to beg you to marry again, for, since it pleased God to take your only son and child to heaven, to your own great name and family, to your person and virtues you owe a successor, which, since my dear sister was now incapable of giving you, it may be God was pleased by calling her to your only offspring to make way for a more durable issue and to free her from a perpetual headache and as great a heartache in the prospect of seeing you Table 15.  Marriages of resident peers, c.1600–c.1690.56 No. of peers (total sample = 348) Never married

  20 (6%)

Married once

241 (70%)

Married twice

  73 (20%)

Married three times or more

  14 (4%)

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childless. . . . ’Tis a debt due to her memory, who wished you a happy father, to the ashes of all your noble ancestors, and what you can never answer to God or man, if you endeavour not the satisfying of it by a speedy second marriage.57

In May 1680 Lord Chancellor Finch reiterated the request and enjoined Conway ‘to marry a wife that is young and healthy without consideration of fortune within these two months or to appear at the [Privy Council] Board and give reasons to the contrary’.58 In fact, before Anne died and presumably at her behest, Conway had been looking at who was available on the marriage market.59 His friends advised him that if he wanted to win a ‘young lady’ he would need ‘fine clothes and equipage’ and so his London tailor dressed him in the most fashionable outfits.60 Increasingly, brokers approached the wealthy widower with proposals. In February 1680 Viscount Massareene enquired whether he would accept ‘an overture concerning a deserving young lady . . . a daughter of a family unquestionably noble, ancient and very sober in their educations, the young lady every way well qualified and her fortune plentiful’.61 In June another matchmaker suggested that he consider Lord Crewe’s daughter, ‘a very desirable character’, who had a portion of £5,000.62 The following month another suggested a 22-year-old ‘knight’s daughter’, ‘virtuous and discreet’ with a portion of £10,000. The broker, who refused to name the young woman, added that ‘She is also represented to be so handsome that no man need be ashamed to own her for his lady’.63 Conway eventually opted for Elizabeth Booth, a daughter of Baron Delamere, who brought with her a portion of £13,000. She fell pregnant almost immediately but died in childbirth in July 1681. The following month the earl took as his third wife Ursula Stawell, the co-heir of an army colonel, whose fortune was £30,000 but who failed to provide him with the heir he so desperately craved. Conway died in November 1683 and his title became extinct. The premature death of a spouse was common and in practical terms was the equivalent of divorce in the modern period. Under English law the eldest available male heir inherited the title and entailed estate on the death of his father. Other children were entitled to a third of their father’s other assets; a wife was entitled to a third (which increased to half if there were no children); and the remaining third was at the man’s own disposal and was most often used for the payment of debts, to reward servants and friends, or to make religious or charitable bequests. Provision for a younger son was sometimes by virtue of a marriage settlement or a mother’s will, enabling them to live independently. Many examples are given later in this chapter, so one will suffice here. In accordance with a marriage agreement of 27 February 1624 between Sir John Netterville, later second viscount, and Elizabeth Weston, daughter of the earl of Portland, Nicholas, first viscount, demised lands for the provision of

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Elizabeth’s jointure and portions for each child (£1,000 for each daughter and £500 for each son).64 This level of provision for younger children was fairly typical and highlights the fact that the noble family operated as a collective. In death the wider family also rallied around. Individual experiences of widowhood and the ways widows and widowers negotiated the complexities of the loss of a life partner, their unmarried status and the challenges of finding a new spouse, remain to be studied in the context of early modern Ireland.65 This was undoubtedly a gendered experience that reflected the patriarchal society in which a widow or widower lived. Widowers tended to remarry faster. Roughly a quarter of the 348 resident peers for whom data survive did remarry (see table 15), either because they lacked an heir, as in the case of Lord Conway, or because they had large families that needed a mother and a household that needed a mistress to oversee it. The loss of a wife rarely altered a man’s status, while the loss of a husband invariably and irrevocably brought about a change in a woman’s life even if a jointure provided economic security. Husbands also exercised authority over their wives from the grave. In his will Kildare Digby, who died in 1661, made generous provision for his wife, Mary, and their young family, but he specified that if Mary remarried she was to receive £400 per annum instead of her jointure of £500.66 Mary lived as a widow for 30 years and her own will provides a glimpse of the landed and disposable wealth she went on to accumulate.67 The extant testaments of the widows of other resident peers – Ladies Clancarthy, Cork, Dillon of Costello-Gallen, Orrery, Shannon and Thomond – suggest that they enjoyed comparable levels of wealth and independence.68 The responsibility of looking after young families often fell on the shoulders of a young widow, as in the case of the Montgomery family which suffered from particularly bad luck. Hugh, second viscount, died in 1642 aged 36, and his son, Hugh, first earl of Mount Alexander, died in 1663 aged 38. The duke of Ormond became Hugh’s guardian and, together with his mother Jean, watched over the family’s affairs. At his death in 1663 Hugh left behind him two sons and a daughter by his first marriage and a son and daughter from his second. His pregnant wife, Catherine Jones, a daughter of Arthur, Lord Ranelagh, cared for the latter while William Montgomery of Rosemount, the earl’s uncle, together with the Moores of Drogheda (his mother’s family), looked after the young heir and his siblings.69 After 1664 the unfortunate house of Kildare faced another period of minority when Wentworth, seventeenth earl, died prematurely in 1664, leaving three-year-old John as his heir. Initially, John’s mother, Elizabeth Holles, looked after the interests of her son, but on her death in 1666 responsibility for the young earl passed to his English maternal grandmother, Elizabeth, countess dowager of Clare.70 Other widows, especially those who argued with their sons over their jointure, had less positive experiences of widowhood. Widowed mothers

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occasionally had no option but to take their eldest sons to task. Shortly after her husband’s death in 1635, Joan, mother of Maurice, eighth Viscount Roche of Fermoy, complained about ‘the perverse carriage of her unnatural son’ and of ‘his turbulent, refractory and contentious disposition’, which had ‘fatally brought decay and loss on the honourable house and shortened his father’s days with grief ’. The widow claimed that he kept her from her jointure lands and forced her to live ‘obscurely beholden to her neighbours who provide her with board and lodging’.71 Fermoy’s shabby treatment of his mother brought dishonour and reflected badly on the entire family. The 1627 will of Elizabeth, mother of Nicholas, Lord Howth, captured the heartache that litigation with her son had caused her: ‘And although my son, Nicholas St. Lawrence, Lord Baron of Howth, hath much grieved me, in putting me in suit, for the performing of a bargain, which I never concluded with him, yet I do hereby freely forgive him, and do leave with him, his wife and children, my prayers and blessing.’72 Of course, siblings also litigated against their eldest brother and each other over inheritances and the payment of allowances and jointures. Space precludes an extensive discussion of the relationships between siblings but it is worth noting that most daughters and sisters did marry, which put very real strains on family finances. For example, in 1634 the court of chancery obliged Patrick Fitzmaurice, baron of Kerry, to pay his three sisters – Eleanor, Maria (or Margaret) and Mary – their marriage portions of £500, together with ‘20 markes sterling on the feast of Easter and Michaelmas by equal portions’.73 Cases like this were rare, which suggests that most domestic disputes over money were resolved within the family. Younger sons and brothers, who did not pursue careers in the Church, army or legal profession, also tended to wed the well-to-do daughters of local squires or merchants and used their allowances to support their diminished position in society. Dynastic ambitions determined these marriages, much as they did those of daughters (discussed below). Age at Marriage Though driven by biological imperative, the earl of Conway’s interest in young women attracted scorn from his fellow peers, including the duke of Ormond.74 ‘The youth was but fifteen years of age,’ Ormond quipped, ‘and if this be the lady my Lord Conway was said to pretend to, he must have been at least as much too old for her as my grandson is too young’.75 In a letter to his son, the earl of Ossory, the duke again criticized teenage marriages: ‘And there is more than superstition in my aversion to young matches, how advantageously soever they appear to the world: and there must be something more than ordinary in it, when few of those designed conjunctions hold and fewer prosper.’76 In 1673 Arthur, first earl of Donegal, refused to entertain a

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proposal for his only daughter, Anne, since she was ‘not then past 11 years old and but very little in stature’, which made it ‘too early and indeed dangerous for her to be matched’.77 Anne matured quickly and three years later the ‘exceeding pretty’ teenager did marry Ormond’s youngest son, John Butler, earl of Gowran, despite Donegal’s concerns about Gowran’s profligate lifestyle and his ‘many misses’ (Gowran was 33 when he married).78 In 1676, shortly after the wedding, Gowran died of consumption and two years later Lady Anne, now aged 16 or 17, married as his second wife the middle-aged (he was 46) entrepreneur Francis Aungier, earl of Longford, a confidant of Ormond.79 By Irish, though not continental, standards Gowran was relatively old for a first marriage. It was common practice for the children of peers to marry young, something that Lord Trimleston had advocated in his letter of advice. In Ireland and Scotland eldest sons of peers married in their late teens or early twenties and in England in their mid- to late twenties.80 Their brides were even younger (i.e. in their mid- to late teens, with a handful marrying in their early teens). This suggests that the age of marriage for the Boyle children as calculated by Nicholas Canny, where the average age for the boys was 19 and for the girls 16, was by no means unusual for members of the Irish titled nobility.81 The negotiations that underpinned these unions, however, began when the boys were in their mid-teens and the girls were children. In England there is evidence to suggest that as the seventeenth century progressed, marriage was postponed until the groom and bride achieved a reasonable age. This was probably the case in Ireland as well, but not enough dates of birth for brides are known to offer definitive conclusions.82 When girls did marry before reaching full sexual maturity they did not usually cohabit with their husbands. The earl of Castlehaven’s granddaughter, Lucy Davies, was only 11 when she married the 15-year-old Ferdinando, Lord Hastings. She remained at home and he attended university at Cambridge, it being ‘not held convenient they should cohabit together’.83 Similarly, Sarah Boyle was 12 when she married the heir to Lord Moore and lived with her parents for another two years before joining her teenage husband at his seat at Mellifont.84 The marriage in 1673 between John Power, Lord Decies, the 8-year-old grandson of the earl of Anglesey, and his 12-yearold cousin and his son-in-law’s ward, Catherine Fitzgerald, proved particularly controversial. According to Anglesey, ‘I gave her in the chapel there, and they answered as well as those of greater age. The wedding dinner and supper I gave them, and the rest of the day till 12 at night was spent in dancing &c and they lay in my house.’85 Less than two years later Catherine, whom Anglesey now dubbed his ‘false bold ungratefull daughter Decies’, complained that she had been forced into the marriage against her will and had not given her consent.86 Anglesey kept her under house arrest until Easter 1677 when she escaped and married Edward Villiers, the eldest son of Viscount

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Grandison. Chancery proceedings and a public scandal ensued over the validity of Catherine’s first marriage.87 A respected Irish legal expert concluded that she was setting ‘a pernicious example’ and should be forced to return to Lord Decies and the marriage be consummated.88 Another, representing Catherine and her second husband, declared the first marriage invalid because Catherine had been ‘seduced thereunto by threats, violent persuasions, and undue practices, contrary to her own will and spontaneous inclination, as she hath decalr’d and protested before the Lord Arch-Bishop of Canterbury, and so soon as she could obtain an opportunity to manifest the same by protestation, was neither by Law or Conscience oblig’d to perfect such contract’.89 The marriage was declared null and void and John Power, no doubt scarred by his experiences, died unmarried in 1693. His brother succeeded him but died without a male heir, with the result that the title became extinct. Geographic Origin of Brides An analysis of the geographic origin of the wives of 421 peers (table 16) highlights four broad trends. First, nearly two-thirds of resident peers for whom data are extant (272, or 61 per cent) married women of Irish birth from within the peerage or from the landed, commercial or professional elites in Ireland. This should not surprise us and the level of intermarriage especially between the native Irish and Old English effectively rendered meaningless the use of ethnic labels between these two groups but retains some value for the newcomers, especially the Scots who initially retained their ethnic identity. Second, resident peers rarely married women from the Continent and in the instances of the five lords who did, their unions were invariably associated with prolonged stays in Europe. The great military general Thomas Preston,

Table 16.  Geographic origin of 421 wives of resident peers (based on wives’ fathers), c.1600–c.1690.90 Religion of peer

Ireland

England

Scotland

Continent

Catholic (pre-1649)

95 (22.56%)

18 (4%)

3 (0.7%)

2 (0.47%)

Protestant (pre-1649)

46 (10.9%)

56 (13%)

14 (3.3%)

1 (0.2%)

Catholic (post-1649)

58 (13.77%)

22 (5%)

0

1 (0.2%)

Protestant (post-1649)

55 (13%)

48 (11%)

1 (0.2%)

1 (0.2%)

Total pre-1649

141

74

17

3

Total post-1649

113

70

1

2

Total

254 (c. 61%) 144 (34%) 18 (4%)

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later Viscount Tara, took as his first wife a woman from Brabant and as his second Marguerite de Namur who lived in Flanders and France for the duration of their marriage. In 1659 Thomas, earl of Ossory, who had been in exile in the Netherlands for much of the mid-seventeenth century, married Amelia, daughter of Lodewyk van Nassau, heer van Beverweerd, governor of Sluis. As he was an illegitimate son of Maurice of Nassau, the marriage linked the Ormonds to the royal house of Orange and other leading Dutch families.91 Similarly, during his exile is the 1650s William, Viscount Dungan of Clane, married a Spanish woman. Third, during the early seventeenth century 17 lords, all of whom were of Scottish provenance, took Scottish brides. What is so striking is the virtual absence of Scottish brides after 1649 and the marked preference that peers of Scottish provenance had for Irish women over both Scottish and English ones. In other words the first generation of ‘Scottish peers’ who settled in Ireland either brought with them a Scottish spouse or actively sought one for themselves or their heir. Later generations did not, preferring to consolidate or create national alliances by matching with local women.92 Fourth, over a third of resident peers married English women, especially as first wives, aiming to increase their social status by intermarrying with members of the English nobility, landed gentry or prosperous merchant families. As a result a significant number – the Butlers of Ormond, the Fitzgeralds of Kildare, the Flemings of Slane and St Lawrences of Howth, and branches of the Dillons – acquired landed interests in England.93 As one might expect, Protestant peers preferred women from England. For instance, Viscounts Lambert and Chichester sought English brides: the former married a sister of the earl of Radnor; and the latter wed a daughter of the earl of Bristol. The duke of Ormond found English spouses for three of his five children. More interesting is the number of Irish Catholic lords, especially those from the higher ranks (viscounts and above), who took English brides, a trend that continued after 1649. Why were these wealthy and well connected English families willing to consider an Irish lord as a spouse for their daughters? Some sent their daughters to Ireland with reluctance, associated as the country was with incivility, barbarism, rebellion and popery. In 1616 Sir Barnabas O’Brien, later sixth earl of Thomond, asked the earl of Cork to meet him and his new wife, Mary Fermor, a daughter of a Northamptonshire squire, at Youghal so that ‘his wife think she is in England’.94 During the 1620s Randal MacDonnell, first earl of Antrim, failed to marry off his son to one of the duke of Lennox’s daughters (Lennox was the king’s cousin and favourite). Antrim then focused his efforts on Honoura Bourke, the fourth earl of Clanricarde’s daughter, who had been reared in England. Between 1620 and 1630 both families seriously considered the union. Antrim offered a very

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generous ‘bride price’ of £5,000 and promised to buy the couple an English estate, but Lady Clanricarde rejected his overtures on the grounds that Lord Dunluce was the earl of Tyrone’s grandchild and his County Antrim seat was too remote. Honoura Bourke, however, was the exception, rather than the rule. For many, access to large estates sweetened the pill of geographic isolation and facilitated the passage of women across the Irish Sea. Seven (out of 18) of Ireland’s largest landowners including the top four – Lords Ormond, Clanricarde, Antrim and Thomond – married women of English provenance. The sons, grandsons and great-grandsons of the anglicizing fourth earl of Thomond all married wealthy English women, and from the midseventeenth century the Thomonds spent relatively little time on their Munster estates, preferring to reside in Great Billing rather than Bunratty. Of nine great Catholic landowners, four married English brides from amongst the most prominent Catholic families, which served to reinforce their Catholicism: Antrim, Clanricarde, Mayo (a convert) and Mountgarret.95 There was substance to contemporary perceptions that these English women were ‘civilizing’ influences on their spouses. Equally, the political significance of some of these unions cannot be overstated. Consider the example of the Butlers of Mountgarret, who took English spouses from well-connected and well-healed English Catholic families over the course of three generations. Richard, third viscount (1578–1652/3), married as his second wife Elizabeth Andrewes and, as his third, Margaret Branthwaite. Writing to Sir William Andrewes of Lathbury, his father-in-law, in 1613, the third viscount suggested a possible match with one of his daughters and a prominent English recusant family: ‘I doe understand of late by som in this land that the lorde William Howarde, whoe hath a number of young children, wolde willingly mach one of his daughters unto one of my son[s] his ranke and qualities wherin I wolde wish his lop were moved and his answer retorned unto me, by ye next [post].’96 In the event, this particular match came to nothing. His son and heir, Edmund ‘Roe’, fourth viscount, married as his first wife Dorothy Touchet, a daughter of the earl of Castlehaven; in 1635 as his second, Anne Tresham; and in 1637 as his third, Elizabeth Simeon, Lord Vaux’s granddaughter, which linked him to the Howard family. His son and heir, Richard, fifth viscount (d.1707), married Emilia Blundell from Crosby in County Lancaster. These English connections certainly facilitated Mountgarret opposition to attempts by the government in the late-1630s to confiscate lands in Counties Kilkenny and Tipperary.97 Then, in the wake of the upheavals of the civil wars, these associations enabled the Mountgarrets to parade their ‘Englishness’ despite the family’s close involvement in the confederation of Kilkenny (see chapter 11 below).

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Mixed Marriages Even though Lord Trimleston deemed intermarriage with a Protestant unacceptable, it was nevertheless remarkably widespread throughout the resident peerage and readily accepted by contemporaries.98 Commentators, both Catholic and Protestant, repeatedly emphasized the very real links of kinship – together with friendship, and mutual indebtedness – that united Irish society on the eve of the 1641 rebellion. The Old English historian Richard Bellings, later secretary of the confederate general assembly, noted: The colonyes (setting aside their different tenets in matters of religion) were as perfectly incorporated, and as firmly knit together, as frequent marriages, daily ties of hospitality, and the mutual bond between lord and tenant, could unite any people.99

Sir John Temple famously described pre-war Irish society as ‘one body, knit and compacted together with all those bonds and ligatures of Friendship, Alliance, and Consanguinity as might make up a constant and perpetual union between them’.100 Certainly the following families all married across the religious divide: the Annesleys, the Aungiers of Longford, the Boyles of Cork and Orrery, the Brabazons of Meath, the Bourkes of Clanmorres and Castle Connell, the Butlers of Ikerrin, the Digbys of Geashill, the Esmonds, the Fitzgeralds of Kildare, the Fitzwilliams of Merrion, the Flemings of Slane, the MacCarthys of Clancarthy, the MacDonnells of Antrim, the Moores of Drogheda, the Nettervilles, the O’Briens of Thomond and Inchiquin, the O’Dempseys of Clanmalier, the Plunketts of Louth and of Fingal, the St Lawrences of Howth, and so on. The names represent a complete cross section of the Irish titled nobility: Catholic and Protestant; Gaelic Irish, Old English and New English; some politically powerful, others politically impotent; some great and wealthy territorial lords, others impoverished and landless; some with titles dating back to the Middle Ages and others of recent creation. In the majority of cases Catholic men married Protestant women. King James VI and I cautioned against mixed marriage on the grounds that it led to domestic disharmony.101 Despite this, James allowed Prince Charles to enter into a marriage validated by a papal dispensation which Urban VIII granted in return for rights for English Catholics and assurances that Charles’s bride, Henrietta Maria, would not be required to convert.102 Marriages across the religious divide appear to have been common throughout Irish society. In 1651 and 1653 the Cromwellian authorities prohibited intermarriage between Catholics and Protestants, and in 1658 the Catholic synod did likewise. This suggests that mixed marriages continued to be widespread. Certainly the

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synod conceded that when unions with Protestants occurred, the Catholic spouse should have liberty to practise their faith and that any children resulting from the marriage should be raised as Catholics. Interestingly, the Church even lifted consanguinity restrictions if a mixed marriage might occur as a result of failing to do this.103 Contemporaries clearly believed that marriage could be used as an effective instrument for conversion. The Pope expected Henrietta Maria to achieve the conversion of her husband and to protect English Catholics. The fact that the devoutly Catholic MacDonnells were even willing to contemplate a marriage with the Protestant heir of the house of Kildare reflects a similar attitude. In the 1620s the first earl of Antrim had been so eager to ally with the ancient lineage that he had promised to allow the young earl to practise his religion freely should he wed one of his elder daughters: Your Lordship need not to doubt that any will attempt to alter your opinion in religion, and I hope your Lordship will not seek to force whosoever shall be your wife from hers. You both may live contentedly and each one use their own conscience, for which (thanks be to God) you want not an excellent precedent.104

No doubt Antrim hoped that a union with his family would bring the house of Kildare back into the Catholic Church. Similarly, Orrery, whose niece – ‘a very good young woman, and . . . well settled in her religion’ – had married the earl of Clancarthy (discussed above), expected her to ‘bring my lord Clancarthy to our church, than he bring her to his’.105 As it turned out Clancarthy reluctantly conformed, though he later died of an apoplexy ‘out of communion with the established church’.106 Their son and heir was reared as a Protestant but thanks to the influence of his Catholic uncle Justin, later Viscount Mountcashel, he reverted to Catholicism. By and large, couples who married across the religious divide respected the faith of their spouse and this facilitated significant levels of social and cultural integration. For example, Susanna, a younger daughter of Edward, Lord Brabazon, had married in 1611 (as his second wife) Luke Plunkett, first earl of Fingal, but continued to enjoy the ‘full exercise of her religion’ and received a Protestant funeral in 1623.107 The affection in which Mathew Plunkett, seventh baron of Louth, held his Presbyterian second wife, Anne Hamilton, was such that in his will he bequeathed £10 to the ‘Free Church of Scotland’, together with £40 to his local priest and further legacies to the Dominicans in Dublin and Drogheda.108 Under the pressures of war and rebellion, Viscount Mayo and his heir (who had been reared as Protestants and had married English women) reverted to Catholicism.

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However, their spouses refused to convert and a Protestant minister, Reverend Goldsmith, remained in the Mayo household during the 1640s. The local Catholic archbishop was furious. He chided Mayo for ‘maintaining two religions in his house’ and asked Mayo to hand over Goldsmith. Mayo agreed providing the reverend was given six priests to secure his safety. In the event Goldsmith was confined to a private part of the house where he preached and ministered to Lady Mayo, who ‘would not be an atheist’.109 Ultimately, it was the women who reared Mayo’s grandchildren in England as Protestants which secured the lineage’s political fortunes (see chapter 11 below). The Catholic marquis of Antrim took as his second wife Rose O’Neill, a devout Protestant heiress from County Antrim.110 Henry Leslie, archdeacon of Down, who delivered Lady Antrim’s funeral oration, explained how the couple reconciled their religious differences: Her lord and she intirely loved each other, they in all things thought and spake the same thing, save in the manner of worshipping of God, and even in that, tho’ they differed, they did not disagree, but each enjoyed their own way in which they had been educated in peace, content and happiness, without the least heats, or animosities, which are the usual consequents of differing opinions in the same heuse, betwixt man and wife, and not only betwixt themselves was all bitterness and rancour laid aside, but also their protestant tenants and neighbours enjoyed the favour and countenance of their lord.111

Other mixed marriages proved less successful. Furious that her husband, Murrough O’Brien, Lord Inchiquin, had reverted to Catholicism, his staunchly Protestant wife repeatedly and publicly rebuked him as the couple squabbled over whether their younger children should be raised as Catholics.112 Lady Inchiquin appears to have lost the struggle (only the heir appears to have conformed to the Established Church), and eventually she reconciled herself to her husband’s Catholicism. The union of Alexander, third earl of Antrim, and Elizabeth Annesley, daughter of the Protestant statesman, Arthur, first earl of Anglesey, yielded no such compromise. According to one account, Elizabeth ‘was most arrogantly rude with her husband, and he, of a pleasant humour, would onely and usually return in his Irish language, how can it be otherwise with a man that has maryed the daughter of the devil’.113 Clearly the response to a mixed marriage varied according to personalities and circumstances, but there is no clear evidence to suggest that they brought with them disproportionate levels of domestic disharmony such as adultery, separation, divorce, and physical and sexual abuse.

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Social Status of Brides On the whole contemporaries were more concerned with the social status of a bride than her religion. Information survives regarding the social status for 177 brides who married resident peers over the course of the seventeenth century (table 17). This suggests that these lords married the daughters of fellow Irish, English and Scottish peers (53 per cent), with Catholic peers preferring Irish brides and Protestant peers favouring English ones.114 A significant proportion of Irish Protestant peers also wed the daughters of baronets and knights (who sat at the lower end of the ‘noble’ class). A close analysis of the composition of the ‘other’ category reveals that Irish Catholic peers rarely married outside their social rank whereas Protestant ones, especially pre-1649, married daughters (ideally English ones) of landed gentlemen, senior government officials, lawyers or wealthy merchants. Given the ‘ancientness’ of so many of the Catholic titles, these lords clearly resisted intermarriage with women of unequal rank, presumably on the grounds that this might debase their honour and somehow ‘contaminate’ their lineage by intermingling their blood with those of ‘no breeding’. For example, the anonymous author of Pairlement Chloinne Tomáis poured scorn on the descendants of Tomas Mor (peasants) who had accumulated wealth at the expense of the Old English nobility by wedding ‘women of higher rank’, and who then allowed their blood to mingle with that of serfs and churls and others of no ‘breeding’.115 The willingness of so many Irish Protestant peers to select wives from beneath their own rank is hardly surprising given the high number of new ennoblements and the relatively humble origins of so many of them. However, as these new peers were absorbed into the establishment (both in Ireland and England), they proved less willing to marry women whom they considered ‘unworthy’ of them or their rank. What was exceptional was for any peer – or his siblings – to marry from amongst the ‘lower orders’. Thus the marriage (and subsequent conversion to Catholicism) of John King, third Baron Kingston, to Margaret O’Cahan, ‘a servant maid in his father’s house’, was highly unusual, even unique.116 This mésalliance may have cost Kingston his reputation but it did not affect his noble status, as it would have in many continental countries. Table 17.  Social status of wives of resident peers (based on wives’ fathers), c.1600–c.1690.117 Status of fathers-in-law

Peers

Baronets/Knights

Other

Pre-1649 (total sample = 90)

51.1%

25.5%

23.3%

Post-1649 (total sample = 87)

55.1%

22.9%

21.8%

17th century (total sample = 177)

53%

24.2%

22.5%

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When the Irish data are compared with the social status of Scottish wives for the years between 1560 and 1637, a number of similarities and differences immediately emerge.118 Scottish peers overwhelmingly married within the ranks of the nobility, about 62 per cent of marriages involving peers being to daughters of other peers (the figure for Ireland was 51 per cent), and around 36 per cent to daughters of barons or lairds (25.5 per cent is the comparative figure for Ireland). Scottish grooms rarely strayed outside their social or national grouping.119 This clearly suggests that the barriers between these various ranks were more rigid than in Ireland, where there appears to have been more fluidity in the marriage market and this, in turn, created opportunities for upward mobility.120 Upward social mobility is well illustrated by the ‘Scottish peers’ who settled in Ireland, the majority of whom hailed from humble backgrounds. Close scrutiny of 28 marriages made by resident peers of Scottish provenance, where the rank of the bride’s father is known, reveals that 19 women came from noble backgrounds. Five fathers were Scottish lords and three were English peers. The remaining 11 fathers were Irish lords. With the exception of the first earl of Antrim, who married a daughter of the Catholic and Gaelic Irish earl of Tyrone, these marriages were largely to New English Protestants (the Annesleys, Blayneys, Brabazons, Cootes, Jones, Massareene and Moores). Two matched with the daughters of Protestant Old English peers (Dillons and St Lawrences). Seven brides were the daughters of baronets and knights. These upwardly mobile unions reflect the desire of ‘Scottish peers’ to secure recognition within the social hierarchy of their new home. Others, especially lawyers, government administrators and merchants, used marriage to secure rank and status. The Barnewalls of Turvey are an excellent example of a Catholic legal dynasty that used marriage to ascend the social ladder. Sir Patrick Barnewall, a noted lawyer, married Nicholas, his heir, who had also attended the Inns of Court, to Bridget Fitzgerald, a daughter and co-heir of Henry, twelfth earl of Kildare, and widow of the earl of Tyrconnell. In 1646 Nicholas secured his title of honour (Viscount Kingsland) and was careful to wed his sons to daughters of established families (the Nettervilles of Dowth and Nugents of Westmeath). He also found titled husbands for four of his five daughters.121 The three marriages of Sir George Lane, Ormond’s personal secretary, embody his social ascent and the premium placed on securing English matches: his first wife was Dorcas Brabazon, a niece of the earl of Meath, a recent creation in the peerage; his second was Susan Nicholas, daughter of the influential English secretary of state; and his third, Frances Sackville, was a daughter of the English fifth earl of Dorset. The Colvills, a merchant family from County Antrim, used their wealth to secure a number of prestigious marriages. In the late 1660s the marquis of Antrim tried, unsuccessfully, to broker a union between Colvill’s daughter (who was to have the

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considerable portion of £8,000) and one of the earl of Drogheda’s sons.122 In 1686 Sir Robert Colvill married a daughter of Callaghan, third earl of Clancarthy. The prenuptial agreement mentioned a ‘title of honour’, but Sir Robert did not insist upon it though he encouraged his in-laws to explore the possibility.123 Whatever her social rank, a rich heiress was an appealing option for even the wealthiest family. As the figures in table 18 show, resident peers attracted wives who were described as ‘heiresses/co-heiresses’ and by the later decades of the seventeenth century nearly one in five resident peers married an heiress. In England, however, during the early seventeenth century ‘one in every three arranged marriages were with heiresses’.124 A detailed examination of these women suggests that Protestant peers attracted a higher proportion of heiresses, albeit of a non-noble rank. This, however, changed over the course of the century, and Irish Protestant lords increasingly married the daughters of Irish and English peers who are classified as ‘heiresses/co-heiresses’. Examples of heiresses abound. One of the most colourful was the fifth earl of Clanricarde’s only daughter, Margaret, who brought an ever-decreasing fortune to each of her three marriages (her husbands were Charles, Viscount Muskerry, Robert Villiers, Viscount Purbeck, and Robert Fielding). An anonymous poet celebrated her first marriage, to Muskerry, in 1660 as the union of two great and ancient aristocratic houses.125 He represented Muskerry as a great warrior – strong, brave and valiant – and his bride as ‘the luminous lady’ from Portumna. One well placed court cynic offered an alternative account. He suggested that Muskerry only married Margaret for her money. She was, he quipped, one of the vain fools of the court . . . whose husband most assuredly never married her for her beauty, [she] was made like the generality of rich heiresses, to whom just nature seems sparing of her gifts, in proportion as they are loaded with those of fortune: she had the shape of a woman big with child, without Table 18.  Succession status of resident peers’ wives, c.1600–c.1690.126 Heiress or Only Eldest Younger Illegitimate Unknown co-heiress daughter daughter daughter daughter status Pre-1649 (total sample = 225)

13.3%

4.8%

7.1%

14.6%

0.4%

59.5%

Post-1649 (total sample = 193)

19.2%

4.1%

8.8%

12.9%

2%

52.8%

17th century (total sample = 418)

16%

4.5%

7.8%

13.8%

1.2%

56.4%

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being so; but had a very good reason for limping; for, of two legs uncommonly short, one was much shorter than the other: a face suitable to this description gave the finishing stroke to his disagreeable figure.127

In the case of Lady Muskerry she inherited much of her father’s estate while her cousin inherited the earldom of Clanricarde. Only in exceptional cases did the title pass to the husband of an heiress. Sir John Clotworthy, first Viscount Massareene, and his wife Margaret, a granddaughter of Viscount Moore and a daughter of the first Viscount Ranelagh, had only one child, Mary, who in 1654 married John Skeffington, a substantial landowner in both Staffordshire and Warwickshire. On the death of his father-in-law in 1665, Skeffington became second Viscount Massareene by special remainder and succeeded to a considerable Irish estate in his wife’s right. In this instance it was the heiress’s, not her husband’s, estate which was the beneficiary of the alliance. In a male-dominated world, the presence of a man on the Massareene estate undoubtedly contributed to the family’s long-term survival.128 The Economic Importance of Marriage At the risk of oversimplification, the principal motive behind marriages was, in addition to siring an heir, financial and political gain. Astute unions could secure a family major capital sums in the form of marriage portions and access to new estates, along with political patrons and allies. Marriage involved a series of significant financial transactions. Women often brought considerable marriage portions or dowries to the marriage.129 In return for these payments the father of the groom had to undertake a far wider set of obligations. The most important was the provision of a future jointure, or annual allowance for support of the bride during her widowhood, and the ratio between it and the marriage portion was the main issue around which negotiations turned. A jointure usually took the form of physical ownership of land, though occasionally families preferred to retain the estates under unified management and to pay the widow a fixed annuity instead. The father also had to provide the couple with an appropriate allowance that would enable them to live in a style befitting their rank. In practice, it seems that only a minority of husbands or fathers of husbands used the marriage portion for the purpose for which it was intended (i.e. the purchase of lands or investment), which could result in legal wrangling and financial headache for later generations.130 There was nothing to prevent a husband from increasing a jointure and a number did, either to account for the rising cost of living or as a token of their appreciation for their wives.

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The size of dowries increased over the course of the century from between £500 and £1,000 during the early decades to between £2,500 and £10,000 by the 1630s.131 Of course, the provision a parent made for his daughter or son at marriage was linked to standing and status. In 1621 the earl of Cork gave one of his daughters, Alice, a dowry of £4,000 when she married his ward, Lord Barrymore. With his fifth daughter, Katherine, he gave a dowry of £4,000 when she married in 1630 Arthur Jones, later second Viscount Ranelagh, and asked that her in-laws purchase jointure lands at Grangegorman, near Dublin, worth £500 per annum.132 English grooms commanded higher dowries. In 1629 Lettice, Cork’s third daughter, married Lord Goring and took with her a portion of £10,000, which Goring then squandered.133 Mary’s dowry, when she married Charles Rich, later earl of Warwick, in 1641, was £7,000 (the outbreak of war meant that some of this was never paid). On the eve of civil war the average dowry was about £3,000, though the hardships associated with war reduced dramatically what a family could pay. For example, in 1644 Dorcas Barabazon, niece of the first earl of Meath, married the upwardly mobile George Lane, later Viscount Lanesborough, as his first wife. The earl of Meath was concerned ‘that through ye extremetie of the tymes I cannot as yet saye in what portion shall upon accompt bee found due unto her’, but promised to make interim payments of £40 until the matter could be satisfactorily resolved.134 During the later seventeenth century dowries varied considerably, from £1,500 which the earl of Westmeath allocated to his daughter Anne on her marriage to Lucas, sixth Viscount Costello-Gallen, to £10,000 which the earl of Ranelagh allowed for his daughter Elizabeth when she wed John, eighteenth earl of Kildare. The size of the dowries Ormond bestowed on his daughters reflected his status after the Restoration. As Ireland’s premier peer his daughters, who married members of the English peerage, were given portions of £10,000 or £12,000.135 On the marriages of his sons the duke was obliged to provide them with annual allowances (Ossory’s marriage allowance was £2,000).136 As the Ormonds discovered, these encumbrances put intolerable strain on the resources of even the largest landowners (see chapter 14 below). The amount of the dowry determined the size of the jointure. Jointures rarely generated an annual income of more than £500, but the figure rose with the passage of time and according to the rank of the bride and the wealth of the groom’s family. Even in the eighteenth century ‘a portion of £10,000, rightly employed, would provide portions of the same amount for three younger children, and a jointure of £1,000 a year for their mother for several years’.137 One of Antrim’s daughters, Anne MacDonnell, married as her second husband William Fleming, fourteenth Lord Slane, and brought with her a portion of £2,700 which secured a jointure of £300.138 Another daughter, Mary MacDonnell, received the same portion upon her marriage to Oliver

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Plunkett, sixth Baron Louth. The Louths provided a jointure of £400 and specified portions (of £800) for their future daughters and allowances (of £400) for their younger sons.139 As her first husband, Mary had married Lucas, second Viscount Dillon, and from this union she had an annual allowance of £400 which she brought with her to her second marriage, to Lord Louth.140 The use of a marriage settlement, which determined the portions for future daughters and allowances for younger sons, became common in Ireland. For example, between 1630 and 1631 the Chichesters negotiated a marriage between Arthur, later first earl of Donegal – immediately after the death of his first wife – and Mary Digby, a daughter of John, first earl of Bristol, who brought with her a fortune of £5,500. In return the Chichesters settled on her lands worth £1,000 (which she was to receive ‘in the common dyning hall of the Inner Temple London’), including much of their Devon estates. If Mary outlived Arthur, she was to live in the family home in Exeter and receive an annual income of £300. The marriage portions of their future daughters were also agreed at £6,000 if there was only one and £4,000 if there was more than one; if the girls married without the consent of their parents then their portions were to be reduced to £2,000 (for the eldest) and £1,000 for the others. If Mary died within two years and without ‘living issue’, £2,000 of her dowry was to be returned to her father. Finally, the Chichesters were required to sign a statute staple for £40,000 as security for Mary’s future living.141 In the event the couple did not actually marry until 1638 and Mary lived for another decade, during which time she bore her husband five sons and two daughters, all of whom predeceased her, leaving it to his third wife, Leticia Hicks, whom Chichester married in 1651, to provide an heir.142 The provisions made in settlements dating from later in the century were similar. The 1668 marriage articles survive for the match between Robert Barnewall, ninth Baron Trimleston, and Margaret, youngest daughter of William, Viscount Dungan of Clane. Margaret’s portion was £1,110 and lands in Counties Meath and Dublin, worth £200, were reserved for her jointure. Their daughters were provided for, and in his will (of September 1686) Trimleston allocated portions of £1,450 for his two eldest girls and £1,000 for the two younger ones.143 Complex though these negotiations inevitably were, they nevertheless helped to secure the futures of a daughter and her offspring. Equally important, a legally executed marriage settlement ensured the long-term political survival of a number of prominent noble families, especially Catholic ones (discussed in chapters 10 and 11 below). Marriage was also an effective means of estate acquisition for a lineage, particularly for powerful territorial lords, who manipulated the marriages of their children and extended kin in pursuit of consolidating their landed holdings and creating powerful dynasties. This was particularly true for the Protestant peers who intermarried with impoverished native Catholic families

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* P. Little, ‘Family and Faction: The Irish Nobility and the English Court, 1632–42’ (unpublished MLitt thesis, Trinity College Dublin, 1992)

Figure 1.  The marriages of the Boyles of Cork, 1620–42*



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with a view to expanding their territorial empires while, at the same time, creating an ancient and distinguished lineage for their recently ennobled line. The marriages that the first earl of Cork negotiated with the houses of Barrymore and Kildare are, as Nicholas Canny and Patrick Little have shown, excellent examples of this.144 Cork lacked an extended kinship network and set out to create one. He settled in Ireland many family members, his sister and his cousins, and married them to local grandees. The Boyle empire, however, rested on the marriages of the earl’s own offspring. He had 15 children, 13 of whom survived into adulthood and 11 of whom married (figure 1). A contemporary later noted the first earl’s achievement, ‘the founder of no family in England, was ever so far favoured by Providence, as to see so many of his children settled in the world, and disposed after so favourable a manner’.145 Matches with members of the established English and Irish titled nobility added particular lustre to the new lineage. Cork reserved four (of his five) sons for the daughters of English lords and wed five (of his seven) daughters to Irish ones. Old lineages, strapped for cash, also sought out parvenus like the Boyles. During the late sixteenth and early decades of the seventeenth centuries David, Viscount Barrymore, arranged a series of discerning marriages that consolidated his territorial position and extended his links with the lords of the Pale and Protestant newcomers. It was into this Catholic baronial network that Cork bought when one of his daughters, Alice, married in 1621 Barrymore’s grandson and heir, who also happened to be Cork’s ward. Ultimately, what mattered to Cork was the fact that the son of their union would be heir to this ‘noble and anciently hon[oura]ble house’ which, infused with Boyle blood, would regain ‘its former lustre and greatness’.146 As it turned out this did not happen and neither the second nor third earls of Barrymore distinguished themselves or acquired great riches. It was with the same ambition that in 1630 Cork wed another daughter, Joan, to the heir of the house of Kildare, Ireland’s premier dynasty in the pre-war years. Though of less value in terms of prestige and status, Cork also consolidated his links with more recently ennobled families: the Joneses, Viscounts Ranelagh, the Moores, Viscounts Drogheda, and the Digbys, barons of Geashill. The calculating and apparently callous way in which Cork peddled his children to the richest or most prestigious bidder was by no means unusual. The earl was determined to create a Boyle dynasty and he focused on this long-term goal rather than on the individual feelings and fortunes of his children. Those of his fellow lords, who were in a position to do so, followed his example. Within two generations the tentacles of the Boyle dynasty embraced many of Ireland’s titled houses. Cork’s second cousin, Michael Boyle, lord chancellor and archbishop of Armagh, took as his second wife, Mary, the Catholic sister of the first earl of Inchiquin.147 Alicia, their granddaughter and the eldest daughter of Murrough, Viscount Blessington, married another Catholic,

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Pierce Butler, fourth Viscount Ikerrin, whose title had long outlived his means. After the Restoration, Roger, first earl of Orrery, plugged this Boyle–O’Brien network (figure 2). Orrery’s second son, Henry, ‘an accomplished gentleman, but more of the soldier than the scholar’, married Mary O’Brien, Inchiquin’s youngest daughter.148 In 1666 Orrery’s daughter, Margaret, wed Inchiquin’s Protestant heir, William, later second earl.149 One of the most powerful men in Restoration Ireland, Orrery was ideally placed to protect the Inchiquin estates in the knowledge that his Protestant grandson, William, later third earl, would eventually inherit the vast O’Brien patrimony in County Clare. The Boyle alliances also directly benefited Inchiquin who, according to Oliver Plunkett, archbishop of Dublin, was one of the most influential Catholics in Ireland. The archbishop reported back to Rome that Inchiquin’s ‘sister [was] married to the grand chancellor, one of the two who will govern this country. The earl’s son is married to the daughter of the earl of Orrery, who is governor of the whole province of Cashel. . . . These are offices for life, and so it would be very advantageous to the faith there.’150 These marriages also finally laid to rest a lifetime of political rivalry between the two men and, as Ormond put it, made ‘a good end of old dissensions’.151 The other great political power broker after 1660, Arthur Annesley, earl of Anglesey, like the first earl of Cork, matched kinsmen with Englishwomen and his daughters with prominent, but impoverished, Catholic lineages (figure 3). One of his brothers, John, had married Charity, a daughter of Henry Warren of Kildare, a prominent recusant family. In return for helping the heirless marquis of Antrim (himself married to a Protestant heiress) to secure his Ulster estates and to alleviate some of his more pressing debts, Annesley married Elizabeth, one of his daughters, to Antrim’s heir and brother, Alexander. Since she died without producing a male heir, Annesley’s return on his investment was a poor one.152 At least the match in 1654 between his eldest daughter, Dorothy, and Richard Power, sixth baron Le Power and Curroghmore (Annesley had served as guardian to Richard’s lunatic father), provided a male heir, John, and helped to make ‘his house English’. To reinforce this, Annesley provided the couple with an English nurse for his grandson, an English cook and a Protestant chaplain.153 Annesley used his influence first with the Cromwellians and later with Charles II to safeguard the family’s County Waterford estates and to secure first a viscountcy and later the earldom of Tyrone for his Catholic son-in-law who, when he was later implicated in the Popish Plot, protested his Protestantism. Thanks no doubt to his father-in-law’s influence, Tyrone’s heir, John (later Lord Decies), conformed to the Established Church. Annesley also insisted that the eight-year-old John marry his twelve-year-old first cousin, Catherine, heiress to a vast territory known as the ‘Decies’ with a view to expanding the family’s territorial empire (discussed above). The examples

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Figure 2.  Family tree of the Boyles of Orrery

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Figure 3.  Family tree of the Annesley family



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of the Annesleys and the Boyles are particularly well documented but these sorts of arrangements were replicated across Ireland as nobles used marriage to build and consolidate their dynastic fortunes. Relationships Robert Boyle, confirmed bachelor and the only son of the earl of Cork who did not marry, wryly noted that marriage was ‘a lottery, in which there are many blanks to one prize’. He continued: ‘I have so seldom seen a happy marriage, or men love their wives as they do their mistresses, that I am far from wondering our law givers should make marriage undesolvable, to make it lasting.’154 Boyle was, of course, referring to a marriage being grounded in love in an age when unions, especially noble ones, were very carefully considered dynastic, political and economic affairs. As he wrote, he probably had in mind the disastrous marriage between his beloved sister Katherine and Viscount Ranelagh, or the tortured relationship that his other sister, Lettice, had with Lord Goring, which resulted in her periodically becoming ‘extremely sick in body and mind’.155 The couple had married in 1629 and appear to have been estranged by 1640. Of course, recovering relationships between wives and husbands is notoriously difficult in any era but particularly one where private records are so scarce. There were instances, including those of the Lords Antrim, Cork, Ormond and Orrery (discussed above), where a marriage was grounded in love, mutual trust and respect. Whether grounded on love or not, most marriages operated as partnerships albeit ones in which male authority predominated. Many women were astute at business, managing their estates more effectively than a husband distracted by war or politics. Elizabeth Shaw from Greenock married in 1587 Hugh, first Viscount Montgomery, and played an active role in developing his County Down estates, overseeing the construction of watermills and the manufacture of linen and woollen cloth, providing support for disorientated settlers and rearing her family of five.156 Equally entrepreneurial was Jean, the eldest daughter of Sir William Alexander, Secretary for Scotland, who in 1620 married Hugh, second Viscount Montgomery. Like her mother-in-law, Jean was a loyal and devoted wife (and after Hugh died also to her second husband, Lieutenant Colonel Robert Monro, the Scottish commander in Ulster), a dedicated mother to and educator of her four children, and wily mistress of an extensive estate and large household. She also ‘composed good godly verses’.157 After the Restoration, Antrim delegated the running of his estates to his second wife, Rose O’Neill. Her funeral sermon recorded how her husband, ‘who being bred up in the delicacies of a court, and his genius not inclining to the fatigue of business, left the whole management of his estate and confused affairs to her prudence and discretion . . . few women

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(if any of our age ever attain’d to so great a dexterity in businesse, and yet without diminishing ought of her duty to God)’.158 Some women assumed a public role during the civil wars when they defended and managed the family estates, or during the 1650s and early 1660s when they lobbied and importuned the authorities on behalf of their absent or disgraced spouses (see chapters 10 and 11 below). Lengthy periods of separation, especially during the civil war of the 1640s or the exiles of the 1650s, strained even the closest of relationships. The future Lady Tara did not join her husband in Ireland but wrote him long and passionate love letters from Brussels: Do not think I forget you. I would rather die than forget the man whom I honour and cherish more than myself. I have written you 20 letters or more since I came here, but you have only got three or four of them. If I can only see you again, nothing but death shall take me from you . . . . The longing I have to see you makes me think nothing of the danger of the sea.159

Other women emerge from the shadows during periods of family crisis, particularly during a minority or disputed wardship, or when an estranged husband or grasping brother threatened to violate a marriage settlement which provided financial security for a woman and her offspring. For example, on his deathbed in June 1659 James Hamilton, first earl of Clanbrassil, appointed ‘my beloved spouse, Anne’ as his executor and left his two sons, Henry and Hans, ‘to the education and instruction of my mother [Jane, d.1662] and my wife during their minority, earnestly praying that they may be brought up in the true Protestant religion, and after the best form and manner of civil nurture used in any of the three nations’.160 Anne did not hesitate to importune Charles II for the wardship of her young son and also enlisted the support of her influential parents (her father was the second earl of Monmouth). In 1663 she then dispatched the teenage earl to Oxford to be bred ‘under the care and tuition of Dr Fell, where he will be instructed in better principles than the place he now lives in usually affords’.161 Wills highlight the extent to which husbands regarded their wives as trusted partners and increasingly women served as executors. Of the 86 wills that are extant for the resident peers, 28 named a wife as the sole executor and three as the co-executor. In other words, one in three peeresses was made responsible for honouring the last wishes of their spouse. An unexecuted will, dating from 1616, by James Hamilton, first Viscount Claneboy, entrusted his wife Jean, daughter of Sir John Philips, with ‘the breeding and keeping of my son, James Hamilton, unto his mother, the said Jean, during the tyme of his tender aige’. It was for Jean, together with two other trusted friends, to select a boarding school for young James and ensure ‘that he be bred to all pietie

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and virtue, and be chieflie in the keeping of the said Jean, so long as he shall remain unmarried’.162 These sorts of requests were typical and provide quick glimpses of the love and trust couples shared. It was often in death that a husband publicly revealed his true feelings for his wife. The death of Lady Clanricarde left the fourth earl bereft. A letter dating from April 1632 captured his ‘extreme grief and vexation’ and the great loss he felt for ‘so good a wife and so great an assistant, that even in her greatest infirmities was to be so great a comfort and ease in all my troubled affairs’.163 It is clear from extant correspondence that the marquis of Antrim was devoted to his wife, the duchess of Buckingham, who throughout their relationship acted as his closest confidante and adviser, his deputy, secretary and watchdog. Particularly poignant is Antrim’s appeal, written in the preface to her spiritual meditations after her death, to those ‘that shall happen to looke upon this booke to be pleased to say three Aves for the soule of the duchess of Buckingham’.164 The duke of Ormond may have strayed occasionally but he loved his wife deeply and despite periods of prolonged separation their 55-year marriage was a very happy one. On her death in July 1684, Ormond’s great friend, the Anglican archbishop of Armagh, wrote to comfort him: ‘You have lost the noblest person, the wisest friend, and the best of wives that ever lived; one of such an universal goodness that her death doth worthily challenge not only your Grace’s, but the kingdom’s lamentation.’165 A pastoral upon the death of Her Grace the Dutchess of Ormond appeared shortly afterwards and celebrated the couple’s loving marriage: Full fifty happy years this matchless pair Liv’d in unshaken love; No Jealous care, Or mean distrust, did once their joys molest

The verse went on to recall achievements of the various members of the Ormond family, its ‘warlike’ sons and virtuous daughters.166 Ormond’s children enjoyed stormier relationships with their spouses. Elizabeth had married Philip, second earl of Chesterfield, but he made no secret of his love for his mistress, Lady Castlemaine. A well informed courtier described how Chesterfield had wed Elizabeth ‘without loving her, and had lived some time with her in such coolness as to leave her in no doubt of his indifference’.167 Yet when she attracted the eye of the lascivious duke of York, her enraged husband removed her from court in the midst of a scandal.168 In January 1663 the king became involved, much to Ormond’s embarrassment. The marriage survived, but when Lady Chesterfield died in 1665 it was rumoured that her husband had poisoned her.169 Another of Ormond’s daughters, Mary, who married William Cavendish in 1662, was also trapped in a loveless union. Her husband gambled, partied, accrued considerably

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debts and ignored his wife. Gossip about his mistress and their illegitimate offspring was widespread and led to public humiliation and reputational damage.170 Acrimony characterized the earl of Arran’s second marriage, to Dorothy Ferrar, and Arran declared himself ‘an enemy to matrimony in general’.171 The earl of Ossory’s marriage eventually ended in divorce. Ormond’s niece, Margaret MacCarthy, married Luke Plunkett, third earl of Fingal, in 1666 and over the course of their 20-year marriage suffered unreasonable ‘calumnies’. Her father and friends urged her to leave the earl but she persevered.172 After a 20-year marriage Robert Ridgeway, second earl of Londonderry, deserted his wife, Elizabeth Weston, who, her father claimed, had ‘suffered very much’. In 1635 the king ordered the earl to pay maintenance for his wife and children.173 Lady Katherine Ranelagh had a formidable intellect and was the Boyle family matriarch, exercising considerable influence over her brothers and especially Robert, the famed scientist, but her marriage to Arthur Jones, second Viscount Ranelagh, was deeply troubled.174 The couple married in 1630 but after the birth of a son in 1641 (she had already had two daughters) they lived separate lives interspersed with acrimonious exchanges. On one occasion she urged her brother to bring a formal complaint about her husband to the committee of grievances in the English House of Commons.175 A contemporary who knew them well described her as ‘a more brave wench, or a braver spiritt you have not often mett w[i]thall’ and her husband as ‘the foulest Churle in the world; he hath only one vertu[e] that he seldom cometh sober to bedd’.176 The earl of Clarendon and the duke of Ormond agreed that he was ‘the worst man in the world’ who ‘oppressed’ his wife and children and failed to provide for them.177 Her son, the first earl of Ranelagh, proved more fortunate in his match. When his wife, Elizabeth, died in 1695 much was made of their relationship and family life.178 The experiences of his Boyle cousin were very different. By the early 1680s the second earl of Orrery and his wife, Mary Sackville, a spirited daughter of the fifth earl of Dorset, had become estranged. Orrery wrote despondently to his mother from his seat at Charleville, informing her that he had no wish to live with his wife unless they could regain the mutual love of their first four or five years of married life and preferred instead to secure a military command in Holland. Prolonged lawsuits ensued, which poisoned domestic relations for generations.179 Accounts of the sexual activities of couples have not survived but sex, especially for women, would have been confined to the marital bed. Very occasionally a wife strayed, causing scandal and comment. The affections of Alice Moore, a ‘very handsome, witty and well bred’ daughter of the first earl of Drogheda and wife to Henry, second earl of Clanbrassil, whom she married in 1667, gave ‘too much opportunity and access to noblemen and gentlemen’ in Dublin and London.180 Her relationship with the king himself came under

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close scrutiny and one well informed courtier suggested in 1671 that Lady Clanbrassil ‘thinks to trip up Nell Guin’s [Nell Gwynn] heels, and you cannot imagine how highly my Lord Arran and many others do value themselves upon the account of managing Lady Clan[b]ra[ssil] in this affair’.181 This was unusual since sexual impropriety on the part of a noble wife was not normally tolerated, as the unfortunate experiences of Lady Balfour of Glenawley illustrate. In the 1620s James Balfour of Glenawley ‘though an ancient man of great adge’ married Anne, the 15-year-old daughter of Lord Blayney, who brought with her a portion of £1,200 on the understanding that she be granted jointure lands worth £300. After the wedding, ‘which was done on both sides with more haste than good speed’, Balfour reneged on the marriage settlement on the grounds that another man ‘had abused his wife both before his marriage with her and after’. Under duress, Anne confessed to her infidelities and a lengthy and very public lawsuit ensued that threatened to bankrupt her father, Lord Blayney (something that Balfour had fully intended).182 The ‘causes that induced her to accuse herself in a matter of unchastity, to her own and her parent’s dishonour’ puzzled the king, who then instructed the two peers to settle the ‘unnatural’ dispute without bringing further shame to all concerned.183 A number of the lords, especially the younger ones, frequented whorehouses or kept mistresses.184 An anonymous poem collected by Sir William Petty and probably dating from the 1670s vividly related the antics of Dublin prostitutes and their titled clients, including the earls of Ardglass, Arran, Donegal, Drogheda and Longford, together with Lords Blayney, Blessington, Charlemont, Courcy and Galmoy. The poem made references to extramarital affairs between William, Viscount Charlemont, and Jane, wife of Viscount Loftus of Ely, and to incestuous relationships (the parties were not named). Another London pamphlet published shortly after the outbreak of the 1641 rebellion claimed that one insurgent, Brian O’Dempsey, was ‘a base son to the earl of Clanmelero [Clanmalier], that he had by his own daughter’.185 Whether true or not these bawdy verses and pamphlets, the equivalent of modern-day tabloids, illuminate raunchier episodes of everyday life in early modern Ireland otherwise lost.186 Certainly a few peers infected their wives with ‘the pox’ or fathered bastards.187 Compared with the sixteenth-century, references to illegitimate children are rare even if it has been suggested that one out of 40 babies born was out of wedlock.188 Illegitimate offspring had no legal rights but fathers often provided for them. James MacDonnell, one of the first earl of Antrim’s illegitimate sons, later recounted how he had been raised in his father’s house till the age of 13. He then travelled to Spain, France and Flanders and ‘studied in foreign colleges three or four years’.189 The earl of Arran had at least one illegitimate son. Ormond furnished him with a modest allowance but refused to acknowledge him.190 The will of Cary

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Dillon, earl of Roscommon, who died in November 1689, included a bequest of £100 for his ‘natural daughter Frances whom I left at Mr Henry Dillon’s in the Kings County in Ireland’ and of £200 for Mrs Cecily Evers, who appears to have been her mother.191 The earl of Tyrconnell fathered two illegitimate daughters, who later married foreign noblemen.192 In 1662 Daniel O’Neill referred to one of the duke of Ormond’s mistresses as the duke’s ‘little wife’.193 Of his son, the earl of Ossory, Thomas Carte noted that ‘he was deemed not insensible of the charms of a daughter of Sir C. Swan, with whom he was really in love’ but that he had concealed his feelings so as not to hurt his wife (from whom he was eventually divorced in 1680), and in December 1677 he fought a duel over the wife of a Mr Buckley.194 Wives appear to have known of their husband’s extramarital affairs and had little choice but to tolerate the infidelities of a spouse or son. Conclusion One of the most important things that a lord could do for his lineage was to sire a legitimate male heir and this left him no real option but to marry since the future well-being of their house depended on securing a bride capable of producing a son (and many failed to do so, see chapter 2 above). In aspiring to found and sustain a dynasty, peers were at some level emulating royal behaviour. How this was achieved varied from family to family and was profoundly influenced by the economic, tenurial, dynastic and political concerns of the wider lineage. These familial agendas were further tempered by specific local contexts, political geography, the nature of the relationship a titled family enjoyed with the king and members of the administrations in London and Dublin, or major crises, especially the mid-century civil wars. The imperatives of individual lineages often accorded with the king’s wider ‘civilizing’ initiatives and the desires of men, like Sir William Petty, to make Ireland English, but, predictably, other factors – especially political, financial and landed gain – also helped to determine whom a peer married. What is clear is that marriages, including unions across the religious divide, could ‘raise or ruin’ a family and proved critical in securing the political and economic survival or continued prosperity of individual houses. It was essential for the male heir to marry well, but it was also – for different reasons – in the wider interests of the dynasty for his male and female siblings also to find wellconnected partners. The majority of younger sons did so and lived independently as country gentlemen within the wider orbit of the lineage. Despite the financial burdens marriage placed on a family and the tensions this could cause, daughters of peers were also destined for the altar. As in the case of sons, these marriages were carefully arranged with a view to forging alliances that would benefit the lineage and increase the capacity of the wider kin group to

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survive and prosper. The very real bonds of kinship and loyalty that these marriages forged manifested themselves in a variety of public and private ways: patronage in Dublin and London; active collaboration in Parliament; cooperation over local and landed issues; and socializing on the Dublin dinnerparty circuit, on the racecourse or at weddings and funerals. Of course, noble marriage strategies that placed a premium on social and economic advancement over religious conformity also attracted intense criticism and charges of degeneracy. The eighteenth-century antiquarian Charles Vallancey ranked ‘the degeneracy of many English families as a great hindrance of the reducing of this people to civility, occasioned not only by fostering . . . but much more by marriages with [the Irish], by mean[s] whereof our English, in too many great families become [in] a few generations one both in manners and interests with the Irish’.195 Vallancey may well have had a point. Yet these seventeenthcentury marriages also helped to forge a significant degree of social, even cultural, harmonization in this particularly transitionary century.

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PART II The Peerage in Politics

This part of the book offers a broadly chronological overview of the role that the peers played in politics – parliamentary, courtly, national and regional – between the 1610s and the 1680s. Chapter 7 highlights the importance of the royal court in London, the ‘nerve centre’ of politics and analyzes how the peers exercised power on their estates and in central and local government. The contribution that the peers made to parliamentary politics is discussed in chapter 8. Chapter 9 offers a sustained discussion of the civil wars and analyzes the military and political contributions the peers made to the Wars of the Three Kingdoms (1639–1652). Chapter 10 illustrates how the completion of the Cromwellian conquest reduced the resident peerage, especially those lords with royalist and confederate track records, to particularly low ebbs. Chapters 11 and 12 focus on the fortunes of the resident peerage in the 1660s, 1670s and 1680s. The implementation of the land settlement, which defined the lives of lords for the remainder of the century, is discussed in chapter 11. The focus of chapter 12 is political life after 1660.

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CHAPTER 7

Power, Politics and Public Office This chapter and the next one on early Stuart parliamentary politics

examine how the peers exercised political power in seventeenth-century Ireland. These discussions highlight the level of mutual dependence between the Crown and the titled nobility. On the one hand, the king relied on these lords in his task of making Ireland English; while, on the other, the Crown remained for the peers the best source for securing titles, offices, land and wealth. The focus of this chapter is threefold. First, it underscores the importance of the royal court in London, the ‘nerve centre’ of politics, as the place where policy was formulated, patrons were secured, patronage and clientage were exercised, matches were made and bad habits and debts acquired. Above all the court allowed peers to gain direct access to, and to forge relationships with, the person of the monarch, the fount of all honour, along with his family and favourites. Second, this chapter analyzes the role that resident peers played in central and local government. Across early modern Europe rulers entered into partnership with noblemen who wielded significant authority in their own localities.1 In seventeenth-century Spain and England grandees dominated central government, while in France and the Dutch Republic they played a key role in local politics. Ireland was no different. James VI and I might have fulminated against the lawlessness of his nobles and twisted traditional, baronial rivalries to his own advantage, but he nonetheless realized that effective and inexpensive royal government would prove impossible without their collaboration.2 He rewarded loyal administrative, legal and military service with titles of honour and expected established peers to serve as his counsellors and military officers. The fact that peers were required to take the oath of supremacy before holding office was a major grievance and the cause of considerable tensions. Who actually held office in Stuart Ireland and to what end? What role did the titled lords play in governing Ireland? How did they promote the Crown’s ‘civilizing’ agenda? What was the relationship between administrative and military service and upward social mobility?

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Third, this chapter explores the exercise of baronial power in the context of the law, which was ingrained in every aspect of early modern life.3 Military might underpinned Stuart rule in Ireland, but James VI and I favoured reforming initiatives that promoted the maintenance of law and order and minimized the exercise of private violence. It was the law, as Sir John Davies noted, that would make Ireland English.4 The introduction of English law throughout the island was central to any policy that aimed to demilitarize and to harness the Irish lords.5 This, of course, was nothing new. From the mid-sixteenth century the state had set out with renewed vigour to assert law and order by attacking the military systems on which lordly power rested and by pressuring lords, Old English and native Irish alike, to accept royal authority. Accordingly, legislation proscribed the collection of tribute, cattle-raiding and the maintenance of armed retainers, and mandated that all lawsuits be settled by English common law, all in an attempt to bring the people to ‘the obedience of English law and the English empire’.6 Determined to build on this, James appointed Sir John Davies solicitor general in 1603 (he was promoted to attorney general in 1606). Davies argued that the civillaw doctrine of conquest, to which James had appealed in The Trew Law of Free Monarchies, was the basis upon which English common law could be imposed and all competing Irish systems and customs, which allowed Irish lords to raise private armies, swept away.7 The Stuart Court The court, according to a recent historian of the Scottish nobility, was ‘the most powerful institution in European kingdoms’.8 Across early modern Europe relationships between kings and nobles were changing. The court has been seen as the crucial link in a chain of developments that transformed the higher nobility from local provincial power brokers and even semi-independent warlords to a more dependent position in the king’s entourage. The presence of the noble elite at court, which cut them off from their local power bases and the sources of their military strength, has often been viewed as part of the process by which the early modern state domesticated its aristocracy.9 This was precisely what the Tudor and Stuart monarchs intended to achieve when they summoned to court recalcitrant Irish lords or insisted that the eldest sons of the leading Catholic peers spent time living at the royal court. During the sixteenth century the heirs to the houses of Ormond, Desmond and Kildare spent prolonged periods of time at court, either basking in royal favour or languishing in disgrace. The possibilities and pitfalls of incurring royal (dis)favour are exemplified by the contrasting experiences of the tenth, eleventh and twelfth earls of Ormond. Reared as a Protestant, Thomas Butler (‘Black Tom’), tenth earl of

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Ormond, was educated at Oxford and Gray’s Inn. He spent much of his youth in London as a member of the courts of Edward VI, Mary and then Elizabeth I, only returning to Ireland in 1553 at the age of 23. The political geography of the Butler lordship ensured that he enjoyed the queen’s favour, something he skilfully used to consolidate his regional power base even in the face of local rebellions and turbulent politicking amongst warring factions in Dublin and at court.10 The experiences of Black Tom’s successor proved very different. His failure to cultivate friends at court left Walter, eleventh earl of Ormond, and his estates vulnerable. In the wake of a legal battle with Elizabeth, the only surviving child of the tenth earl, and her husband, Richard Preston, Lord Dingwall and later earl of Desmond, himself a royal favourite and a Buckingham client, Walter was forced to hand over half of his patrimony, including his seat at Kilkenny. When he complained the remainder of his estates were sequestered and he spent six years in gaol in London.11 The earl of Desmond’s daughter Elizabeth became heir to much of the Ormond fortune on her parents’ deaths in 1628. Despite plans for her to marry Buckingham’s nephew, she persuaded the earl of Holland to convince the king that she should be allowed to marry her cousin, James Butler, later twelfth earl and first duke of Ormond, also a grandchild of the tenth earl, and heir to the title. Their union secured for the time being the Butler estates and lineage and underpinned Ormond’s future political successes. A favourite first of Charles I and later his son, Charles II, Ormond held after the Restoration the privileged position of lord steward to the royal household, which gave him easy access to the person of the monarch and endless opportunities for the exercise of patronage. Ormond bore the crown at the coronations of both Charles II and James II, while his son, the earl of Ossory, served as chamberlain to Queen Catherine of Braganza. Ormond held dukedoms in both Ireland and England, together with other honours. In fact, Ormond and the earl of Ossory were both Knights of the Garter simultaneously, which testified to the extent of Ormond’s social and political importance after the Restoration.12 As the examples of the tenth and twelfth earls highlight, the English monarchs preferred to turn to their great nobles for advice, seeing them as the natural point of contact with their Irish subjects, and sought to work in partnership with them. Equally in Ireland, kingship determined the exercise of political power and the centre of that power was not Dublin castle or Westminster palace but the royal court in Whitehall. When viewed from the perspective of the titled nobility, the court in London was the essential point of contact between the Stuarts and their power brokers in Ireland. It also enabled physical access to the king, the source of honour, wealth, office, land and status. Both James VI and I and his son Charles I appreciated the

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importance of patronage, however modest the amounts.13 An award by letters patent entitled peers to an annual pension. For example, the earl of Thomond received £200, the earls of Castlehaven £500 and Conway £2,000, and the duke of Ormond £1,000.14 Many young Irish lords spent time at court, usually in their late teens or early twenties, sometimes after a continental ‘grand tour’ (see chapter 15 below). The court provided these young men with an opportunity to parade their loyalty and to secure the ‘cultural capital’, social skills and networks that underpinned their status as nobles.15 The favoured few enjoyed close physical proximity to the king as members of his household and entourage. John De Courcy, thirteenth Lord Courcy of Kinsale, was a gentleman of James VI and I’s bedchamber, and his son, Gerald, served Charles I until 1636 when he reverted to Catholicism and fell from favour. When compared with the Scots (149 Scots, many of them nobles, found employment at James’s court especially in the inner sanctum of the bedchamber), very few resident peers held court office, which further enhanced the status of those who did.16 In a world where direct access to the person of the monarch determined success or failure, these gentlemen of the bedchamber were recognized brokers capable of charging considerable sums for their services and support.17 The ability to gain access to the person of the monarch and to the patronage networks that enmeshed him and his household profoundly shaped Irish politics, and throughout the seventeenth century promoters of Protestant and Catholic interests vied for the attention and munificence of the king, his family, favourites and ministers. For others access provided opportunities for rapid advancement in a period of intense change. Chief governors, members of the Dublin government and the Established Church, together with prominent landed grandees and titled nobles, regularly importuned those who wielded power and patronage in London. As a result Irish lords, particularly the earls of Kildare and Ormond, had sought during the later decades of the sixteenth century to secure Elizabeth I’s favour and direct access to influential, and often overlapping, patronage networks at her court. With the accession of James VI and I in 1603 the number of peers from Ireland vying for royal approval or for the patronage of the king’s ministers and favourites, especially the duke of Buckingham, increased, a trend that continued throughout the seventeenth century.18 Consider the fairly typical example of Lord Balfour of Glenawley, who mobilized all of his courtly connections in order to further his various Irish vendettas, including one against a fellow peer and his father-in-law, Lord Blayney. In 1627 Balfour sent his daughter to London to lobby Buckingham and to bribe prominent courtiers, warning her that ‘the eyes of all men are upon you, and the business you have in hand’.19 Over the course of the early seventeenth century the Old English proved particularly skilled at securing the king’s ear, especially at times of political

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crisis: in the late 1620s and again between 1640 and 1641 (discussed in chapter 8). The patronage of a select coterie of exceptionally well placed resident peers provided direct access to influential brokers in both the English Parliament and at court.20 The prolonged residence in England – both at court and at Summerhill, conveniently located near the fashionable spa at Tunbridge Wells – of the Catholic fourth and fifth earls of Clanricarde and St Albans, together with their deep ties of kinship with members of the English nobility, ensured that they exercised very real influence. Prior to his death in 1635 Richard, fourth earl, used his political contacts at court to sabotage Lord Deputy Wentworth’s attempts to plant Connacht. Clanricarde dubbed it ‘a most abominable wicked invention, I should rather wish my hand in the fire first’.21 Back in Ireland the lord deputy had dishonoured Clanricarde by staying in his house at Portumna and holding ‘his court of inquiry in the hall, to find the earl’s whole estate in Ireland for the king’. To add insult to injury Wentworth allegedly slaughtered the earl’s deer, grazed his horses in the best meadow and cast ‘himself in his riding boots upon very rich beds’. The 72-year-old earl died shortly afterwards. At the funeral, which was attended by leading figures from court, Ulick, fifth earl, claimed that Wentworth’s shabby actions had hastened his father’s demise.22 The fourth earl’s widow and the fifth earl’s mother was the daughter of Sir Francis Walsingham, Elizabeth I’s secretary of state. She had previously been married to Sir Philip Sidney and the queen’s disgraced favourite, Robert Devereux, second earl of Essex. Their son, Robert, third earl of Essex, who later headed the parliamentarian armies, castigated Wentworth for his rough carriage towards his stepfather.23 In short, Wentworth’s actions brought dishonour to a particularly influential aristocratic lineage (see chapter 3 above). The fifth earl continued his father’s campaign and in 1641 the king finally agreed to abandon the proposed plantation of Connacht. Clanricarde’s contacts included the earl of Northampton whose daughter, Anne, he had married in 1623 and the duke of Buckingham, to whom Anne was related by a previous marriage.24 The Catholic marquis of Winchester married the fifth earl’s sister, Honoura, and Clanricarde enjoyed friendships with the earl of Bristol, the earl of Holland, a prominent member of the queen’s household, and the duke of Lennox and Richmond, the king’s cousin and a great favourite.25 These links helped Clanricarde to survive the upheavals of the mid-seventeenth century. During the 1640s the earl of Essex used his political influence to protect his half-brother and his Kentish estates. The family’s English connections also proved invaluable after the Restoration and marriages in the later seventeenth century reinforced these cherished networks, culminating in the marriage of William Bourke, seventh earl of Clanricarde, to Lettice Shirley, a granddaughter of the earl of Essex.26

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Other Irish Catholic peers were exceptionally well placed at court during the pre-war years and especially in the Catholic household of Queen Henrietta Maria.27 The second earl of Antrim’s marriage to the duke of Buckingham’s widow brought him the patronage of Charles I himself, together with that of his queen and William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury. The Villiers connection also linked Antrim to the earls of Desmond, Arundel, Suffolk, Northampton, Nithsdale and Pembroke, and two of the most powerful men at court – the dukes of Hamilton and Lennox (and after 1641 also the duke of Richmond).28 During the 1630s and 1640s, Antrim used these networks to promote the Catholic cause and the interests of his own lineage and clients, much to the disgust of resident chief governors. After the Restoration Antrim’s close contacts with Henrietta Maria and other Stuart courtiers helped to secure his survival (see chapter 11). The Villiers connection also brought Antrim access to unprecedented wealth. Together with her sons the duchess inherited an enormous fortune from Buckingham, which included his London mansions – Wallingford House, Walsingham House and York House – regarded by contemporaries as among the finest palaces in Europe. These were all near Whitehall. There were 19 more modest properties on the Strand, a mansion in Chelsea and another, New Hall, north of Chelmsford in Essex. The duchess was extremely wealthy in her own right. She received an annual income of roughly £4,550 from the Irish customs and a state pension of £6,000; she was sole heir both to her mother’s fortune and to extensive, unentailed portions of the Manners estates in Northamptonshire and Yorkshire; and she also owned estates near Winslow and Bletchley in Buckinghamshire, and others in Leicestershire.29 Given his position at court Antrim wanted an impressive English estate and late in 1637 he purchased for £12,000 a magnificent mansion at Bramshill in Hampshire, together with neighbouring lands that were worth £400 per year, because his wife disliked ‘the air at Newhall [in Essex]’.30 Almost everyone regarded the purchase as ‘an excellent bargain’,31 but one quipped that he ‘did not exchange Newhall with Bramsell [sic] for unhealthfulness so much, as because he conceived it in diminution to himself to live in his wife’s house forth of his own. This I assure you was the magnificat which fell forth of his own mouth.’32 Though Antrim later fell from favour, other Irish Catholics populated the court. From the 1650s Richard Talbot, later earl of Tyrconnell, and his brothers, together with other Catholic peers such as Theobald Taaffe, earl of Carlingford, became the advocates of the Catholic cause at court.33 Acutely conscious of the power these courtly connections afforded their Catholic and Old English compatriots, members of the New English peerage adopted similar tactics. In particular, the earl of Cork assiduously cultivated his English contacts and especially members of the queen’s household. Cork and his sons pandered to the king’s love of hunting and dispatched him

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presents of Irish hawks and wolfhounds.34 The earl sent the king other expensive gifts and made a number of trips to Whitehall to secure the patronage of Buckingham and other influential courtiers.35 In return they watched over the earl’s Irish interests and helped to secure for him coveted privileges such as the wardship of the young earl of Kildare, into whose extensive English networks Cork now tapped. From the early 1630s Cork won over members of the queen’s court by marrying off his children (four sons and a daughter) to influential members of it, including Sir Thomas Stafford, the queen’s gentleman usher, Lord Goring, her master of horse, and the earl of Dorset, her lord chamberlain.36 Cork also enjoyed, again thanks largely to astute marriages, contacts with the opposition earls of Bristol, Salisbury, Northumberland, Warwick and Bedford.37 In 1638 Cork bought from the earl of Castlehaven a fine estate at Stalbridge in Dorest, close to the earl of Bristol’s seat at Sherbourne. From there he entertained his extended family, cultivated his patrons and clients, and visited the spa at Bath and the court in London.38 The earl and his sons received a warm welcome from the king and ‘all the lords’ when they visited Whitehall in October 1638. The following week Cork had a ‘free and gracious conference’ with the king, who thanked him for his ‘many good services’ in Ireland ‘which he would reward to me and my children’.39 He did not have long to wait for his reward. On 28 June 1640 Cork was sworn in as a privy councillor of England and in November he took his seat in the English House of Lords. As with Ormond, Clanricarde and Antrim, these influential networks worked well for the Boyles as the family negotiated the complexities of the 1640s and 1650s. After the Restoration the second earl of Cork, who lacked his father’s political savvy, nevertheless maintained strong connections with the court which, together with his wife’s lineage (she was a Clifford) and his loyalty to the Stuarts, secured in 1665 his English earldom of Burlington, together with a variety of other regional appointments, including lord lieutenant of the West Riding of Yorkshire and recorder of York.40 In terms of their longevity and scale, the courtly connections enjoyed by the Boyles of Cork, Butlers of Ormond and Bourkes of Clanricarde were exceptional. The vast majority of resident peers lacked the financial resources to spend sustained periods of time living in London and oiling the wheels of courtly patronage. Yet even the shorter stays were significant and exposed Irishmen to the anglicizing impulses and ‘civilizing’ influences inherent in court life and culture. The very presence of Irish nobles in London, the melting pot of the Stuart kingdoms, helped to facilitate social integration between English, Scottish and Irish nobles which intermarriage reinforced (see chapter 6 above).41 Shared political grievances, especially during the 1620s, late 1630s and early 1640s, and again after the Restoration, forged further bonds between members of the Stuart nobility (see chapters 8 and

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12).42 There was also a downside to prolonged stays at court. The need to maintain a residence in London and another in the country, and to live a life of conspicuous consumption, challenged the resources of even the wealthiest Irish aristocrat (see chapter 14 below). Gambling, excessive drinking and extravagant socializing exacerbated matters and plunged many deep into debt. Moreover, absence at court could weaken a lord’s ties to his locality and left some exposed to politicking back at home. The Exercise of National and Local Power The Crown rewarded loyal service with titles and expected peers to serve as royal advisors and administrators. In Ireland many lords enjoyed some sort of public office. At a national level Protestants held paid administrative posts as privy councillors, lords justices and treasurers; legal positions as lord chancellor, judges and attorneys general; and military commands as governors of forts or army officers. At the regional and local levels Protestant peers served as members of provincial councils, governors, commissioners, or custodians of local records (custos rotulorum). The only exception to this, aside from during the reign of James II and VII, were the earls of Clanricarde who were governors of Galway. These offices provided sources of income and influence, as well as patronage for dependants. That lords vied with each other to hold lucrative and prestigious posts is understandable, and for many the ability to secure office was regarded as a reflection of their status and authority. For others office-holding facilitated upward social mobility, enrichment and, for the lucky few, ennoblement or the acquisition of new honours. Officeholding thus strengthened a peer’s position within his community and his ability to serve as an effective mediator between the local and national worlds. In the absence of a paid bureaucracy it also made the peers particularly valuable to the Crown. Catholic lords, especially the Old English ones, felt particularly aggrieved that their religious beliefs prevented them from holding local office as they had for generations. They repeatedly voiced their wish to be allowed to hold ‘any kind of office or dignity in the state, cities, towns and beyond, and may freely elect catholics as magistrates and all other officials, as well as judges, lawyers, schoolmasters, advocates, civil officials’.43 The position of chief governor, the king’s representative in Ireland, was highly coveted and accorded the incumbent quasi-regal status.44 During the course of the seventeenth century a total of 24 men served as lord deputy or lord lieutenant, some for very short periods of time. Of these only six were from the resident peerage but the longevity of their appointments ensured that men like Lords Chichester and Ormond dominated the political landscape during their tenures. In October 1604 James VI and I appointed

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Sir Arthur Chichester, later Baron Chichester, as lord deputy, an office he held until 1614. The first duke of Ormond served as lord lieutenant on three occasions (1643–50, 1662–9 and 1677–85), with his sons – the earls of Arran and Ossory – acting as his deputies during his lengthier trips to England in the mid-1660s and early 1680s. Prior to the earl of Tyrconnell’s appointment in 1687, Ulick Bourke, marquis of Clanricarde, was the only Catholic lord deputy (1650–2), but his tenure was as brief and as tortured as that of Tyrconnell, who died in 1691. In the absence of a chief governor the king appointed lords justices to rule Ireland. A number were titled nobles. During the pre-war years they included (in chronological order) Sir Adam Loftus, later first Viscount Loftus of Ely, who was also lord chancellor; Richard Wingfield, first Viscount Powerscourt; Richard Boyle, first earl of Cork; and Robert Dillon, second earl of Roscommon. After 1660 Roger Boyle, earl of Orrery, Sir Charles Coote, earl of Mountrath, Sir Arthur Forbes, earl of Granard, and (after 1687) the Catholic William Bourke, seventh earl of Clanricarde, held the position of lord justice and governed Ireland, often with two or three others. Peers regularly held the important office of treasurer-at-war and treasurer or vice treasurer and in the case of the Boyles, the first earl of Cork passed the treasurership to his eldest son.45 These offices conferred precedence in the Irish parliament, a daily allowance and, more importantly, gave the holders access to patronage and enabled them to reward political allies with lesser posts in the various branches of the central administration.46 Whatever form they took, patronage and clientage were features of Stuart society and operated at every level from the greatest nobleman to the lowliest tenant.47 A contemporary captured the advantages of having a powerful titled patron: ‘every gentleman (especially private ones) should have some potent personage of ye nobility (if of kin the better) to bee his friend, to scar men from attempting injurys, and unto whom he may resorte for protection, when wronged: And to take shelter under his cover, in stormy times.’48 The exercise of political patronage in early Stuart Ireland has been well documented. During the early decades of the seventeenth century, thanks to the influence of Lord Deputy Chichester, many newcomers rose to prominence first as administrators and later as lords and landowners. Francis Annesley, later Baron Mountnorris, Sir Francis Aungier, later Baron Aungier, Sir Toby Caulfeild, later baron of Charlemont, Sir Edward Blayney, later first Baron Blayney, Roger Jones, later first Viscount Ranelagh, Sir Garret Moore, later Viscount Moore, and others were all clients (and sometimes kinsmen) of Chichester, and through him they secured their offices and often their lands. The lord deputy promoted natives as well as newcomers: Sir Dominic Sarsfield, later Viscount Sarsfield of Kilmallock, Viscount Butler of Tulleophelim, and the earls of Ormond, Clanricarde and Thomond all benefited from his patronage.49

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A chief governor looked for advice and guidance to the collective wisdom and experience of his council.50 The Irish executive comprised the chief governor, the lord chancellor and archbishop of Dublin, the bishop of Meath, the vice treasurer, both chief justices, the chief baron, the master of the rolls and other appointed councillors, who were traditionally members of the titled nobility. The council met roughly 10 times a year (or less). Of the 309 peers who were politically active during the seventeenth century, a significant number served as members of the Privy Council (see appendix II). Seventyfour (24 per cent) sat as members of the Irish Privy Council, the majority of whom (56) were Protestant. During Lord Chichester’s deputyship membership of the council stood at roughly 50 and many of the leading figures were related to each other by marriage, which helps in part to explain the adept way the lord deputy managed it.51 Others were clients of the duke of Buckingham.52 The Privy Council advised the chief governor, issued proclamations and instructions, but left the business of government to provincial and county officials.53 Beneath the executive, there were roughly 70 other offices (largely administrative and legal) in the central government.54 Although lacking the status associated with council membership, involvement in the lower levels of the Dublin administration often proved lucrative and served as an important source of patronage. The system of governing distant and difficult areas through the appointment of a lord president and provincial council dated from 1569 (in Connacht) and 1570 (in Munster). With an army and a large number of officials at his disposal, the lord president enjoyed absolute authority in his own province and his commissions gave extensive powers, embracing civil, criminal and ecclesiastical jurisdiction, and martial law. Over the course of the seventeenth century three peers sat as the lord president of Munster (there were nine in all): Donough O’Brien, fourth earl of Thomond (1615–24), Murrough O’Brien, sixth Baron Inchiquin (1645–8), and Roger Boyle, earl of Orrery (1663–72). Peers predominated as lords president of Connacht: Richard Bourke, fourth earl of Clanricarde (1604–16), Sir Charles Wilmot, later Viscount Wilmot of Athlone (1616–30), Roger Jones, first Viscount Ranelagh (1630–44), Thomas Dillon, fourth Viscount Dillon of CostelloGallen (royalist appointee, 1644–51), Sir Charles Coote, later earl of Mountrath (parliamentarian appointee, 1645–60 and 1660–1), and John King, first Baron Kingston (1666–72). Both offices were suppressed in 1672. The presidents appointed their own councils, akin to the councils of the Marches of Wales or of the North of England, which involved another layer of local grandees, usually of New English provenance. In 1615 the majority of councillors for Munster were either established lords or peers in waiting.55 The council book for the province of Munster survives and vividly recaptures the extent to which the council acted as a ‘civilizing’ agent as it brought law

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and order to the province, inculcated English tenurial, economic, educational, cultural and social practices, and promoted the Established Church.56 In 1615 the king ordered the council of Munster and Lord President Thomond to cherish ‘the reformed and civill sorte of subjects’ and to instruct the ‘ignorant and disobedient . . . to imbrace knowledge and civillitie’.57 The earl of Clanricarde, lord president of Connacht, received a similar set of instructions.58 Thomond appears to have been particularly effective and the lord deputy later refused to let him travel to England because of his importance in Munster, ‘especially at Waterford, where his presence and judicious carriage has produced general obedience of those people to the provincial government since their disenfranchisement’.59 Regional governors were expected to pursue a comparable ‘civilizing’ agenda and over the course of the seventeenth century roughly 50 titled nobles served as county governors, for which many received annual payments of between £240 and £365.60 In theory, as governors they enjoyed considerable authority over the counties under their jurisdiction. Responsible for the ‘defence and safety of good and loyal subjects’ and the ‘punishment and reformation of . . . evil disposed persons’, they were entitled to assume command of local military forces and levy men, and to convene parleys with disaffected natives and issue protections. Some governors even held ‘power of life and death’ over their subjects ‘according to the martial law’ and often exercised this office with great brutality.61 In a number of instances the office passed from father to son. Thus the earls of Clanricarde held the governorship of the town and county of Galway throughout this period and received an annual payment of £243 6s 8d. After 1660 the government restored the Catholic sixth earl to the governorship on the grounds that the family had demonstrated its loyalty to the Crown and that ‘the now Earl has the greatest influence among the loyal Irish of any peer or native officer or commander in that kingdom’.62 With the exception of the 1640s and after 1685, Protestant peers usually held these key local positions, along with that of custos rotulorum. In addition, peers of both denominations regularly undertook specific administrative duties helping with the collection of taxation or serving as commissioners who evaluated the progress of the plantation. The commissioners nominated to raise money for the army in 1627 included virtually every lord, Catholic as well as Protestant, but this was exceptional.63 Whatever their religion peers rarely held any of the lesser offices of government – provost marshalships, the martial-law commissionerships and the county shrievalties – but often ensured that one of their clients did. During the early decades of the seventeenth century the earls of Ormond placed trusted cronies in most of the key positions in local government throughout Counties Tipperary and Kilkenny, and attempts to reverse this after 1633 caused considerable disquiet.64 The evidence is impressionistic and the

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detailed research remains to be undertaken, but it is clear that other key aristocrats did likewise. Public service at the highest levels could be a double-edged sword. For some the burdens associated with royal service tended to be overwhelming.65 A recent examination of the office-holding of Henry Docwra, Baron Culmore, who served as governor of Derry at the turn of the seventeenth century (he has been dubbed its second founder) and as treasurer-at-war between 1616 and 1631, suggests that ‘He served long and died poor’, having failed to secure for himself plantation lands in Ulster or elsewhere. His landlessness and poverty might be attributed to the fact that he never attempted to defraud the government, as so many of his predecessors had done and successors went on to do, including Sir Thomas Ridgeway, later earl of Londonderry.66 By the 1630s even the seemingly endless resources of the earl of Cork began to show strain due to his political activities (as lord treasurer and lord justice). During four years of office, which he claimed were ‘ruinous to my estates’, he allegedly spent £6,000 of his own money ‘maintaining hospitality and the dignity of the state’ and a further £1,200 repairing and improving the fortifications of Dublin castle.67 Similarly at the Restoration, Ormond’s salary and allowances rarely covered his expenses as lord lieutenant or lord steward and in 1682 he reported to his agent in Ireland that ‘the king’s affairs go on well . . . but if my own decline as fast it will be hard to repair them’.68 Yet office-holding provided opportunities for enrichment: the acquisition of land, prestige and status, together with easy access to patronage networks and lucrative fees and a royal pension. For some, these represented important income streams. After the Restoration the sale of ‘those places in the king’s household that were under him and voyd’ netted Ormond £17,000.69 Royal salaries were provided for Lords Annesley (£600 as vice treasurer) and Ranelagh (£1,500 as treasurer).70 By 1640 the presidency of Munster, which carried a salary of £1,500, was worth an additional £1,500 to the holder.71 The careers of two fairly typical newcomers, Sir Richard Wingfield and Sir Edward Blayney, illustrate the rewards that public service brought. Of English stock and a military background, Wingfield had fought in the Nine Years War and helped to suppress the O’Doherty rising of 1608. He served as a privy councillor, a member of the council of Munster, a lord justice, a commissioner for raising money for the army, and sat in the 1613 Parliament for Downpatrick. He also commanded a troop of horse and company of foot for which he received 15 shillings per day from the establishment. In 1609 the king awarded him the lands of Powerscourt and Fercullen in Wicklow, and Wingfield later secured additional acres in Wexford and a further 2,000 acres in the manor of Benburb, County Tyrone. In recognition of his administrative and military services he was created Viscount Powerscourt on

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1 February 1618.72 Similarly, Sir Edward Blayney held a variety of offices, including seneschal of Monaghan and the council of Munster and a military command. In 1604 the king appointed him governor of Monaghan (on a daily stipend of 10 shillings) on the grounds that he was ‘a gent[leman] of good sufficiency and understanding in matters appertaining to the wars and peaceable government’, and granted him 2,000 acres provided he built a castle for the ‘relief of Monaghan’.73 Within a decade Blayney had built his castle, fortified the town, and secured the region for the Crown. In 1614 Chichester appointed him to the Privy Council ‘by reason of his knowledge and sufficiency and long employment in his service in Ireland’.74 In 1613 he sat as an MP for Monaghan. It was 1621 before he received the title of honour, Baron Blayney of Monaghan, for which he had worked so hard. The career paths of Lords Blayney and Powerscourt were also typical of the 14 swordsmen who acquired titles during the early decades of the seventeenth century (see chapter 2 above). The fortunes of these men clearly illustrate the connection between military service, the acquisition of cheap lands and upward social mobility. Military careers, especially for lesser nobles and the sons of peers, remained important as the century progressed, even if English victory in the Nine Years War reduced the Crown’s standing army to a modest force. This, combined with the Crown’s concerted efforts to demilitarize Ireland’s warlords by undermining the ‘fighting and feasting’ culture that sustained them, transformed the domestic martial landscape. Yet Ireland remained a violent and highly militarized society especially when compared with its neighbours. Roger Manning has suggested that the number of ‘military peers’ (i.e. career soldiers with direct experience of battle) in Ireland in 1605 was significantly higher (at 72 per cent) than either in England (45 per cent) or in Scotland (43 per cent). By 1625 the proportion of Irish ‘military peers’ remained the highest at 68 per cent (the figure for England was 57 per cent and for Scotland 55 per cent). It was 1640 before the numbers of ‘military peers’ in England (69 per cent) almost matched the figure for Ireland (71 per cent), while that for Scotland soared to 73 per cent.75 The Crown expected the nobility to provide military leadership. The lords, especially the established ones, perceived themselves as a military caste where service on the battlefield continued to be inextricably linked to a lord’s public and private sense of privilege, honour and virtue.76 Thanks to the exercise of martial law, which was in operation in Ireland for much of this period, levels of state-sponsored violence were high. In short, the state and its titled agents in the localities used violence to wield power.77 Though the evidence is scarce, peers seem to have maintained private baronial armies or retinues and exercised considerable military authority, which became very apparent after the outbreak of war in 1641. During the later 1610s contemporaries noted how Viscount Gormanston presented himself in Dublin with large retinues of

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men, including some of his own men in livery.78 Others seized moments of national crisis, especially during the 1620s, to consolidate and modernize their personal retinues. The earl of Antrim’s patent required him to provide for royal service ‘120 foot soldiers, 60 to be good shot, and the rest swordsmen and pike men, and 24 horsemen’.79 In 1625, as the Spaniards threatened to invade Ireland once again, Antrim asked that his men be suitably attired with his colours (crimson and yellow taffeta) and properly equipped with the latest weapons, since he was loath to let them ‘go to the field like kernes’.80 Protestants, however, dominated the small military establishment, and attempts in 1627 to appoint Catholic lords of the Pale as colonels of regiments came to nothing.81 Instead, Protestant peers commanded five (out of nine) troops of horse in 1630 and the non-resident Richard Bourke, fourth earl of Clanricarde and stepfather to the earl of Essex, was the only Catholic lord to serve as a colonel of foot.82 Of course, Clanricarde owed his military command to the pre-eminent position he enjoyed at the Stuart court and his personal relationship with the sovereign. The centrality of military service to an aristocratic ethos also ensured that young nobles – Catholics and Protestants alike – volunteered for service when opportunities arose, such as the duke of Buckingham’s proposed expedition to La Rochelle in 1627.83 For instance, in 1626 the earl of Westmeath toyed with the notion of going to court to obtain a commission, and Secretary Conway suggested that a person of his distinction would be best suited to a cavalry command.84 Lords also took up arms in the service of European rulers: the Spanish and Austrian Habsburgs, together with the Dutch, French, Swedes, Russians and Poles (see chapter 15 below). But many only did so largely because they did not have – until the 1640s – an opportunity to serve the Stuarts at home. Law and Order Whether in local or central government, one of the primary functions of the Irish administration was to promote law and order. From the early seventeenth century the English legal system increasingly ‘defined and regulated relationships in Ireland whether between government and the governed; landlord and tenant; master and servant; and even, by the end of the century between Catholics and Protestants’.85 Or, in the words of a well-informed contemporary, the ‘Lawes are the ligaments of euery state, the sinewes of societie, the firme bands of unitie and comon concorde, and the high marshall of discipline and all comely order.’86 In Ireland a system of courts replicated the English judicial hierarchy. The high court of Parliament sat irregularly. The four central courts – exchequer, chancery, king’s bench and common pleas – functioned effectively and were located in Dublin castle,

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along with the court of castle chamber which was the judicial arm of the Irish privy council. A parallel structure of prerogative courts – the court of wards and the commission for the remedy of defective titles – emerged in part as a response to the uncertainties associated with a period of war and plantation. Assize and presidency courts were established as part of the surrender and regrant process and provided justice in the localities, alongside manorial courts (leet and baron). By 1624 the country had, as one recent scholar has suggested, a ‘full establishment of justices of the peace, constables, subsheriffs, bailiffs, gaolers, portreeves, recorders, sovereigns and other local functionaries essential to the task of carrying out litigation’.87 In 1621 James VI and I boasted to his English House of Commons that Ireland had never been more orderly. It had been ‘one of his masterpieces to reform it’.88 Despite complaints about the cumbersome nature of the judicial system and gripes about the corruptness of individual lawyers, judges and juries, levels of litigation appear to have increased significantly and this, in turn, can be linked to the decline in private violence.89 Analysis of 415 individual Dublin chancery recognizances dating from 1627 to 1634 reveals that litigants embraced every ethnic and religious group living in early modern Ireland.90 The fact that a disproportionately large number of Catholic Gaels appear in these legal records is particularly significant and indicates that chancery also acted as a forum whereby suits arising from English common law and Gaelic customary law could be mediated. A contemporary English observer, Fynes Moryson, suggested that ‘the inferiour Gentlemen and all the Common people, gladly imbraced this liberty from the yoke of the great lords’.91 In other words, the native Irish looked to the common law as the lesser of two evils and as a means of protecting them from the traditional obligations associated with a ‘fighting and feasting’ culture. From the early seventeenth century regular assizes and quarter sessions were held throughout the country, together with borough, sheriff, church and manorial courts.92 The lord president’s court also provided a cheap and speedy means of pursuing litigation and was widely used. Of most immediate concern to the tenants of local lords was the manor court, consisting of ‘court baron’ and ‘court leet’. The function of the court baron was to maintain the records of the manor and settle problems between the landlord and his freehold tenants according to customary law, and to regulate these relationships. A jury composed of tenants and presided over by the lord’s factor gave judgements. The factor also played the role of judge in the ‘court leet’ administering, with the authority of the Crown, basic justice in minor criminal cases. Little is known about the detailed operation of these courts but in many areas they clearly provided swift and affordable settlement of disputes amongst tenants, even if the landlords did pack them with their own nominees and relations.93 For example, in 1611 the earl of Clanricarde received a grant to

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‘hold a leet or view of frankpledge and a court baron within the manor of Tyaquyn, co. Galway, and also another leet and court baron in the manor of Callowe’. A generation later the Protestant bishop complained that these courts were so effective that they enhanced the earl’s power at the expense of that of the Church.94 At least 12 manor courts operated in Fingal, north County Dublin, including those for the tenants of Lords Ormond (at Whitestown and Rush), Thomond (at Holmpatrick) and Howth (at Howth and Jordanstown). Lord Gormanston’s tenants made the short journey across the border to attend his court at Gormanston in neighbouring County Meath.95 From the Crown’s perspective, the commitment of local lords to the enforcement of law and the provision of justice was of paramount importance for effective governance. In this era of increased and intensive colonization and expropriation, which brought with it tenurial insecurities and opportunities – in terms of acquiring lands and local influence – a knowledge of English law could well increase a family’s chances of political and economic survival and enhancement. Hardly surprisingly then, the peers, Protestant and Catholic alike, appreciated the importance of acquiring some legal knowledge and of cultivating contacts with the wider legal community in Dublin but especially in London. Some peers spent limited spells attending one of the Inns of Court in London or enjoyed an honorific association, and others dispatched close family members or clients to study the law (discussed in chapter 15 below).96 Four of the resident peers were practising lawyers: Adam Loftus, first Viscount Loftus of Ely; Francis Aungier, baron of Longford; Dominick Sarsfield, first Viscount Sarsfield of Kilmallock; and James Barry, Baron Santry. Their elevations to the peerage during the early decades of the seventeenth century highlight how effective the legal profession was as a means of securing social advancement. Between them these peers held principal legal positions: lord chancellor, master of the rolls of chancery, baron of the exchequer, chancellor of the exchequer, chief justice of king’s bench, or chief justice of common pleas. The son and heir of Sir Dudley Loftus of Rathfarnham, Adam Loftus was admitted to the Middle Temple on 10 November 1604 and as an honorary fellow to Lincoln’s Inn on 7 August 1628.97 In Ireland his uncle, Archbishop Loftus, facilitated Adam’s preferment in the court of chancery (from 1598 he served as a master of chancery), as a member of the Irish privy council (1608), constable of Maryborough castle (1611), and judge of the new Irish admiralty court (1612). In 1619, after offering the cash-strapped duke of Buckingham £1,000, Loftus of Ely succeeded his uncle as lord chancellor and after 1622 he served on a number of occasions as a lord justice. From 1613 to 1615 he sat in the Irish House of Commons as a member for King’s County and in 1634 took his seat in the upper chamber. Well connected though he undoubtedly was, Loftus of Ely

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also made powerful enemies and during the later 1630s fell foul of Lord Deputy Wentworth, who had him imprisoned and dismissed from office.98 Wentworth maintained that Loftus was unfit for his post of lord chancellor ‘both in respect of the weakness of his understanding, as also of his indirect, oppressive, and corrupt proceedings in the execution thereof ’.99 As lord chancellor Loftus of Ely worked closely with Francis Aungier, baron of Longford, who was appointed master of the rolls in 1609, an office he held until his death in 1632. He was a distinguished lawyer, first attending Trinity College, Cambridge, before being admitted to Gray’s Inn in 1577 (he was called to the bar in 1583 and became a bencher in 1602).100 The participants in Lord Longford’s funeral procession in 1632 provide an interesting snapshot of how his clientage networks permeated the profession. Among the chief mourners were five of the ‘six clerks’ of chancery and the clerk of decrees and recognizances.101 Given that their offices were in the gift of the master of the rolls, or subject to his approval, their presence at his funeral is not surprising.102 In addition, at least three barristers who regularly pleaded in chancery formed part of the cortege.103 Longford had used his privileged position to dispense patronage and to acquire property in London and Dublin and lands in County Longford and Surrey. His marriage in the 1590s to Douglas Fitzgerald, a daughter of the fourteenth earl of Kildare, allowed for his quick absorption into the ranks of the landed nobility. Dominick Sarsfield, later Viscount Kilmallock, was of a similar vintage and another of Lord Deputy Chichester’s clients. The son of a wealthy Cork merchant, he had been admitted to the Middle Temple in 1594 and became a bencher of the King’s Inns in 1607, and was very active on the council of Munster where he held the position first of attorney general (1600–4) and later chief justice (1604–8). In 1607 he moved to the king’s bench and between 1616 and 1634 served as the chief justice of common pleas.104 Like Loftus he fell foul of Wentworth (discussed below).105 Kilmallock’s humble origins and the fact that he used his position to enrich himself also incurred the wrath of Catholic commentators.106 James Barry also used his legal career to gain social advancement, but it was 1661 before he secured his baronage as Lord Santry. The son of a prominent Dublin merchant family, he was educated at Trinity College Dublin and called to the English bar at Lincoln’s Inn in 1628 and to the King’s Inns two years later. He enjoyed an illustrious legal career and was appointed prime sergeant in 1629, baron of the exchequer in 1634 and chief justice of king’s bench in 1660. His political experience was also extensive and he sat as an MP in the 1634, 1641 and 1661 Parliaments and in the convention.107 Socially, Lord Santry, like the other legal lords, was upwardly mobile and he serves as an excellent example of a man who used his office and influence to acquire wealth and status. His merchant background, however, remained

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something of an obstacle to his integration into the wider peerage, and the earl of Barrymore took umbrage when his heir married Santry’s daughter (see chapter 6 above).108 The direct involvement of other peers in legal processes took a number of forms: occasionally as criminals or more commonly as litigants (discussed in chapter 14 below); as members of public courts; and as dispensers of justice in their own baronial courts. The lords temporal sat as members of the high court of Parliament. In that capacity they tried Lord Dunboyne in 1628 and during the Irish parliament of 1661–6 became increasingly involved in mediating the land settlement (discussed in chapters 3 above and 11 below). Membership of the court of castle chamber was limited to members of the Privy Council, supported by common-law judges, but the peers attended irregularly.109 Other lords sought to influence the exercise of local justice or, in the words of a recent historian, ‘to annex the legal system to their own interests’. They secured the appointment of local justices of the peace, commissioners and sheriffs, and lorded it over their own manorial courts.110 No doubt the first earl of Antrim had an ulterior motive for asking that the quarter sessions of the assize be held on his estates at Oldstone, near Glenarm, rather than requiring his tenants to travel to the assizes held at Carrickfergus.111 Certainly in 1627 he refused to let judges of the assize take cattle from his land, put bailiffs in stocks for trying to execute writs in the county, and fined in his own manorial courts those who had turned for justice to the local sheriff.112 Many disgruntled tenants or business associates complained that this baronial influence made it impossible for them to secure justice or to receive a fair trial.113 Complaints regularly raised against the Protestant planter Richard Boyle, first earl of Cork, noted his ability to drag out lawsuits (and thereby impoverish his suitors) and his tendency to bully local sheriffs, to intimidate witnesses and, as a result, to prevent his opponents from enjoying a fair hearing.114 Other peers faced similar allegations over the abuse of private justice. Cornelius Kelly of Killeen in Galway complained in 1629 that Viscount Clanmorres had raided his mother’s property, taking away her cattle and horses, and had then embroiled the family in expensive litigation. Kelly begged for justice and asked that the proceedings begun against him be voided and the stolen cattle restored.115 In May 1634 Lord Deputy Wentworth summoned Lord Balfour of Glenawley before the court of castle chamber to account for the outrages he had allegedly committed while he served on an assize circuit. ‘I do not think there is such another tyrant in the king’s dominions,’ wrote Wentworth, ‘who [is], utterly drunk with the vice of violence, [and] hath with unequal and staggering paces trod down his majesty’s people on every side’.116 This echoed earlier charges made against overmighty lords. The poet Edmund Spenser had portrayed the Catholic lords as lawless princelings, as

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forces of degeneration, as the principal obstacles to the implementation of government policies and Protestantism, as upholders of an alien and subversive culture, and as disloyal ‘half-subjects’ who would rise in rebellion at the slightest provocation. ‘The Irish lords are great opposers of justice’ wrote one government official at the turn of the century. He added that Ireland was a country where a man could be advanced or beggared at the will and discretion of a lord and that the people feared for their personal safety if they complained about a lord’s behaviour.117 Matters barely improved over the course of the 1610s and 1620s. Shortly after his arrival in Ireland in 1634, Lord Deputy Wentworth articulated his contempt for the peers: ‘They would have nothing shew more great or magnificent than themselves so they might . . . lord it the more bravely and uncontrollably at home, take from the poor churl what, and as they pleased.’118 The key difference in 1634 was that these ‘opposers of justice’ included the Protestant newcomers as well as established lords and men who were supposedly committed to a ‘civilizing’ agenda, albeit one clearly tempered by self-interest. Extant correspondence reveals the extent to which the peers packed local juries with their own men or exerted their influence with judicial officials on behalf of their clients. In 1616 Lord Castle Connell asked Sir Richard Boyle, later earl of Cork, to ensure that the jury trying his dispute with Lord Inchiquin would be free of Inchiquin sympathizers. Later the same year, David Barry, fifth Viscount Barrymore, begged ‘his interest’ with the lords of the assize in a spat with one of his Castle Lyons tenants.119 With the passage of time baronial sway over the administration of justice became entrenched, especially among the Protestant peers. In a letter back to Rome, dating from 1670, Oliver Plunkett, Catholic archbishop of Armagh, noted how he had cultivated many of the local Protestant lords so that ‘I would be able to avail myself of the good will of these powerful men, upon whom all depends, whenever I should be summoned before a protestant tribunal.’120 The dispute between Richard Power, earl of Tyrone, and a local gentleman, Hubert Bourke, with whom Tyrone drank, fished and hunted, vividly recaptures the power local lords wielded in the 1670s. Bourke had represented Tyrone at the earl’s ‘court-baron’ in a case ‘betwixt the said earl and some of his neighbours and tenants concerning certain trespasses’.121 The next day the two quarrelled when Bourke refused to help with Tyrone’s alleged attempts to secure French aid for Ireland. According to Bourke’s published account, Tyrone imprisoned him in Waterford gaol and secured his trial before the Waterford assizes for allegedly assaulting a local sheriff, a friend of the earl. Bourke maintained that Tyrone had bribed the local legal and judicial officials and packed the jury with his ‘kindred and tenants’ and with Catholics. As the case escalated so too did Tyrone’s fury, and his henchmen tied up Bourke and marched him through the town as entertainment and a warning to the ‘multitude’. Bourke’s

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appeals to Ormond and other Dublin officials, in which he accused Tyrone of ‘popish plotting’ and pleaded for a fair trial, fell on deaf ears, and fearing for his life he fled to England.122 Whatever the veracity of Bourke’s allegations against Tyrone, there is little doubt that Tyrone’s behaviour was that of a bully and a thug who manipulated the legal system to his own advantage. Yet, as Tyrone discovered, he was not above the law. Having been accused of involvement in the Popish Plot, he was indicted at Waterford (August 1679 and again in March 1680) and taken to England, where he was incarcerated until 1684.123 Earlier in the century the lords justices were chastised for failing to reprimand the fourth earl of Thomond for an ‘error committed by him’. Thomond’s status as ‘a peer of that realm and a man of eminent place’ did not give him licence to ‘prefer his own profit before the public good of that kingdom’.124 In a separate charge Sir Daniel O’Brien complained that the fourth earl of Thomond had forcibly acquired lands from the McNamarras prior to 1624, ‘being then Lord President of Munster and so powerful that [none] could or dare oppose him in any his actions’. He added that the fifth earl was ‘so wealthy and allied and befriended with all the gent[lemen] freeholders in the several countries of this kingdom as your supplicant [Sir Daniel] may not expect any indifference of trial to be had by course of common law’.125 Thomond’s counterpart in Connacht, Roger Jones, Viscount Ranelagh, also transgressed and in 1641 faced charges of extortion, false imprisonment, and of using his position to secure lands by dubious means and bullying.126 Viscount Sarsfield was dismissed from office in 1634 following a case against him in the court of star chamber, which found him guilty of threatening and intimidating jurors.127 Despite these high-profile cases, the Dublin administration maintained that the situation did improve. On the eve of the 1641 rebellion, the lords justices boasted that ‘the great Irish lords, who for so many ages so grievously infested this kingdom, are either taken away or so levelled with others in point of subjection as all now submit to the rule of law, and many of them live in good order’.128 The outbreak of the 1641 rebellion made short shrift of the ‘good order’ and initially reduced the country to anarchy, before the Catholic confederates took charge and established a judiciary closely modelled on the pre-war legal infrastructure (see chapter 9). Conclusion In an age of personal monarchy government was the king’s business. Whether in London or Dublin it was ultimately the king who mediated the exercise of political power. The limitations on royal power in Ireland were very real, as they were elsewhere in early modern Europe. The monarch depended on

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securing the goodwill of noble power brokers in order to rule and ‘civilize’ Ireland. Given the precarious nature of royal finances and in the absence of a large army to coerce the population or of a significant body of bureaucrats to administer them, the Stuart monarchs found it hard to rule the ‘dark corners of the land’ without securing the cooperation of regional magnates, whatever their religion.129 For their part, however, many members of the Catholic ruling elite resented the very real diminution of their influence that occurred as the Crown promoted Protestant parvenus. Richard Bellings justified Catholic involvement in the 1641 rebellion on the grounds that they were denied adequate opportunity to serve the king: We have considered the condition of all the other kingdomes of Europe, and we are the sole subjects, who, being much the more numerous and powerfull, are made incapable of raysing our fortunes by serving our King in any place of honour, profitt, or trust, in that country wherin we were borne, and which God, of his providence, appointed us as a part of the earth which our ancestors for soe many hundred yeares did inhabit.130

The Dublin administration also grumbled that the king promoted the interests of the Catholic lords, especially those who exercised influence at court, but had no alternative than to accept this. The compromise that the limited co-option of the Catholic aristocracy represented might have proved distasteful to some Protestants, but it nevertheless reflected the realities involved in ruling seventeenth-century Ireland. The ambiguities and tensions that characterized Stuart Ireland would end in 1691 with the military defeat of Irish Catholics and their total exclusion from power, politics and public office. Thereafter, Ireland resembled more closely the Habsburg lands of Bohemia and Lower Austria where, after 1620, nobles who wished to wield power, own land and have a political voice had no alternative but to espouse the religion of their ruler.131

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CHAPTER 8

Early Stuart Parliaments

1

In an important article on communication in early modern England Kevin

Sharpe noted that open two-way communications – from the court to the locality and from the locality to the centre – underpinned the effective operation of government, the key elements of which were the court, the council and the aristocracy. Parliament was not an ordinary institution of government and its two most important functions – passing laws and voting taxes – were themselves extraordinary. However, with the collapse in England of this chain of communication, problems, grievances and issues normal to political life (and generally ironed out by informal contact and action between the court and the locality) increasingly came before Parliament.2 In Ireland something similar was happening over the course of the early seventeenth century, reaching crisis point during the late 1630s. Having been excluded from serving their king during the early decades of the century, the Irish parliament remained the only arena where Catholics could engage in national politics. Or, in the words of the earl of Castlehaven, by 1641 the Irish parliament had become ‘the only way the nation had to express their [sic] loyalty and prevent their [sic] being misrepresented to their sovereign’.3 This chapter examines the contribution that the peers made to parliamentary politics, especially in the parliaments of 1613, 1634 and 1640–1, while chapter 12 focuses on their role in the Restoration Parliament. Though in no sense representative, the pre-1641 Irish parliaments included elected Catholic and Protestant MPs from a variety of ethnic backgrounds (native Irish, Old English, New English and Scottish), who sat together with an upper house of spiritual and temporal peers.4 Sir William Brereton visited Dublin castle in 1635 and described the houses of parliament, which he felt were ‘much less and meaner than ours [i.e. in England]’. The House of Lords was ‘a room of no great state nor receipt. Herein there sat [in] the first session about eighty lords . . . . The Commons House is but a mean and ordinary place; a plain, and not very convenient seat for the Speaker, nor officers.’5 However modest

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the building may have been, natives and newcomers alike acknowledged the fundamental importance of parliament to the exercise of political authority in Ireland. Writing shortly after the opening session of the 1613 parliament, an Old English recusant observed that ‘a parliament is in the nature of a principle w[hi]ch a man must believe in, without dispute or question’.6 Though the circumstances of his selection as speaker proved fraught (discussed below), Sir John Davies’s acceptance speech in 1613 captured the importance of parliament as a place where ‘all the inhabitants of the kingdom, English of birth, English of blood, the new British colony, and the old Irish natives, do meet together to make laws for the common good of themselves and their posterities’.7 Nearly thirty years later, in July 1641, the Irish House of Commons reiterated the centrality of parliament to the exercise of power in Ireland and declared that ‘the subjects of this his majesty’s kingdom are a free people, and to be governed only according to the common-law of England, and statutes made and established by the parliament in this kingdom of Ireland, and according to the lawful customs used in the same’.8 This was the theory; predictably, the practice proved less clear cut. From the scrappy evidence that has survived, historians have reconstructed the procedures and protocols of the Irish parliament which largely followed English practice, including those that accompanied the opening of a parliament, the election of the speaker, respect for the ancient privileges of the lower house (freedom from arrest and the freedom to speak freely), and the daily routine of sitting from 8 or 9 a.m. until midday and reserving the afternoons for committee work.9 The Dublin assembly even followed English precedents to exercise the parliamentary right of impeachment.10 The Irish parliament met infrequently in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.11 From the 1530s until 1603, a period of 73 years, eight parliaments assembled usually sitting for a year, two at most. There were only five Stuart parliaments. James VI and I’s only Irish parliament, which was the first assembly to meet since 1585–6, opened in 1613. This body had three sessions, which lasted for one week, six weeks and four weeks, or a total of 11 weeks. Charles I’s first Dublin parliament met between July 1634 and April 1635 (with three sessions lasting in all nearly 20 weeks), and his second between 1640 and 1648. Charles II’s Irish parliament met between 1661 and 1666 but in fact it sat for less than three of the five years. In 1689 James II convened what is known as the ‘Patriot Parliament’ and it met for only 12 weeks.12 Poynings’ Law, which mandated that no parliament could meet in Ireland unless licensed to do so by the king and that the king and his English council approved all legislation to be submitted to an Irish parliament, restricted the legislative function of the Irish parliament. The 1613 parliament only passed a subsidy bill and 10 statutes, a fraction of what had been contemplated.13 The legislative record of the 1634 parliament was, however, very different,

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with 72 statutes being enshrined in law.14 This extraordinary level of activity, which has been attributed to Lord Deputy Wentworth’s close working relationship with Charles I and his bullying tactics (rigging the elections, manipulating the Commons, arrest of MPs and so on), was repeated in the first session of the 1640 parliament which passed 14 laws.15 The removal of Wentworth and the outbreak of civil war ended this legislative bonanza until the Restoration parliament passed 87 bills, including the controversial and lengthy (600 pages) Act of Settlement (31 July 1662), followed by the Act of Explanation (23 December 1665).16 Whatever the legislative significance of Poynings’ Law, it is important to note the extent to which Poynings shaped – and continued to shape throughout both the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries – the constitutional relationship between Ireland, the English council and, above all, the Stuart king.17 The other key constitutional development was the passage of the Kingship Act in 1541, which transformed Ireland’s status from a lordship into an imperial kingdom: That his Majesty, his heirs and successors, be from henceforth named . . . kings of this land of Ireland . . . for ever, as united and knit to the imperial crown of the realm of England.18 (italics mine)

The phrase ‘united and knit’ implied that the two kingdoms were equal, albeit under the rule of the English sovereign (but not his English Parliament).19 Yet according to the English statute that gave legislative sanction to the act, it ‘united and annexed [Ireland] forever to the Imperial crown of his highness’ realm of England’.20 Thus from the outset the roles played by the English and Irish parliaments in defining the nature of kingship in its Irish context were ambiguous and understandably resulted in a variety of interpretations, particularly during the 1640s and after 1688 when the tortured working relationship between the king and his English Parliament disintegrated.21 Equally, English military victories after 1649 reinforced Ireland’s position as a vanquished and conquered nation. And with the passage of the Adventurers’ Act (1642) and the Acts of Settlement and Explanation (1652, 1662 and 1665) the English Parliament asserted its legislative supremacy, something it continued to do for the rest of the seventeenth century. What role then did the temporal resident peers play in these parliaments and what were their spheres of influence? The political career of 309 peers has been examined between 1603 and 1689 (see appendix II for details). Of these men, roughly 200 (65 per cent) took their seats in at least one national parliament in either Ireland or England, with 140 (45 per cent) sitting in only one parliament, 44 (14 per cent) sitting in two parliaments, and 16 (5 per cent) sitting in three or more parliaments. The majority sat in the Irish House of

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Lords but nine peers, who also held English titles, sat in the English upper house (the first and second dukes of Ormond, the first and second earls of Cork, and three generations of Lords Conway and the first and second earls of Clanricarde). The relationship between the two houses was critical. Many peers sat as MPs before assuming their titles and ensured that their close kinsmen or clients were elected to the lower house. Over the course of the century a significant number of peers had been elected as MPs. Forty-seven (15 per cent) sat in the Irish Commons and served as important points of contact between the two chambers. Twenty (6 per cent) had sat in the English House of Commons either prior to moving to Ireland, as part of the antiWentworth campaign of 1640–1 (discussed below) or after the Restoration (see chapter 11 below).22 Nine Protestant peers sat as MPs in both the Irish and the English lower houses. Whether in London or Dublin, 40 (13 per cent) lords sat in both the Commons and the Lords, providing them with considerable practical experience of parliamentary processes and access to influential political networks and patrons on both sides of the Irish Sea.23 The 1613–15 Parliament The need to promote the interests of one group over those of another characterized parliamentary politics in Dublin throughout the seventeenth century. Traditionally, the Old English had dominated political processes and parliamentary structures, to the virtual exclusion of the native Irish.24 However, by the early seventeenth century the Crown and its Dublin executive determined to replace the Catholic majorities in the Elizabethan parliaments with those who supported the Protestant interest. Thus James VI and I created 40 parliamentary boroughs out of the newly founded plantation towns, with the specific intention of packing the 1613 Irish House of Commons with Protestant MPs and thereby diluting the Old English influences that had hitherto predominated. The state’s electoral strategy resulted in the return of 100 Catholics (only one of whom was from Ulster) and 134 Protestants (63 of whom were from Ulster). For the first time Protestants enjoyed a majority in the lower house.25 The king also tried to increase his hold of the upper house by calling ‘by writ’ the earl of Abercorn, together with Lords Ibracken, Ochiltree (later Baron Castle Stewart) and Audley (later the earl of Castlehaven).26 These encroachments strengthened the resolve of the ‘opposition’ to resist. From the late sixteenth century, the opposition – invariably Catholic and of Old English provenance – focused on religious and constitutional grievances over the collection of cess (or taxation) without their consent, their exclusion from government, and their identity as the ‘English’ of Ireland. Catholic opposition to the government’s preparations for James’s Parliament had

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begun in November 1612 when some of the leading lords of the Pale claimed that they had the right to be consulted about bills that were to be presented. In April 1613 Lord Deputy Chichester reported that ‘the contrary faction are now in consultation dayly, with their lawyers, Jesuits and seminary priests, how to make their party strong and to give impediments unto the designes in hand’.27 The following month 12 recusant lords wrote to the king, indicating that the policies of the Dublin administration, especially the creation of new boroughs and the proposed anti-Catholic legislation, risked inciting ‘dis­­ orders’.28 These ‘disorders’ had already manifested themselves during contested parliamentary elections. For example, local recusants disputed the returns of Sir James Hamilton and Sir Hugh Montgomery, both of whom were later elevated to the peerage, for County Down, arguing that Rowland Savage and Sir Arthur Magennis, later Viscount Iveagh, had secured more votes. Similarly, the local Protestant sheriff rigged the returns for Counties Armagh, Fermanagh and Cavan, and scuffles occurred between the supporters of the various candidates.29 In the Cavan election Oliver Lambert, who was returned as the MP and later became baron of Cavan, intimidated one elector ‘with a truncheon’, striking ‘him on the head’ and imprisoning others.30 As for the upper house, Viscount Roche of Fermoy complained that not all of the ancient nobility had been summoned according to ancient custom.31 On the eve of the opening of parliament the Catholic lords wrote to Lord Deputy Chichester ‘with sundry exceptions, but specially against the place, appointed for the parliament to be houlden at, and against the erection of so many borroughes’.32 After a series of disputes relating to precedence, official proceedings finally began on 18 May 1613 with a service in St Patrick’s cathedral. Chichester ‘with the Lords Spiritual and temporal all in their Parliament Robes . . . attended also by the Knights, Citizens and Burgesses of the Commons house in Parliament’ processed from Dublin castle to the cathedral, which the Catholic lords refused to enter preferring to wait outside. After the archbishop of Dublin delivered his sermon they processed back to the parliament chamber, where Chichester addressed both houses and invited the Commons to appoint their speaker.33 Matters took a turn for the worse when, led by the lawyers, the opposition disputed the legality of the Protestant majority. They became involved in an unseemly scuffle that involved Sir Walter Butler, later eleventh earl of Ormond, trying to replace the government nominee for speaker (Sir John Davies) with their own candidate, Sir John Everard, himself a noted lawyer. When Everard was ejected, the opposition, encouraged by the Old English peers, withdrew.34 The following day, the recusant lords requested leave to see the king and a delegation that included Lords Barry, Delvin, Dunboyne, Fermoy, Gormanston, Killeen, Slane and Trimleston, together with a number of MPs, travelled to London where they met with a frosty reception. How, demanded

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James, could the Irish claim to be ‘loyal vassals when they had given their souls to the Pope and their bodies to the king of Spain’?35 Baulking at the prospect of further confrontation, however, the king finally acquiesced to some of the demands of his ‘half subjects’.36 The token compromise ended the boycott and parliamentary business resumed without further incident.37 Back in Ireland the government published a royal proclamation in which the king dismissed those who had raised objections in Parliament and at court as stubborn and ‘undutifull’ children but ones who would be reconciled to their benign parent.38 Attendance in the Lords during the later sessions was patchy but 11 recusant peers, led by the Viscount Gormanston, regularly took their seats and closely monitored proceedings.39 The government’s majority in the Lords, however, depended on securing the attendance of 20 spiritual lords and four Protestant peers (some of whom had been summoned by writ for the occasion), led by the earl of Thomond.40 This dependence on the spiritual peers left the Dublin administration feeling exposed and so it welcomed the creation in the late 1610s and 1620s of a new cohort of Protestant peers, many of whom were non-resident and simply handed control over their proxies to the state (see chapter 2 above). The Graces With the conclusion of James’s only Irish parliament in 1615 the active phase of his kingship in Ireland, which had itself only begun in 1606, ended. Thereafter James took little interest in his third kingdom, delegating it to his favourite Buckingham.41 External threats, linked to James’s foreign policy, destablized Irish affairs and fears of a continental war and later of a possible Spanish invasion of Ireland resulted in the increase of the Irish military establishment. The new king, Charles I, looked to the Irish grandees, especially the Old English nobles, for support. Eager to display their loyalty by helping their new king in his hour of need, the Old English responded positively and communicated with Charles I through the agency of Richard Nugent, elevated in 1621 to the earldom of Westmeath. Understandably, Lord Deputy Falkland had his concerns about these developments and described Westmeath as ‘very busy and ambitious, and his ways very popular, appearing upon all occasions wherein the country may seem to be entitled to an interest, and eager in pressing of grievances’. Falkland continued that ‘he is the minion of the Jesuits and priests, who labour to rivet him in the opinion of the people of the Popish party, who have all their eyes fixed upon him, as for them the principal person of consequence in this kingdom’.42 Despite Falkland’s concerns, Charles I and Westmeath reached an agreement and in September 1626 the king instructed Falkland to increase the Irish army to 5,000 foot and 500 horse and to call a meeting of the nobility

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where arrangements would be made for the support of the army. Charles also sent Falkland a list of 26 concessions that he was willing to consider, including the suspension of recusancy fines, along with other religious tests for officeholding. After October 1626 leading grandees held a series of meetings, culminating in a ‘Great Assembly’, as the gathering became known, that met in April ‘after a parliamentary way’. The lord deputy pressed his case for support for the increased military establishment, but the lords prevaricated. The Protestants baulked at the prospect of royal compromises and the Catholics, increasingly distrustful of the king’s real intentions, called for a parliament that could enshrine in legislation any concessions. In May the earl of Westmeath sailed for England, returning triumphantly in mid-June with the news that Charles I was willing to receive an Irish delegation. Months of negotiation ensued, which finally resulted in the king’s agreeing in May 1628 to 51 ‘Instructions and Graces’ in return for four annual subsidies of £40,000.43 The Graces guaranteed Catholic security of tenure and ended much religious discrimination.44 Desperate to secure the promised subsidies, Falkland made hasty preparations for the calling of a parliament in 1628, but a procedural error on his part meant that it never met and ratification of the Graces was postponed. The external crisis passed, which led to a reduction both in the military establishment and the subsidies, now £20,000 for four years. In 1630 the earl of Cork reported to London that in the 43 years he had lived in Ireland, things had never been so quiet. ‘The great lords with their great followings are all gone and rebellious spirits grown old.’ He added that ‘barbaric practices and plunder’ had ended, the Irish gentry had titles to their lands, and rural settlements and urban developments were prospering.45 The 1634–5 Parliament For the time being the Old English had clung on to their privileged position as political and parliamentary power brokers. By 1634 the situation was very different. Lord Deputy Wentworth was determined to ensure that, rather than being an instrument of the former colonial elite, the Irish parliament would serve as a tool of government. In the lower house the government now held a clear majority with 142 Protestant MPs, many of them recent planters, together with a high number of office-holders and non-residents, often Wentworth clients. New temporal ennoblements gave the government full control of the upper house for the first time (chapter 2 above). Back in 1613, 12 Catholic and four Protestant peers had attended the Lords, leaving the government embarrassingly dependent on the support of 20 bishops. However, by 1634 the composition of the upper house had been radically transformed. Membership trebled to 123 peers, 24 lords spiritual and

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99 lords temporal. Of the temporal peers, two-thirds were Protestant and one-third non-resident. This influx of new peers gave the government a clear majority, for the first time, an advantage that Lord Deputy Wentworth planned to make the most of. In a confidential memo sent to England in the spring of 1634, he outlined his parliamentary strategy: I shall endeavour, the lords house be so composed as that neither the Recusants, not [nor] yet the Protestants shall appear considerably more one then the other, and holding them as much as may be, upon equall balance, for they will prove them easier to governe, then if either party were absolute.46

For Wentworth’s ‘divide and rule’ agenda to succeed in the Lords, he required the full support of the bishops (which the king agreed to secure for him) and control over the proxies of all the non-resident peers.47 In accordance with his wishes, the king encouraged non-residents to absent themselves and to send Wentworth their blank proxies. George Calvert, Lord Baltimore, noted how it had been suggested that he and ‘other members of that Parliam[en]t that are here [i.e. in England], to be absent from it [the Irish parliament]’, adding, ‘I conceive it good manners to accept of it, for it is lit[t]le less of then a com[m]and to do soe.’48 Thus Wentworth’s strategy for managing the Lords revolved around his control over the 36 proxies of absent peers, preferring ‘their proxies’ to ‘their company’.49 As a result eight peers, each armed with four or five proxies, ‘could outvote all the temporal nobility present’.50 To consolidate his position further, Wentworth also forged during the early weeks of the parliament a temporary alliance with the Old English activists (many of whom had formed the backbone of the opposition in 1613). This facilitated the passage in the first session of four subsidy bills and other important legislation. However, the lord deputy’s refusal to enshrine in statute the 1628 Graces shattered this uneasy coalition. Yet, ultimately Wentworth succeeded in pushing through a carefully prepared body of government legislation. In the process he not only alienated key members of the Old English community, but also many Protestant New English planters by depriving them of administrative office or challenging their titles to land. For his part, the earl of Westmeath, who had done so much to secure the Graces and ‘whose movements were rarely without political significance’, sought permission to make a pilgrimage to Loreto in Italy.51 The 1640–1 Parliament From Wentworth’s perspective the 1634–5 parliament, with its raft of government legislation, had proved an overwhelming success and he planned to

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deploy his ‘divide and rule’ strategy in the parliament which assembled in March 1640. However, on this occasion his political enemies – Catholic and Protestant, Old and New English – allied against him. With few exceptions, Wentworth’s policies had seriously challenged the personal power bases of the landed elites and during his brief lord deputyship he had castigated and humiliated most of the peerage.52 The earls of Antrim, Clanricarde, Cork, Fingal, Kildare, Meath and Westmeath; Viscounts Dillon of Costello-Gallen, Loftus of Ely, Roche of Fermoy, Sarsfield of Kilmallock, Valentia and Wilmot of Athlone; Lords Balfour of Glenawley, Esmond, Lambert, Mountnorris – to name just a few – all fell foul of Wentworth’s waspish pen and heavy hand.53 Two examples illustrate the sort of treatment that Wentworth meted out. Viscount Roche of Fermoy was a Catholic peer of Old English provenance whose title dated from the fifteenth century. He had riled the lord deputy when ‘at the chusing of Parliament men, he “stickled much for Papists” ’. When Roche was warned that Wentworth ‘will powder you’, he laughed claiming that he had as much powder as the lord deputy. Roche paid a high price for his perceived insolence and was tried before the star chamber, along with others who had dared to challenge Wentworth’s authority.54 Protestant newcomers received similar treatment. In the case of William Brabazon, first earl of Meath, he was ‘wrested out of his estate by the potency of the late earle of Strafford’. In 1638 Wentworth found issue with the legality of Meath’s title and in July 1639 confiscated his Wicklow estates and regranted them by letters of 5 June 1639 to his cronies, Sir Adam Loftus, Sir Robert Meredith and Sir Philip Percival. When the earl of Meath objected, he was bullied into submission and only complained to the English House of Lords after Wentworth’s downfall.55 Late in February 1641 the peers struck back. A petition to the king articulated their collective position: ‘That, of late years, the nobility of this your realm have been [held] in so little esteem, and so much undervalued by the powerfulness and misgovernment of Thomas, earl of Strafford.’ Their appeal continued ‘that by his untrue representations and misinformations unto your majesty’ and his employment of ‘sundry persons of mean condition’ he had not only performed a great disservice to the king but had dishonoured the nobility.56 The contempt in which Lord Deputy Wentworth held the peerage in Ireland was well known and is fully documented.57 A pamphlet entitled A Discourse between two councillors of state (1642) outlined his abysmal treatment of the ‘loved and honoured’ fourth earl of Clanricarde, a Catholic peer of Old English provenance, during a visit to his Portumna estate in 1635. The author recounts Wentworth’s browbeating the earl’s kinsmen and dependants who came to do honour to the house and him, his scornful casting himself in his riding boots upon

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very rich beds, the slaughter of the deer, not by hunting for pleasure, but by a disorderly and unreasonable destruction . . . his horses turned into the best meadows, then ready to be mowed, and such havoc made of everything as if the house had no master. These things when they came to the hearing of that brave lord, took such impression that he fell into a deep melancholy and in a few days his memory decayed, and soon after he fell sick and died.

The pamphlet concluded by suggesting that this sort of dishonourable behaviour made Wentworth unworthy of royal office and favour.58 Wentworth’s humiliations of the Protestant Lord Mountnorris, the earl of Anglesey’s father, and Adam, Viscount Loftus of Ely, elicited similar condemnations.59 According to one tract, Wentworth’s ‘arbitrary forme of government’ had deprived Mountnorris ‘of those honourable imployments’, ‘his owne private fortunes, and the birthright and liberty of a subject’, together with ‘his honour and integrity’.60 By riding roughshod over the interests of the peerage, Wentworth had demonstrated that he lacked the virtues necessary to serve a king. His behaviour had, according to the disgruntled lords, dishonoured the peers and the person of the king. Little wonder, then, that the resident peers retaliated when they felt that it was safe to do so. The determination of his enemies in both houses to get rid of Wentworth, his cronies and his policies comes as no surprise. Working closely with their allies in Westminster and, more importantly, at court, this crossdenominational coalition finally secured the chief governor’s downfall (he was beheaded on 12 May 1641).61 Having successfully ousted Wentworth, the opposition, led by Catholic lawyers, focused their efforts on a reform programme to dismantle any policies – especially those relating to land tenure and plantation – that threatened to undermine their Irish power bases.62 Central to their strategy was a determination to restrict the power of the executive by insisting that the Irish judges respond to the 21 ‘Queries’, which questioned the legality of Wentworth’s government of Ireland since 1634 (discussed below). In short, the opposition were using Parliament as a force for constitutional change. How many of the 69 resident temporal peers were politically active in 1640–1? According to the lists printed in the Journals of the House of Lords, attendance at this parliament was small, especially when compared with the 1634–5 parliament (which had attracted 43 temporal lords for the first session, 39 for the second, and 24 for the third). Only 38 (55 per cent) of the resident lords attended at least one of the sessions in 1640; while the opening session of 1641 (26 January–5 March) attracted only 24 (35 per cent) temporal peers. The reasons for this low turnout in January 1641 are fourfold.63 First, a number of absences can be easily explained: Le Power was a lunatic; Hamilton of Strabane was a minor; Roche of Fermoy languished in

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London; Cork asked that his two sons be excused ‘in regard they were both underage’;64 while ill-heath and old age kept Chichester and Athenry at home (though they sent proxies). Second, Castlehaven, Clanricarde and Conway, who all held English titles, took their seats in the English Lords, as did Cork in his capacity as an English privy councillor.65 Third, a significant number of resident peers had flocked to London either as members of a delegation from the Lords or as prosecution witnesses at Wentworth’s trial which began on 22 March 1641 (frenzied preparations for it dated from mid-November 1640). Finally, a number of Protestant lords who had supported the government with such enthusiasm in 1634 stayed away from the early sessions of 1641.66 Given a frustrating absence of evidence for the final sessions (the journals from 5 March 1641 to 1 August 1642 are not extant), it is likely that attendance for the heated fifth session (11 May until 7 August, when it was adjourned) was much higher and included a significant number of the lords who had been absent in England from the earlier sessions.67 With about a dozen exceptions, the bulk of the peers who attended in 1640–1 had taken their seats in the upper house in 1634; while Muskerry and Sarsfield of Kilmallock had served as MPs in the Irish Commons, and Lambert had gained political experience in the English Commons in 1626 and 1628–9.68 Twenty-three ‘activists’ (see appendix II for details) quickly emerged.69 Of these 23 lords, 13 were Catholic (only Antrim and Slane lacked previous parliamentary experience) and 10 Protestant (only Baltinglass lacked previous parliamentary experience). Virtually all of them enjoyed links to members of the lower house.70 Perhaps because of the poor turnout, the Lords quickly settled down to business. By the end of March 1640 four subsidies had been voted ‘with one voice’.71 Wentworth, now on the verge of departure from Ireland, was delighted with the proceedings and attributed this to the intervention of key ministers of the state, which ensured that the others dare neither ‘to oppose or open their mouths’.72 While the Lords may have been cowed into compliance during the spring of 1640, by the autumn they adopted a more belligerent stance. As the political climate shifted dramatically in England, they took the offensive, picking as their battleground the government’s manipulation of proxies in 1634. Determined that this should not happen again, Viscount Gormanston, whose father had led the Old English opposition in 1613, supported by Lord Digby of Geashill, a Protestant newcomer and Cork’s son-in-law, moved ‘that no proxy be received without sight of the proxy, and allowance of this House’.73 Gormanston and Sarsfield of Kilmallock then asked the Committee of Privileges and Grievances to consider whether ‘lords as have titles of honour only in this kingdom, and no lands, may be compelled to purchase lands in a convenient time, or otherwise forfeit their votes in parliament’.74

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The issue of proxies and the absentee peers, together with 15 other complaints relating to Wentworth’s ‘unlawful, arbitrary and tyrannical government’, formed the basis of a list of grievances from the Lords (18 February 1641) and a further petition to the king from Gormanston and Sarsfield of Kilmallock.75 Their complaints coalesced around a number of issues that had long concerned the Old English members of both houses, together with others that related to Wentworth’s harsh treatment of the peers: unlawful imprisonment, the use of scornful language, preventing the peers from hunting on their own land, and placing his cronies in positions of authority.76 In February 1641 the Irish Commons provided further fodder for those determined to topple Wentworth by compiling a list of 21 ‘Queries’ for the Irish judges, which questioned the legality of his government of Ireland since 1634. As Aidan Clarke has noted, these Queries ‘were not simply a random series of grievances: they were, rather, the balanced ingredients of a calculated policy of rendering impossible a repetition of the events of the recent past by establishing an agreed delimitation of the competence of the executive government’.77 Then, at the end of February, impeachment charges were brought against Wentworth’s leading administrators.78 Ultimately, these impeachment proceedings came to naught, but in the short term they deprived the chief governor of key defence witnesses at his trial. The anti-Wentworth factions in London immediately seized upon these collective grievances, and they formed the basis of a number of charges subsequently brought against the disgraced earl.79 Wentworth’s heavy-handed treatment of the peers – especially Clanricarde, Cork, Loftus of Ely, Mountnorris and Wilmot of Athlone – had alarmed many English lords who no doubt felt that a dangerous precedent was being set.80 In order to raise awareness further among the English political nation about Wentworth’s ‘powerful acts’, the peers bombarded the English Lords and Commons with petitions over the winter of 1640 and spring of 1641.81 Details of Mountnorris’s court martial (for allegedly ridiculing the lord deputy at a dinner party) and other humiliations since 1635 were printed and circulated in London.82 The anti-Wentworth propaganda mill was also fed by reproducing the ‘Queries’ alongside various speeches made to the Lords by the Speaker of the Irish Commons ‘concerning their priviledges, and their exorbitant grievances in that kingdome’.83 The Irish contribution to Wentworth’s downfall was not simply limited to petitions and pamphlets. In all, at least 19 resident peers (12 Protestant and 7 Catholic) appeared in London to testify against him.84 At the trial Wentworth claimed that ‘a strong conspiracy against me’ had been hatched between the Irish Lords and the English Commons.85 Even though Wentworth later withdrew this allegation and apologized, there was undoubtedly some truth in it. The fact that Cork and Clanricarde focused their efforts on influencing politics in London (neither returned home until the summer of 1641) should

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not obscure their political clout in Ireland. While Cork saved his sons for well-connected English heiresses, he married his daughters into some of the great Irish noble families. The earl of Barrymore, who had been his ward, married Alice, and this linked Cork to many of the leading Catholic lords. Another daughter, Sarah, wed as her first husband the younger brother of Viscount Moore of Drogheda, while Robert Digby of Geashill was her second. Joan Boyle married George, earl of Kildare, himself a ward of Lennox before Cork took over his guardianship.86 Finally, Katherine married Arthur Jones, Viscount Ranelagh’s son and heir, who sat as an MP in the Long Parliament (1640–8). Bonds of indebtedness supplemented these ties of marriage: Kildare and Barrymore quickly became financially dependent on their father-in-law; while Cork lent money to a host of other peers from Ireland.87 Patrick Little has suggested that ‘Cork’s extensive correspondence shows that his ready abdication of parliamentary influence in the Irish House of Lords was matched by an astonishing lack of interest in the elections for the lower house in the spring of 1640.’88 The fact that so many of his kinsmen and clients were nevertheless returned suggests otherwise.89 What then of Clanricarde? In the Lords, he was related by marriage to Lords Brittas, Castle Connell, Clanmorres (which in turn allied him to Slane and the lords of the Pale) and Mayo. While Clanricarde could not muster the same number of supporters in the Irish Commons as Cork, he served as the patron to at least six influential lawyers, who played a critical role in shaping developments in the later sessions of 1641.90 In addition, he had a number of relatives who sat as MPs, including his nephew Thomas Bourke, an active member of the Irish parliamentary delegation to London.91 Whether in London or Dublin, what united the resident peers was their hostility to Wentworth. Having successfully ousted him, they focused their efforts on a reform programme that aimed to dismantle any policies – especially those that related to land tenure and plantation – which threatened to undermine their Irish power bases. However, their stance on other matters demonstrates that this anti-Wentworth coalition was fluid and, at times, fraught with tensions. This meant that membership of various interest groups operating in the Lords fluctuated according to specific issues. However, as the parliamentary opposition increasingly grew in confidence, Ormond’s position as the principal and, at times, only influential ally that the government had in the upper house (aside from the spiritual peers) forced him to resort to delaying and obstructionist tactics.92 For example, in the impeachment proceedings against Wentworth’s acolytes, Lord Lambert, with Catholic support, urged the Lords ‘to follow the late precedents of England’ and to arrest them.93 Ormond, together with Kerry and Mayo (all three of whom were converts from Catholicism and had been favoured by Wentworth), retaliated by repeatedly trying to block their initiatives. In particular, Ormond

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used his chairmanship of various committees in the Lords in an effort to derail the impeachment proceedings and to undermine the competence of the Irish parliament to judge on the ‘Queries’, which, he maintained, intruded on the royal prerogative.94 But how much influence did Ormond actually wield? Unlike Antrim, Cork and Clanricarde, his English contacts were at this stage in his career fairly limited, but his close associations with Wentworth gave him considerable clout in both houses.95 Thanks to Ormond’s influence, at least six (of the 12) MPs returned for the Kilkenny constituencies were government men. But Ormond’s hold over the Kilkenny electorate had been undermined by his political rival, Viscount Mountgarret. Working with the earl of Arundel, his well-placed English kinsman, Mountgarret exercised real influence and secured the backing of at least five MPs who opposed the government’s agenda.96 In the upper house Ormond’s kinsmen Lords Dunboyne, Ikerrin and Upper Ossory appear to have absented themselves for much of the proceedings, thereby avoiding direct and unpleasant confrontation. However, his brother-in-law, Viscount Muskerry, was politically active and chastised Ormond for his delaying tactics. According to an anonymous account, Muskerry visited Ormond at home in the spring of 1641 and ‘told him yt [that] he smelt him out, and was convinced yt his carping . . . [was] but out of a design to keep ye House in heats to delay by yt means ye impeachm[en]t ag[ainst]t ye E[arl] of Strafford, and therefore in plain dealing told him he must no longer depend upon his friendship to be dissuaded from being call’d to ye bar and sent to castle chambers’.97 Ultimately, Ormond’s Protestant allies in the Lords proved more biddable. Bonds of indebtedness linked him to leading government men and a number of others, especially Viscount Moore of Drogheda, who had been the other government ‘manager’ in the 1634 parliament.98 However, Moore of Drogheda’s family connections with Lords Cork, Loftus of Ely, Ranelagh and Wilmot of Athlone forced him to adopt a more cautious stance in 1640–1.99 With Wentworth out of the way, he clearly favoured a reform agenda and supported Digby of Geashill in the debate over the legitimacy of the fourth session (11 May–17 November). Yet in the discussions over the ‘Queries’, Moore of Drogheda rallied behind Ormond, as did his son-in-law Blayney, Esmond, Inchiquin, Thomond and the aged Valentia.100 The Opposition Peers What then of the opposition? The tactics of the dissident activists centred on the removal of the person of Wentworth. Once this had been achieved in May 1641, they aimed to restrict the power of the executive by having the judges respond to the ‘Queries’, and, following the English precedents, to exercise

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the parliamentary right of impeachment. During the 1640 sessions the opposition peers included the Catholic lords of the Pale, led by Viscount Gormanston, together with Lords Sarsfield of Kilmallock and Muskerry, and at least four Protestants: Lords Digby of Geashill (himself a nephew of the earl of Bristol and Cork’s son-in-law), Baltinglass, Dillon of Costello-Gallen and Lambert. When the bulk of these men shifted their sphere of political operations to London in the spring of 1641, Lords Maguire, Netterville and Slane joined Lambert to form the core of the opposition.101 Baron Lambert’s position is particularly interesting. Raised by his mother in Cornwall, he married in 1625 a sister of the earl of Radnor, later one of the opposition lords in the Long Parliament.102 He returned to Ireland in 1634, with a letter of support from the influential duke of Lennox, and almost immediately crossed swords with Wentworth over the plantation of Connacht.103 He also alienated Cork by disputing the title to property held by the earl in Roscommon, with Cork maintaining, quite plausibly, that Lambert intended to use parliament to regain these lands.104 Self-interest explains, at least in part, why Lambert embraced the opposition with such enthusiasm and, according to one waspish observer, ‘carryes yt here with a great roage, havinge by sidinge with the papist partie gained strength’.105 However, the Protestant members of the ‘papist partie’ did not form a homogeneous body. By the middle of June one government supporter maintained that the ‘Protestant party [was] much disgusted with the course held by the other party, in their retrenchment of His Majesty’s due profits, and pressing too near upon the honour and power of the government.’106 Yet, despite rumours throughout June and July of a split ‘between the Papists and Protestants’, the dissident lords appear to have maintained a remarkably united front and in July sent a further petition directly to the king complaining about the subsidies.107 By August the lords justices found ‘the Popish party in both Houses of Parliament to be grown to so great a height, as was scarcely compatible with the present government’. In an attempt to counter this and to secure the support of the leading Protestant ‘reformers’, Lambert, Digby of Geashill and Dillon of Costello-Gallen were admitted as members of the Dublin government.108 The confidence of the opposition stemmed in large part from the apparent success of their commissioners in London. In July the king and his council had agreed to a further raft of concessions and promised to enact the 1628 Graces.109 Having achieved most of their objectives, the parliamentary delegation prepared, in the words of one contemporary, to return home ‘fully satisfied and loaden with all the Graces and Bounties, good subjects could hope to receive’.110 All that remained was for the Irish parliament to enshrine ‘these bounties’ in legislation. To celebrate their victory, Cork hosted in August a slap-up dinner at the Nag’s Head in Cheapside for the members of

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‘the comyttees of bothe howses’ and lent Viscount Sarsfield of Kilmallock £600 to finance his trip home.111 Despite enjoying the support of Ormond and a handful of other Protestant peers, together with the bishops, who early on distanced themselves from the dissidents, the Irish government had clearly been outmanoeuvred in both London and Dublin.112 Why? First, the English connections, especially of Cork and Clanricarde, provided essential human links with the English Parliament. More importantly, these facilitated meaningful interactions with the king, who, after all, remained the source of ‘supreme political authority in Ireland’.113 Little wonder, then, that the Irish lords paraded their loyalty to Charles I. They supported him both militarily and financially during the Bishops’ Wars (May–June 1639 and August–October 1640) and involved themselves in a myriad of royalist intrigues, particularly the Army and the Antrim Plots (spring of 1641).114 Second, with the removal of Wentworth, the government lacked effective leadership, which in turn seriously impacted on its ability to manage the Lords and to prevent the peers working closely with the lower house. The ‘divide and rule’ strategy that had proved so successful in 1634 failed miserably, especially in the sessions of 1641. One example highlights the government’s abysmal performance. The admission to the Commons in February 1641 of John Fitzgerald, who had been returned as MP for Inistiogue the previous November despite being involved in litigation with Lord Kerry, a government supporter, created uproar among the peers, who believed that Fitzgerald’s admission impugned their privilege and honour.115 The Commons responded by beseeching the Lords to drop their protest and to ‘keep the bond of unity’ between the two houses. Despite Ormond’s best attempts to manipulate this issue of privilege to derail the ‘Queries’ and to stir up animosities, the matter was quietly dropped. The two houses continued to work very closely together, and the frequency of their meetings increased until these occurred on an almost daily basis by July. Finally, effective management of the peers rested on the government’s ability to control proxies, and the Lords repeatedly frustrated their attempts to do this by disallowing the proxies of non-residents.116 By May 1641 the lords justices had become desperate and begged the English Privy Council to intervene and to support them over this critical issue.117 A list of proxies was dispatched to London with a request that ‘The most to [do] come [to] Ormond, Kerry, Thomond and [Montgomery of the] Ards.’118 Matters deteriorated further over the early summer and reached crisis point early in August. On 3 August Lord Justice William Parsons reported that the ‘Queries’, which the Commons had approved, were now with the Lords and ‘by plurality of votes of the Papist party and much urgency of some of the Commons are . . . like to pass’.119 To prevent this, the lords justices adjourned Parliament on 7 August until November on the grounds that ‘Great mischiefs

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will follow if this parliament is allowed to have its way.’120 As it turned out, ‘great mischief ’ did follow when rebellion erupted in Ulster a few months later.121 Conclusion The early decades of the seventeenth century were a period of intense political change and the membership of the early Stuart Irish parliaments reflected this. The king effectively replaced the political dominance of the Old English elite in parliament with a reconfigured political body, which the king and his lord deputy attempted to manage, manipulate, cajole and coerce into cooperation and compliance. The temporal lords, many of whom were seasoned political operators, were key not only to the smooth running of the upper house but also exercised real influence in the lower house as well. Moreover, as the peerage coalesced as a social and cultural group, the nobles became increasingly politically integrated. What is clear from the activities of the temporal peers in 1640–1 is that, despite the very real religious differences which civil war so painfully exposed, they enjoyed a common political and constitutional agenda, albeit one tempered by individual landed and family interests and by political intrigue in Dublin and in London. With few exceptions, Wentworth’s policies had seriously challenged personal power bases, and so the determination of the peers to oust him comes as no surprise. United by bonds of kinship and mutual indebtedness, the peers created powerful webs of intersecting interest groups within both houses that cooperated, however loosely, in order to render obsolete the men and mechanisms that Wentworth had devised in order to control them. While it would be unwise to downplay the significance of individual MPs and the sheer complexity of events during these months, at certain key moments the peers, like their counterparts in England, shaped the Irish parliamentary agenda.122 They may well have been obsessed with matters of protocol, precedence and procedure, but the need to defend their position in the social and political hierarchy ensured that this grouping had became politicized across ethnic and sectarian divides. Of course, a communal sense of identity, shared concepts of honour and loyalty to the Crown, had their limitations and did not prevent the community of nobles from fracturing along sectarian lines after the outbreak of rebellion in October 1641. In a speech made at Knockcrofty Hill early in December, Roger Moore, one of the leaders of the insurrection, reminded the crowd that ‘the nobility and gentry of Ireland were unique in Europe in being unable to improve their fortunes by serving their king in places of honour, trust and profit’.123 In their negotiations with the king during the 1640s, the confederates consistently demanded that there should be a restitution ‘of

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blood, honour and lands’, as well as the free exercise of Catholicism. The confederates wanted an Act of Parliament to ratify this so ‘no memory shall remain thereof to the blemish and dishonour of those who shall be restored’.124 In the event this did not happen, but their request highlights the importance attached to the institution of Parliament as an arena for engaging in national politics.125

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CHAPTER 9

Civil War The seventeenth century was one of intense soldiering across early

modern Europe and during the 1640s war came to Ireland. This was a particularly complex period in the island’s history and one in which the resident peers, as the military caste, played a prominent role both on and off the battlefield. The established Catholic lords and a few of the Protestant ones, especially the converts, called their followers and tenants to arms in timehonoured fashion and provided them with weapons. For some Catholics the outbreak of war offered them the first opportunity to serve at home since the conclusion of the Nine Years War in 1603. The speed with which lords like Antrim, Mountgarret and Muskerry mobilized forces underscored their continuing military potential and, despite the fact that warlords often lacked direct experience of warfare, many were at the forefront of the fighting. Moreover, their ability to wage war for sustained periods testifies to their resilience as military power brokers. The fact that as the war dragged on some, including Lords Antrim, Muskerry and Ormond, exported manpower to the Scottish, English and continental theatres of war in return for supplies and cash, highlights their success as military enterprisers. Protestant lords also mobilized their tenants and followers but their capacity was more limited and they ultimately depended for survival on recruits shipped into Ireland from England and Scotland. This chapter analyzes the military and political contributions the peers and their sons made to the Wars of the Three Kingdoms (1639–52), as the conflict between the subjects of Charles I is now known. How did the war impact on the development of the resident peerage? The chapter takes a broadly chronological approach and after examining the role that the peers played in the Bishops’ Wars (1639–40) and their responses to the 1641 rebellion, it focuses on the respective contributions they made to the confederate, royalist and parliamentarian war efforts both in Ireland and in England, where a number chose to serve. How did the peers mobilize men and

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resources for war? How successful were they as warriors and military strategists? The dogged loyalty of the resident peers to the king, the fount of their honour, is also striking, as is the reluctance with which the leading Catholic aristocrats joined the insurrection. Yet local circumstances and external influences often forced individuals to abandon the royal cause and place their personal interests above those of the king. The onset of civil war in England followed by the 1643 ceasefire with the confederates and the signature of the Solemn League and Covenant (September 1643) created a real crisis among the Protestant lords, who either opted to support the king or his English Parliament. For their part, most Catholics remained loyal to the Stuarts albeit within the context of the confederate assembly, but their commitment wavered as the 1640s progressed and military and confessional pressures increased. Why did a number of key lords switch allegiance, many more than once, during the course of the conflict? In short, the 1640s provide a fascinating case study illustrating how relations between the monarch and his peerage broke down and also how tensions, often around religion, came to the fore and complicated relationships between the king and his nobles, and within the ranks of the peerage. A Military Caste1 Like their contemporaries throughout early modern Europe, the resident peerage in Ireland viewed itself as a fighting class and believed that military service was an integral part of being noble. It afforded them a privileged position, enhanced local status and helped to secure financial and social advancement for other members of the lineage or tenants or clients. Gaelic society encouraged a strong martial ethos and during the later Middle Ages great lords had retained a body of professional swordsmen. For instance, the rebellious earl of Tyrone and his Ulster allies allegedly mustered 2,000 buannachts (native mercenary soldiers) in 1594, and between 4,000 and 6,000 ordinary swordsmen regularly enlisted for service during the later stages of the Nine Years War.2 Scottish mercenaries (gallowglass or redshanks) supplemented these native soldiers and between the 1560s and 1590s some 25,000 such mercenaries found employment in militarized Ulster.3 Military requirements remained a feature of domestic architecture. Many lords lived in well-fortified medieval castles: Dunluce (seat of the MacDonnells of Antrim), Kilkenny (seat of the Butlers of Ormond) and Blarney (seat of the MacCarthys of Muskerry and Clancarthy) immediately spring to mind. Others built grand mansions that retained defensive features. The earl of Clanricarde’s magnificent and ornate residence at Portumna was also fortified in that the projecting, angled towers had gun loops that provided flanking fire and inner and outer bawns, albeit ones that took the form of gardens.4 After

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the Restoration the earl of Orrery ensured that flankers, mounted with sixteen guns, defended his great house of Charleville.5 Of the extant portraits of seventeenth-century resident peers, roughly half depict the lord in armour or military garb. See, for example, the portrait of Ulick Bourke, marquis of Clanricarde, replete with long beard, a plain white collar adding some colour to his grey armour (plate 3). After 1660 John Michael Wright painted fine portraits of Randal MacDonnell, marquis of Antrim, and Murrough O’Brien, earl of Inchiquin. Antrim is wearing armour, adorned by a delicate lace collar and a thick sash, as is Inchiquin. Similarly, a full-length portrait of the earl of Clancarthy, possibly from the studio of Sir Peter Lely or by Garret Morphy, depicts him standing in armour with a curtain half-drawn behind him and a castle, presumably Blarney, visible in the distance. He wears a long wig with a lace cravat at his neck and a gold and emerald sash around his waist, and he carries a walking stick with a silver-gilt top in his hand (plate 7). This desire to be represented as warriors, especially on the part of the Catholic peers, highlights the continuing importance of the exercise of arms in noble culture. Given the limited opportunities for Catholics to participate directly in war at home, during the early decades of the century they looked to the continental theatre as the most effective arena in which to secure military training (discussed below in chapter 15). Exposure to warfare, often as part of a ‘grand tour’, in the various continental conflicts, but especially the Eighty Years War (1568–1648) and the Thirty Years War (1618–48), not only offered young grandees the chance to gain practical military experience but also to garner military honour. In the case of the marquis of Antrim, his lengthy French sojourn (1625–7) would have afforded him ample opportunity to make contact with his exiled O’Neill cousins serving in the army of Flanders, and with his natural half-brothers, one of whom (Maurice) was an infantry captain in Flanders.6 Antrim later claimed that he had ‘no experience in war’, but he nonetheless demonstrated during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms a surprisingly clear idea of how an army should be organized and knowledge of the basic principles of modern warfare.7 The technological, tactical and logistical innovations that underpinned the Military Revolution came relatively late to Ireland (the 1590s and then the 1640s), but elsewhere they transformed the nature of warfare from the late fifteenth century.8 In brief, technological advances in firepower and fortifications led to a dramatic increase in the size of armies in which the infantry, rather than the heavily armoured cavalry, predominated. Christopher Storrs and Hamish Scott have examined how the social changes associated with the Military Revolution impacted on nobles across early modern Europe and have argued that these innovations strengthened and redefined, rather than undermined, the position of the fighting classes. In fact, they suggest that

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‘noble men were the principal agents of these changes and benefited considerably from them’ as they became the officers in the new larger armies that mushroomed up across Europe.9 In Ireland these military developments undoubtedly benefited the Protestant peers and had the added bonus, from the perspective of the state, of reducing the size of private armies and curtailing lawlessness. On the one hand, they facilitated social advancement into and within the ranks of the nobility and, on the other, they created opportunities for employment as officers (see chapters 7 and 12). Catholic peers, prevented from serving in the royal armies at home, nevertheless retained considerable personal retinues and used every opportunity to fight for the Stuarts abroad. The link between military service and upward social mobility was established during the early decades of the seventeenth century when the Stuarts ennobled many swordsmen, mostly Englishmen along with a few natives, who had served in Ireland during the Nine Years War (see chapter 2). This highlighted the extent to which the Crown continued to expect the nobility to provide military leadership and the importance of military service as a route to ennoblement. Moreover, the peers, especially the established ones, perceived themselves as a military caste for whom service on the battlefield continued to be inextricably linked to a lord’s public and private sense of honour and virtue. It comes as little surprise then that throughout the conflict of the 1640s the peers provided the political and military leadership for whichever side they supported: the Irish confederates, the Crown or the English Parliament (and sometimes combinations of all three). Of the 68 resident peers in 1641, three served in England: Oliver, later third Viscount Fitzwilliam of Merrion, fought for the king at Naseby (1645), as did his brother William; Thomas, first Viscount Lecale, commanded a royalist regiment of horse; and Edward, second Viscount Loftus, held Middleham castle (his wife was the co-heir) in Yorkshire, for Parliament. Of the remainder the majority, roughly 50 (74 per cent), saw active service in Ireland (see appendix III). With the exceptions of Lords Mountgarret and Netterville, who were in their sixties, the youth of the Catholic peers is striking. The majority of confederate lords tended to be men in their prime (twenties through to their forties) and went on to make major contributions to the Catholic war effort: Lords Antrim, Castlehaven, Muskerry, Taaffe and Westmeath all held major commands. With the possible exception of Castlehaven, who during the late 1630s had spent some time observing the European theatre of war and later distinguished himself in French and Spanish service, none were particularly gifted soldiers. This had major long-term repercussions but in the short term hardly seemed to matter, since their military power stemmed from their extensive baronial networks that gave the confederate commanders access to large personal armies. A

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Protestant from Dundalk suggested that the insurgents were ‘like hydra’s heads; one is no sooner cut off, but there arise three in his place’.10 Only a small number of peers enjoyed senior commands. The majority fought at the provincial and county levels, defending their estates and neighbouring urban centres and capturing local places of military strength and strategic importance. Given the high levels of engagement a significant number (roughly a dozen) died in combat or sustained serious injuries over the course of the 1640s (see appendix III and chapter 16). Others were captured, imprisoned and then usually exchanged for enemy prisoners of comparable rank. During the initial phase of the war titled grandees took the lead and summoned their followers, tenants and kinsmen to arms in a fashion reminiscent of earlier Irish wars and of the ‘barons’ wars’ of fifteenth-century England. The contribution of Luke Plunkett, third earl of Fingal, to the Catholic war effort was typical. At a gathering at the hill of Tara late in 1641, Fingal was appointed general of the horse for County Meath with the power to nominate ‘so many captains as [he] thought fitt out of the baronies’.11 The earl raised provisions for the Irish forces from his own estates and those of his dependants and commanded a troop of horse at the siege of Drogheda (November 1641–March 1642), and later fought at Dungan’s Hill (August 1647) and at Rathmines (August 1649), where he was captured (he died shortly afterwards in Dublin castle). Elsewhere, Catholic peers also summoned their followers, tenants and kinsmen to arms. On the Leinster–Munster border the aged Viscount Mountgarret called to war the Kilkenny and Tipperary Butlers, including Richard of Kilcash who was Ormond’s brother and Lords Cahir, Dunboyne and Ikerrin, together with the neighbouring Fitzpatricks and Purcells, including Theobald Purcell, titular baron of Loughmoe.12 Like Fingal, he led his men from the front. Lords Antrim and Muskerry did likewise, as did Lord Barrymore, a recent convert to Protestantism (discussed below). Because of their direct involvement there was a wider perception of the war as a ‘baronial’ struggle dominated by the titled nobility. As in civil war England, popular pamphlets, especially those printed during the early years of the conflict, extolled the wartime exploits of titled commanders and recounted their regional skirmishes. There are numerous examples that portrayed the conflict as a struggle between rival noble warlords, including tracts with titles like A Renowned victory obtained against the rebels on the first day of June, neere Burros the Duke of Buckinghams castle, by the valour of these noble and valiant commanders. The Earle of Ormond. The Earl of Eastmeath. The Lord Don Luce, Earle of Antrim . . . Against the Lord Mountgarret. The Lord Dunsany. The Lord Plunket. The Lord Muskro. The Lord Dunhowin with 18000 rebels. Wherein is manifested how the Lord Don-luce tooke the Lord Dunsany prisoner, with five of the great commanders, which are now prisoners in

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the castle at Dublin . . . (London, 1642). More particularly, the author’s representation of Antrim’s personal combat with Dunsany, which is fully developed in the text, evoked chivalric warfare, with each combatant determined to authenticate his personal honour on the battlefield. An account of one of the earliest battles of the war, fought at Kilrush in County Kildare on 15 April 1642, represented a grisly yet very personal encounter between the leading Catholic lords (Dunboyne, Ikerrin and Mountgarret) and the Protestant ones (Coote, Lambert, Ormond, and the eldest sons of Roscommon and Meath) who eventually triumphed.13 Similarly, the battle of Liscarrol fought on 3 September 1642 (discussed below) was portrayed as a baronial struggle between the Boyles of Cork and the neighbouring Irish warlords. Equally interesting are later accounts of the war.14 For instance, in his history Richard Bellings, Caroline poet and confederate lawyer, argued that members of the titled nobility, and especially those of Old English provenance (whatever their religion), were Ireland’s natural leaders, and his account dwelt on the martial conduct and wartime actions of these key figures.15 Similarly, the earl of Castlehaven’s memoirs portrayed the war as a noble struggle.16 Though written from a very different perspective, that of Gaelic Ireland, the Aphorismical Discovery of Treasonable Faction represented the war as a baronial conflict, with members of the traditional Irish nobility (only some of whom held royal titles), led by Owen Roe O’Neill, vying with upstarts such as the earl of Castlehaven, who was ‘hapily desirous of honor’ despite the fact his father had been executed for ‘buggery’, or Viscount Taaffe, whom he branded ‘a comon, cogginge gamster’ and ‘a man of meane ranke (though Viscounte) lesse experience and leaste authoritie’.17 The anonymous author suggested that by the later 1640s the influence ‘in civill or militarie government’ of the traditional nobles had waned, much to the detriment of the Catholic cause. Established leaders like Lords Castle Connell, Dunboyne, Ikerrin, Muskerry and Roche had been ‘secluded from the handlinge of any publicke affaire’ and in their place ‘poore mecanicall people, pedlers, dumbebaristers, atturneys, and route-banck-merchants [were] promoted to the managinge of civill and ecclesiasticke government’.18 This inversion of the traditional social order, he argued, was one reason why the Catholics lost the war. War in Scotland and Rebellion in Ireland A number of resident peers fought alongside the king during the Bishops’ Wars (May–June 1639 and August 1640) and used the conflict as an opportunity to demonstrate their military valour and loyalty to Charles I. In May 1638 the marquis of Hamilton, a leading Scottish courtier who was eager to foster an anti-Campbell alliance, recommended the earl of Antrim to the king

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and suggested using the MacDonnells on both sides of the North Channel to take on the Covenanters in western Scotland. Hamilton argued that an army levied and paid for by Antrim, and supplemented where possible by Lord Deputy Wentworth, should be the first line of royalist offence in the west of Scotland. In return Charles promised the earl that ‘whatsoever land he can conquer from them [the Campbells], he, having pretense of right, he shall have the same’.19 By spring 1639 Antrim had levied an army of 5,000 foot and 200 horse. These men were drawn from the leading Irish families in Ulster, with many of whom the earl enjoyed kin or clientage relationships: the MacDonnells, Magennisses, MacGuires, MacHenrys, MacMahons, O’Haras, O’Lurgans, O’Neills; or, as the lord deputy charmingly phrased it, ‘as many Oe’s and Macs’s as would startle a whole council board’ and ‘in a great part the sons of habituated traitors’.20 Ultimately, the expedition was frustrated by Charles I’s inconsistency and by Wentworth’s hostility. Yet the abortive initiative was not without significance. On the one hand, it destabilized affairs in Scotland by alienating support for the king and forcing Argyll and his followers into the Covenanting camp. On the other, the king’s willingness to conspire with an Irish papist against his Protestant subjects (albeit Scottish ones) did little to dispel the rumours of Popish plots that were circulating in London. The king also turned for help to the extended Boyle network. The earl of Cork’s youthful sons, fresh from continental ‘grand tours’ and eager to flex their military muscle, enthusiastically volunteered for royal service, albeit against their father’s better judgement. Cork’s son-in-law, the earl of Barrymore, served with royalist forces during the First Bishops’ War. In July 1639 Cork reported that Barrymore ‘intends to offer his prince thousands of Irish, and he saies they shall be all Geraldines’.21 The earl later complained that the £2,000 that the king paid him for this was insufficient ‘for raising and bringing out of Ireland to the campe near Skotland fifteen hundredth Irishe soldiers to serve against the covenanting rebelleouse Skots’.22 Cork’s heir, Lord Dungarvan, ‘rashly [and] without my [i.e. Cork’s] privitie undertook’ to raise men ‘at his own chardges, and with them to attend and serve his Maty in his warres in Scotland’. In all, Cork spent £3,000 to enable Dungarvan ‘to perform his unadvised engagement’.23 In April 1640 Cork expended a further £1,000 on weapons, armour and saddles, imported from Rotterdam, for Dungarvan’s troop of horse and to equip his other sons, Lords Kinalmeaky and Broghill, ‘to serve the kinge in this expedicion againste the Scots’.24 In the spring of 1641 Dungarvan also became embroiled, along with his brother-in-law, Lord Goring, in the botched ‘army plot’ in which the royal army was to march to London and threaten the recidivist English Parliament into compliance. Back in Ireland the levying of a ‘new army’ by Lord Deputy Wentworth over the spring of 1640 provided other lords with an opportunity

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to serve. Despite the fact that the earl of Ormond had limited formal military training (Buckingham had refused to allow the teenager to join the expedition to the Isle de Rhé in 1627), Wentworth appointed him lieutenant general and colonel of a regiment of horse. Lords Baltinglass, Blayney, Conway, Cromwell, Dillon, Docwra, Lambert, Moore and Wilmot, all Protestants, also held commands.25 Their men never saw action and in June 1641 Wentworth’s ‘new army’ was disbanded, again with Cork’s help (he contributed £2,000 towards the costs). This left a modest standing force, in which 14 Protestant peers held commands, to put down the rebellion that broke out in Ulster late in October 1641.26 The authorities managed to frustrate an attempt on 22 October to seize Dublin castle but could do little to prevent the rising taking hold in Ulster. There it began at a dinner party hosted by Lord Caulfeild at Charlemont Castle in County Armagh. According to a contemporary pamphlet Sir Phelim O’Neill, the principal dinner guest and Caulfeild’s close friend, told his host ‘now my Lord you are my prisoner’. Caulfeild ‘taking it as a jest, spoke merrily: nay Sr. Philip [Phelim] you are my prisoner, meaning because he was in his Lordships house at the present, upon which words Sr. Philip [Phelim] had the doores opened’.27 Sir Phelim’s armed accomplices seized the young lord, stole his ordnance and pillaged his house. For the next three months Sir Phelim held Lord Caulfeild, his mother, sisters and brothers captive in the castle. He then moved Caulfeild to his home at Kinard where, much to Sir Phelim’s distress, an Irish soldier shot him.28 From Charlemont the rising quickly spread across Ulster as the insurgents seized other strongholds of strategic importance, including Lord Blayney’s castle in Monaghan, Castle Balfour in Fermanagh and Mountjoy castle, together with others in Armagh, Tandragee and Newry (only Carrickfergus, Coleraine, Derry, Enniskillen and Lisburn escaped).29 The outbreak of the Ulster rebellion and the ensuing popular rising of the ‘common sorts’ provoked a major crisis for the peerage in Ireland. Only one, Connor Lord Maguire of Enniskillen, had been directly involved in hatching the insurrection. Despite the fact that Lord Maguire was one of the leading insurgents, there is no clear evidence to suggest that other Catholic lords supported him (albeit many, especially the earl of Antrim, had involved themselves in other plots).30 Their initial reaction to the rising and their determination to find a political solution to resolve it highlights this. The lords of the Pale immediately pledged their loyalty and requested arms to protect themselves.31 In response, the lords justices issued commissions of martial law to the ‘chief persons of power in the countrey’, including Lords Ormond and Mountgarret (County Kilkenny), Lords Costello-Gallen (County Mayo), Gormanston (County Meath), Kildare (County Kildare) and Nicholas Barnewall, later Viscount Kingsland (County Dublin). The state also provided

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arms, powder, lead and match to Viscount Gormanston (500 guns), the earl of Kildare (300 guns) and Lords Montgomery and Claneboy (400 guns).32 The Dublin government demanded that the Irish parliament, which had been adjourned the previous August, be prorogued.33 When parliament finally reconvened, under an armed guard, in mid-November, a committee from both houses implored the lords justices to reconsider their decision to abandon the session.34 They refused. Finally, in a last-ditch attempt to regain control over events, the upper house instructed Viscount Dillon of CostelloGallen to travel to Scotland to persuade the king to continue parliament ‘at least till the rebels (then few in number) were reduced’.35 After sitting for two days parliament was prorogued.36 Early in December the lords justices summoned a Grand Council to discuss the situation. Many Catholic lords refused to attend on the grounds that they feared for their personal safety and that the government had already ignored their counsel and suspected their loyalty.37 Nevertheless, a government insider reported in December that ‘the Earls of Clanrickard and Antrim, and other of the best of the nobility in that kingdom, albeit they are catholics, declare themselves very firm for the King, and are forward both in words and actions by themselves, their friends and tenants in suppressing that rebellion’.38 This show of loyalty did little to stem the ‘sudden commotion of the people’, as Clanricarde dubbed it, and by the middle of December the lords justices reported back to London that ‘this rebellion hath overspread the whole kingdom, and that many members of both Houses are involved therein so as the Parliament can not sit’.39 The Dublin administration immediately mobilized for war. On 11 November it appointed the earl of Ormond (who had been at his house at Carrick-on-Suir awaiting the birth of his sixth child) lieutenant general of the king’s army.40 The Protestant standing army, initially a pitiful force of 2,297 foot and 943 horse, was reinforced with the arrival of 2,600 foot from England over the winter of 1641/2. Ormond, elevated to a marquisate in 1642, found himself compromised as an increasing number of his kinsmen joined the Catholic cause. He noted how ‘scandal [was] dayly cast upon me by those that conclude me guilty because most of my papist kindred and friends’ were in rebellion.41 Ormond ignored these slurs and went on to win a number of victories, especially during the initial phases of the war (at Kilrush in April 1642 and at Old Ross in March 1643). With time his military inadequacies became increasingly apparent, especially his lack of strategic vision. He was no great general and one hostile observer suggested that he was more like ‘a hunts-man then . . . a souldier’.42 That said, Ormond cultivated his image as a ‘fighting warrior’ and an ‘illustrious cavalier’ even if the court, rather than the camp, underpinned his prominence.43 Ormond served alongside Sir Charles Coote and Lords Blayney, Kildare and Moore as they launched numerous forays against the insurgents in

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Leinster and relieved besieged strongholds, often crammed with Protestant refugees.44 According to one pamphleteer, they ‘fired all the Pale, for 17 miles in length, and neare 35 miles in breadth’.45 The outbreak of rebellion had left the earl of Kildare, another recent convert, as exposed as Ormond. Yet Kildare also refused to entertain repeated overtures from the insurgents, many of them his Fitzgerald kinsmen, to join them.46 In retaliation they pillaged Kildare’s livestock and household goods, including ‘divers bookes out of the earles studye’, before burning his ‘new house at Maynooth’.47 Despite speculations about ‘how he will proceed against his countrymen’,48 Kildare, like Ormond, quickly became one of the ‘strong pillars of the Protestant Army’.49 In the meantime Lady Kildare and her five children took refuge in England, where they joined her sisters, Ladies Loftus and Ranelagh.50 When Viscount Moore of Drogheda learned of the rebellion he sent for his tenants, who pledged ‘their lives, for their king, him and their country’. In all he managed to raise nearly 1,000 men, ‘all his friends and tenants’ (but only half of whom were armed) and oversaw the fortification of the strategically important town of Drogheda. On 8 June 1643 Moore died of wounds received when he was hit by a cannonball.51 One of the most experienced and ruthless in combat was ‘that humaine-bloudsucker’ Coote, who had led the anti-Catholic forces against the insurgents during the winter and spring of 1641–2.52 A terror to the Irish and a hero amongst his men, Coote’s acts of great bravery were repeatedly lauded by the English press.53 One pamphlet described his performance on the battlefield: Coote ‘as if he had been but 30 years old, charged in amongst them’ and, despite losing his cap, he ‘scoured about the field, crying Kill, Kill and with his hand gave the example’.54 He died at the siege of Trim in May 1642 from friendly fire, and one Gaelic chronicler gleefully noted that at last Coote had received his ‘ticket’ to ‘hell’.55 The losses of Moore and Coote represented severe blows to the Protestant war effort. As the rising gathered momentum and the ‘common sorts’ and ‘meaner sort of people’ seized the initiative, the Catholic lords of the Pale had no alternative but to join the Ulster insurgents if they were to regain control over their followers and secure their estates.56 Having done so these lords, in order to ensure their own survival, pressured, cajoled and threatened their fellow Catholic peers living elsewhere in Ireland to join them. Many initially refused; others joined reluctantly only when the spread of unrest to their respective localities presented them with no realistic alternative, something of which Catholic writers like the earl of Castlehaven and Sir Richard Bellings later reminded their readers. The majority of Catholic lords, especially the aristocrats, dissociated themselves from an insurrection, which, according to Ulick, earl of Clanricarde, had been hijacked by ‘loose people, desperate in their fortunes’. The Catholic Clanricarde, writing in November 1641 to his

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half-brother and the future commander of the English parliamentary army, the earl of Essex, maintained that the insurgents did not include ‘any man of qualitie, either of English descent or antient Irish’, or any ‘nobleman in the kingdom’.57 By the middle of December 1641, Clanricarde believed that the whole province of Connacht was in revolt. For his part the earl scrambled what resources he could to defend his estates, as did his noble neighbours, Lords Dillon of Costello-Gallen and Mayo.58 Early in December a meeting took place at Knockcrofty near Drogheda, which resulted in an alliance being forged between the Ulster insurgents and the Old English.59 Influential lords of the Pale – Lords Dunsany, Fingal, Gormanston, Louth, Netterville, Slane and Trimleston – attended.60 Having joined the insurrection, these lords now asked that Lords Bermingham of Athenry, Clanmorres, Clanricarde, Mayo and Mountgarret do likewise.61 Clanricarde was implored ‘to serve God, the king, and country in a right way’.62 He refused. According to the lords justices, Clanricarde remained ‘unshaken in his loyalty’ but, they added, ‘so great a defection hath happened amongst those of his religion’.63 In Munster Viscount Muskerry, later earl of Clancarthy, learned of the rising during a dinner party attended by the earl of Cork, his sons ‘and some other men of quality of the Irish nation, with whom they lived in an easy and familiar way’.64 According to a later account, on hearing of the rebellion ‘My lord Muskerry, who was a facetious man, and an excellent companion, employ’d all the wit he was master of to turn the whole story into ridicule’.65 Of course, the insurrection proved to be no laughing matter and in March 1642 Muskerry reluctantly (and against his wife’s wishes) threw in his lot with the insurgents on the grounds that the rebellion had become the only means of preserving Catholicism, the king’s prerogative and the ‘antient privileges of the poore kingdome of Ireland established and allowed by the Common Law of England’.66 Thus from the outset commitment amongst the Catholic lords to an armed rising as the best means of securing political, tenurial and constitutional objectives was fraught with contradictions. The abortive parliamentary session of November 1641, combined with the bungling and hyperbole of the lords justices, and the deteriorating political climate in England, effectively undermined the prospect of any negotiated settlement to the crisis. A series of proclamations, issued after February 1642, declaring 15 peers, including Lords Castlehaven, Fingal, Gormanston, Mountgarret and Muskerry, to be guilty of high treason, further fuelled distrust and inevitably alienated many influential lords and their followers.67 The military excesses committed by government troops (especially Sir Charles Coote) also proved a particular source of contention amongst the peers and drove many lords into the ‘rebel’ camp.68 One of the lesser lords, Barnaby Fitzpatrick, sixth baron of Upper Ossory, who later took part in the siege of Borris-in-Ossory (April 1642) and

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the capture of Ballinakill (May 1643), articulated something that his fellow peers undoubtedly shared. In December 1641 he wrote to Ormond saying ‘that I do not well know how to behave myself . . . I can do nothing as I would otherwise, though I have been threatened as well by the Irishry, as by the Lord President of Munster’.69 Edward Hyde, later earl of Clarendon, in his History well described the dilemma faced by ‘many persons of honour and quality’ during these months when he noted how the course of events left them no alternative but to engage ‘themselves by degrees in it [i.e. the insurrection] for their own security’.70 The Impact of the 1641 Rebellion The insurrection inevitably resulted in bloodshed and unnecessary cruelty. During his captivity Lord Charlemont perished at the hands of an Irish insurgent (discussed above). Others suffered physical assault. Shortly after the rising broke out, Lord Dunsany, a Catholic, and his family fled to Dublin but, according to his own account, the local rebels ambushed him ‘and for his loyalty, had his own daughter and his son’s wife, being both great with child, stripped and sent home naked’. They ‘burned and destroyed’ Dunsany’s house at Castlecore, together with furniture and goods allegedly worth £4,000.71 The 1641 depositions offer fascinating detail on the actions of other local peers, their families and servants and their material fortunes. The witness testimonies of deponents from Ulster relate the comings and goings of Lords Antrim, Blayney, Charlemont, Magennis of Iveagh and Maguire of Enniskillen. Those from Leinster and Munster comment on the activities of Lords Castlehaven, Clanmalier, Cork, Dunboyne, Fingal, Fitzwilliam of Merrion, Gormanston, Ikerrin, Kildare, Mountgarret and Ormond. Finally, the Connacht depositions contain a wealth of material on the reaction to the rebellion of Lords Bermingham of Athenry, Clanmorres, Clanricarde, Dillon of Costello-Gallen, Mayo and Ranelagh. The responses of individual peers varied across the country and a number are discussed below. What is immediately clear is the rapidity and extent with which law and order broke down and how people who had previously been neighbours, acquaintances and even friends engaged in acts of violence against individuals and communities. On occasion peers or their immediate kin were the perpetrators of violence. Deponents paid particular attention to the extent to which a local lord, one of his close relatives or his servants interacted with local insurgents. A tenant on Viscount Fitzwilliam of Merrion’s Ringsend estate claimed that the viscount entertained a ‘great number of rebels’ over the summer of 1642.72 In January 1642 the earl of Fingal’s brother allegedly robbed a local settler of his cattle and household goods.73 Fingal himself reputedly used the disorder to

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settle an old score with a Scottish minister, George Creichton, over a dispute about property in County Cavan.74 By April 1642 Viscount Mountgarret’s sons were accused of being rebel leaders.75 Other deponents claimed that Lords Clanmorres, Mayo and Muskerry were involved in particularly bloody encounters (discussed below and in chapter 10). In a deposition dating from 1652 Jane Cooper from Cashel maintained that Lord Bourke of Castle Connell had besieged Cullen castle between November 1641 and August 1642 and that Lord Roche had ordered an attack on a convoy of 50 people.76 Thomas Mansell from Cork deposed that Lord Roche’s wife had ordered the hanging of his servant, Walter Hart.77 According to James Weld from Mountrath, Barnaby Fitzpatrick, sixth baron of Upper Ossory, ordered some local men to be hanged and ‘whilst he was hanging some of them thrust darts’ through them.78 In July 1642 James Colville, also from Queen’s County, recounted that Upper Ossory’s mother, Margaret, who was a daughter of Walter, eleventh earl of Ormond, was ‘as bad or worse than the men’.79 These accounts of Ladies Roche and Upper Ossory, along with Lady Iveagh (discussed below), suggest that Catholic women were as brutal and barbarous as their menfolk and reinforced long-held English views that Irish women were even more subversive and treacherous than their male counterparts.80 In contrast, Protestant women were blessed with qualities – valour, loyalty and honour – normally the preserve of men. Lady Offaly was represented as a heroine, the epitome of ‘Englishness’.81 In April 1642 O’Dempsey insurgents repeatedly attacked her strategically located castle at Geashill in King’s County.82 Lewis O’Dempsey, second Viscount Clanmalier, offered safe quarter to her, her children and her grandchildren (her son had married a daughter of the earl of Cork). She angrily replied: ‘I little expected such a salute from a kinsman, whom I have ever respected, you being not ignorant of the great damages I have received from your followers.’ She continued: ‘I can think of no place safer than my own house, wherein if I perish by your means, the guilt will light on you, and I doubt not, but I shall receive a crown of martyrdom, dying innocently.’83 She later informed Clanmalier that she would rather they batter her castle down than surrender to men who have no sense ‘either of honesty or honour’.84 Though there were numerous eyewitness and hearsay accounts of their activities, few peers actually deposed. The exception was Henry, Lord Blayney, who recounted how the rebels had seized the town and castle of Monaghan, together with Castle Blayney and his cattle and goods. The insurgents expelled Lord Blayney but took prisoner his wife, seven children, his two sisters and ‘manie of his kindred and servants’.85 James Cranford represented the family’s incarceration in The teares of Ireland. A crude woodcut depicts Lady Blayney and her children sitting on a pile of straw in front of a man

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hanging from a gallows. The caption read: ‘the Lord Blany forced to ride 14 miles without bridle or sadell to save his life: his Lady lodged in strawe beeing allowed 2d a day to releve her & her children. [The insurgents] slew a kindsman of hers and hanged him up before her face [for] 2 dayes telling her she must expect the same to terrifie her the moore’ (plate 12). In the cases of Lords Kildare, Lambert, Loftus, Londonderry and Meath a land agent or trusted servant deposed on their behalf, listing their losses and giving an account of the progress of the rising on their estates. The wives of two Catholic peers, Lady Mary Netterville and Jane, countess of Westmeath, testified on behalf of their men, as did the mother of another, Alice, Lady Antrim (unlike the others this deposition dates from the early 1650s). More common were testimonies by individuals associated with the peers – their servants, factors, men and women who worked on their estates or as members of their households. Deponents close to the elderly Richard, first earl of Westmeath, captured his reactions to the outbreak of the rebellion.86 One eyewitness testified that on 11 February 1642 a party of rebels arrived at Westmeath’s home ‘in a violent manner’ causing the earl, who refused to join their cause, to fall ‘into a passion and hath been ever since driven to keep his bed’.87 Old age and clerical influences prevented the insurgents securing Westmeath’s direct support for their cause, but William Baker, ‘a cooke in his lordship’s houses’, reported that the earl allowed his servants to join forces with those besieging Drogheda. They included his butler (Donal Birne), his coachman (Patrick Ward), George ‘the taylor’, the ‘postillion’ (Henry Kellie), ‘Donnell the waineman’, the undercook (John Bernie), together with the bailiff and the groom.88 William Parker, who had been offered refuge in the earl’s house and had worked as his cook for six months, later heard how Westmeath had died after rebels ambushed his coach. According to Parker, the rebels had ‘forcibly drawne and halled [Westmeath] out of his coach’, shot him in the thigh and dislocated his shoulder. The earl, who was over 60 and ‘blinde of his eyes and often struck wth a dead palsie’, then died.89 In her testimony Westmeath’s wife Jane, who was a sister of the earl of Fingal, added that the rebels had, on the night of her husband’s funeral, stolen their livestock (cows, cattle, sheep, mares and colts), and deprived Westmeath’s grandson and heir of his annual rental income of £3,000. She calculated the family’s total losses to be ‘the sume of twenty thowsand & twenty fiue poundes or therabouts’.90 In the case of Westmeath, he provided refugees with clothing and money for their passage to Dublin, as did Lord Dunsany.91 The depositions thus record the extent to which the peers offered refuge and support to the bewildered victims of violence.92 Catholic peers helped their Protestant neighbours. Viscount Mountgarret and his sons saved from hanging English settlers living in Kilkenny.93 The earls of Antrim and Castlehaven allowed

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many families to take refuge with them in Maddenstown house in County Kildare. According to a deposition by William Collis, a saddler from Kildare, Antrim in particular ‘harboured & releeved a great number of English protestants that had beene robbed by the rebells and would without doubt have been killd if the said Erle had not saved and sheltered them: & the said Erle (when they desired it) sent them away to Dublin with mony & clothes which hee freely gave them’.94 The testimony of William Dynes, a Kildare carpenter, corroborated this but Dynes also claimed that the English (including Collis) who stayed at Maddenstown ‘went to masse’ even though ‘they were proteste [i.e. Protestant] before ye rebellion began’.95 Further north, Antrim’s mother, Lady Alice, claimed that during the weeks after the onset of rebellion she never refused anyone shelter, and her house was ‘full of Irish, Scotch and English’ including the local carpenter, miller, smiths and servants.96 Elsewhere Lords Clanricarde, Mayo and Muskerry did likewise.97 As one might expect, Protestant lords and their wives immediately rallied to help refugees. Lady Ormond offered succour to hundreds of refugees in Kilkenny castle and used her influence with her kinsmen to secure their safe convoy to Waterford and other places of safety.98 In Munster local Protestants flocked to strongholds – Castle Lyons, Youghal and Lismore castle – defended by Lords Barrymore, Cork and Broghill. The 1641 depositions capture the distress, fears and anxieties of those caught up in the insurrection and how the war tore families and communities apart and shattered livelihoods. As far as the English state was concerned, the depositions illustrated the great cruelties perpetrated against the Protestant community by the Catholics and formed the basis for convictions in the warcrimes tribunals of the early 1650s (see chapter 10). In this sense they must be seen as ‘documents of conquest’.99 The 1641 depositions also record acts of toleration, friendship and compassion, where lords or their family members protected the local Protestants from the excesses of the insurgents. During the 1650s and especially after the Restoration, testimonies recounting these kindnesses proved important in securing the survival and revival of many families, especially Catholic ones. The Baronial Context of the Civil Wars By Christmas 1641 the rising had engulfed much of the country, with the Irish in Counties Kilkenny, Mayo, Roscommon, Sligo, Tipperary and Wicklow joining the insurgents from Ulster and the Pale. Viscount Mountgarret and his allies had taken Kilkenny town, together with key strongholds in Tipperary and Waterford. In January 1642 Lords Brittas and Castle Connell (‘a new and younge reconciled Catholicke’) followed Mountgarret’s example and took the insurrection to County Limerick.100 In

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February Mountgarret marched into County Cork, together with the baron of Upper Ossory, at Lord Roche’s invitation.101 In March Viscount Muskerry finally joined the insurgents and ‘raysed his country’. From the Catholic perspective securing Muskerry’s support was essential. Of an ancient and very illustrious Irish pedigree and a committed Catholic, he was related to every noble house in Munster and allied by marriage to the houses of Thomond (his mother, Margaret, was the only sister of Barnabas, sixth earl) and Ormond (his wife, Ellen, was Ormond’s twin).102 Moreover, according to even hostile observers, he was a natural leader: He was a man extraordinarily perspicacious, most apt to uniting people’s minds with himself, popular, clever, not known for being deformed by the stains of any vice and having collected all the virtues that may suit a man apt for navigating the ship of a troubled state according to his will.103

Whether Muskerry could in fact muster an army of 8,000 men, as one pamphleteer maintained, was debatable, but he did rally in time-honoured fashion ‘the Irish septs or tribes, which they preserve with as much integrity and care as the ancient Jewes did theirs’.104 Muskerry and his forces based themselves at Blarney castle, just five miles from Cork, ‘a place of great strength . . . with very strong walls and turrets, with battlements, and contrived many places of defence’.105 By April 1642 Catholic forces, led by Garret Barry, controlled much of Munster, except for Tralee, Cork, Youghal and Bandonbridge. According to the earl of Cork, ‘the height of their revenge is principally bent against the Earle of Barrymore, my selfe and my sonnes’.106 There was undoubtedly truth in this, as the Catholic confederates took up arms against men with whom only months previously they had dined and politicked.107 Cork poured his immense fortune into the Munster war effort. According to his own account, the earl fortified Youghal and manned it with two companies of foot ‘compounded of English Protestants and well disciplined’. He left his ‘owne strong and defensible house of Lismore’ to the care of his son Roger, Baron Broghill, and 100 horse and 100 foot (at a weekly cost of £20 plus provisions). Another son, Lewis, Viscount Kinalmeaky, with 100 horse and 400 foot, took charge of the town of Bandonbridge, ‘the walling and fortifying whereof stood me 14,000li [pounds sterling], wherein are at least 7,000 soules, all English Protestants’. Cork’s investment delivered immediate results as troops sallied out from the town, capturing seven ‘strong castles’ and winning a number of skirmishes.108 Meanwhile his son-in-law, David, earl of Barrymore, defended his recently renovated seat at Castle Lyons. As they prepared for war, Cork drew attention to the rich pickings that might be had in the wake of the rebellion and suggested to his political allies in London

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that Catholic lands should be confiscated and planted with Protestants.109 Others concurred. One noted in April 1642 that ‘a man with one hundred pounds in his purse shall purchase that [land] here, whereupon he may live better than he that hath 100 per annum in England’.110 Early in 1642 the earl gave a rousing speech in Cork city. He lambasted the ‘bloody and barbarous enemy . . . [that] hath brought to ruin whole families, nay destroyed, and quite overthrown the fairest of our buildings, and whole towns and cities’. He urged his audience to rally and fight back: ‘When thy neighbours house is on fire, thou are not secure, but the same danger may reach thee also.’111 According to the earl, rebel excesses had ‘bred such desires of revenge in us, that every man had laid aside all compassion, and is as bloody in his desires against them [the Irish], as they have been in their execution against us’.112 He reported that his son, Lord Broghill, was ‘full of hot blood and courage’, which may have been linked to the insurgents’ onslaught in February 1642 against Lismore, now home to hundreds of Protestant refugees and the Broghill family. Again in May 1643 the insurgents fired the town of Lismore and Cork’s almshouses and killed about 60 of his Irish tenants. The following month Viscount Muskerry summoned the castle to surrender.113 Nearby Castle Lyons also became a refuge for hundreds of Protestants whom the countess of Barrymore clothed and the earl later escorted to Youghal.114 The insurgents made every effort to win over Barrymore, who ‘hath been tempted with promises, and threatened with menaces, to joyne with the rebells in Munster’.115 He refused and reassured his father-in-law of his loyalty, ‘enlightened with the understanding of God’s true religion and gospell’.116 More practically, Barrymore ‘raised some 500 horse and foot of his tenants, and friends for the kings service and his own defence’.117 This did not prevent Lords Roche and Muskerry, his erstwhile dinner partner, from capturing and sacking Castle Lyons in May 1642 (though, significantly, Muskerry allowed Barrymore to escape the onslaught unharmed).118 These baronial armies came face to face at the battle of Liscarroll (3 September 1642) when troops led by Lords Brittas, Castle Connell, Dunboyne, Ikerrin, Muskerry and Roche took on a Protestant force led by Lords Broghill, Dungarvan, Inchiquin and Kinalmeaky. The Protestant forces won the encounter, but Liscarroll proved to be a personal disaster for the earl of Cork: Kinalmeaky died in a pre-battle ambush, Barrymore suffered wounds that later killed him, and Broghill narrowly escaped capture.119 Fearing for the safety of his other sons, the earl immediately dispatched Lords Dungarvan and Broghill and their families to England.120 The great hero of Liscarroll was Murrough O’Brien, Baron Inchiquin, a Protestant of Irish Catholic stock and related by marriage to neighbouring settler families.121 Despite his relative youth (he was only 27 in 1641) and his limited experience of warfare (though he had spent some time in Spanish service in Italy during

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the late 1630s), he won early victories at Liscarroll and in other skirmishes with the insurgents. Inchiquin used his kin connections with the Irish to secure accurate intelligence of their plans and movements and always led his men from the front. His leadership skills helped to overcome the perennial problems he encountered fighting in the Munster theatre of war and the fact that his forces constantly lacked seasoned reinforcements, sufficient money and adequate munitions. According to contemporary pamphleteers, Inchiquin ‘performed all the offices of a resolute man and a wise commander’;122 and ‘showed excellent demonstrations of his valour, and by his example encouraged all the army to acts of chivalry and honour’.123 Yet despite his reputation in the popular press as a man of ‘chivalry and honour’, Inchiquin committed numerous outrages, earning him the nickname ‘Murrough of the burnings’ (Murchadh na dTóiteán). In September 1647 Inchiquin’s men stormed St Patrick’s cathedral, Cashel, leaving dead 700 men ‘besides some women’ who had sought refuge there. The carnage at the cathedral was such that the bodies lay six deep, and it did not stop there: allegedly, an additional 2,000 townsfolk perished during the sack of Cashel.124 Inchiquin’s personal rivalry with the Boyles of Cork, especially Lord Broghill, left him vulnerable to politicking at Westminster, and this helps to explain why he changed sides in 1644 (from the king to Parliament) and again in 1648 (when he returned to fight for the king).125 Despite being appointed in January 1645 the parliamentary lord president of Munster, Inchiquin proved reluctant to embrace the Solemn League and Covenant, something that Broghill and hard-line parliamentarians held against him.126 Although consistently undermined and marginalized by Broghill, now largely based in London, and his Westminster allies in the ‘Independent’ faction, Inchiquin took the offensive in 1647 and launched a major campaign into Counties Waterford and Tipperary which forced the confederates to order the Munster commander, Theobald, Viscount Taaffe, to take action against him. Their armies engaged at Knocknanuss, near Mallow in County Cork, on 13 November. Inchiquin’s smaller force routed the confederate army. Despite this, Parliament, now dominated by his political enemies, failed to supply Inchiquin’s troops. This forced him to conclude a truce with the confederate forces in Munster and to switch sides yet again, leaving the Protestants of south Munster once more vulnerable to the Catholic forces.127 From a Protestant view point, west of the Shannon was the most militarily vulnerable province, in part because the Protestant nobility did not enjoy a significant military presence there. News of the rising reached Barnabas, sixth earl of Thomond, then resident in the strategically sited Bunratty castle early in November. Over the course of the next few months he urged his followers to remain loyal to the Crown and attempted to protect his estates, coordinate the defence of County Clare and maintain law and order.128 Local Protestants

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later criticized the earl for his lack of military leadership and for not having armed his English and Dutch tenants, who ‘might not only have awed, expelled and quelled all the rebels of that country, but have done much good against the other rebels of Munster’.129 Throughout the early 1640s Thomond took a strictly neutral stance, something that the confederates tolerated because so many of his O’Brien kinsmen (Inchiquin excepted) supported the Catholic war effort.130 Finally, in the spring of 1646 Baron Inchiquin and Thomond’s English wife persuaded the earl to hand Bunratty castle over to a small parliamentary garrison and to retire to his wife’s estates in Northamptonshire.131 A few months later (14 July) the confederates captured Bunratty castle and broke the parliamentary blockade of Limerick. The earl of Clanricarde held much of Connacht for the Crown by virtue of ‘the generall affection borne to his family, and the dependence upon him, by reason of his great estate’.132 Because of the influence Clanricarde exerted both at home and at the royal court, the confederates repeatedly asked him to join their cause, appealing directly to his sense of honour.133 In November 1642 a fellow peer evoked the memory of his ancestors and begged Clanricarde ‘not to expose the honour descended from so noble a father to so much obloquy, as that the world may see, when all the rest of the catholicks of this kingdom answer their father, your lordship should be the only branded member for denying to your own father, your king and country’.134 As in the case of Thomond, the confederates tolerated Clanricarde’s military neutrality. The earl attributed this to three things. First, ‘the memory of my father was very precious to most of the kingdom’. Second, some believed that Clanricarde’s English connections might, in the event of a defeat, prove ‘a powerful instrument for their obtaining pardon, and the future settlement of a good peace; many through compulsion and mere necessity, being involved in this general calamity’. Third, he had close friends – especially the Galway lawyers – within ‘their council of Kilkenny’ who protected his interests.135 Unlike so many of his fellow peers, Clanricarde was a true royalist who put the king’s cause above his personal interests or those of his compatriots. He nonetheless meddled in confederate politics and attempted to mediate a political settlement between the Crown and confederates. Throughout the war he also implored his fellow peers to act with honour in their dealings with the enemy and chastised them if troops under their command behaved inappropriately.136 It was 1647 (significantly, after the death of his stepbrother and parliamentary commander, the earl of Essex) when Clanricarde finally committed himself to the confederate cause.137 Clanricarde later became Ormond’s deputy but his belated involvement did little to further either the royalist war effort in Ireland or the confederate cause.138 Clanricarde may have maintained his neutrality during the early years of the war but other Connacht lords supported the Catholic cause. Francis

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Bermingham, ‘a very gallant proper man’ who in 1645 succeeded his elderly father as twelfth Lord Athenry, was, according to Clanricarde, ‘drawn into the confederacy, and made a colonel in that party, somewhat, I believe, to the disturbance of his private thoughts and affections’.139 Despite Clanricarde’s assurances that Viscount Clanmorres was ‘as careful and compassionate of the English as any man can be’, the viscount pressed the town of Galway to declare for the confederates and ‘marched to the field, [taking] foure or fiue castles from the enemie perforce’.140 The anonymous author of the Aphorismical Discovery of Treasonable Faction added that ‘such of them [i.e. the captured castles] as did not in time sue for quarter, was putt to the sworde and all this in one day, such was his zeale, but soone after tooke a sicknesse, wherof in a shorte space died, to the noe small greefe of all the Catholicks of Ireland’.141 An account, dating from 1653, offered an alternative version of Clanmorres’s ‘sicknesse’. It recorded in graphic detail his alleged onslaught against the inhabitants of Clarinbridge, County Galway, and how the ‘mad and raving’ Clanmorres engaged in an orgy of violence that began when he ‘drank a health to his lordship [i.e. Clanricarde] and thereupon caused one of the men to be turned off the ladder and presently after called for more wine, drank another health to Clanricarde and caused another to be turned off and hanged, and soe the health upon the hanging of every person until they were all executed’. Clanmorres died of a fever shortly afterwards, ‘much disquieted’, Clanricarde later wrote, by ‘some violent acts committed by him’.142 Another Bourke kinsman, Viscount Mayo, did his best to maintain law and order in north Connacht but in February 1642 lost control of his men, who launched a particularly brutal attack on a convoy of Protestants travelling to Galway at Shrule Bridge, County Mayo. Despite the fact that Mayo, a recent convert to Protestantism and new to the peerage, had promised the refugees a safe conduct, Irish insurgents massacred them and robbed the bodies of their clothing and other valuable items. According to one eyewitness account, when Mayo heard of the atrocity he went into his ‘chamber, and there wept bitterly, pulling off his hair, and refusing to hear any word of persuasion, and comfort . . . having no manner of means left him at that time to be revenged for that inhuman and bloody massacre, and the irreparable dishonour done unto himself ’.143 Mayo’s genuine sense of horror at the nature of the bloodletting and how it violated existing codes of conduct and honour is clearly evident. When atrocities involving a lord (his tenant, servant or kinsman) did occur, the honour of that individual was compromised, often resulting in private distress and public humiliation.144 Despite this and his reversion to Catholicism, Mayo’s subsequent relationship with the confederation of Kilkenny was tense and he often operated as an independent warlord as he did his best to protect his County Mayo estates.

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The 1641 insurrection had begun in Ulster and the Protestant lords there bore the brunt of the action as they defended their estates from incursions by Irish insurgents. By 1643 Lords Blayney, Charlemont, Claneboy, Conway, Cromwell and Montgomery, together with other local Protestant grandees, raised 9,900 foot and 750 horse, and the arrival of a further 10,000 Scots in April 1642 enabled them to regain control over much of central and east Ulster. In November 1641 Parliament appointed Viscount Conway as a regimental colonel (he arrived in March 1642). From his base at Lisburn he acted as commander-in-chief of the British forces and fought alongside Robert Monro, the commander of the Scottish army. Of the leading Catholic lords in Ulster – Antrim, Magennis of Iveagh and Maguire of Enniskillen – only Magennis was in situ when the insurrection broke out. The fact that ‘all the Irish lords of Ulster were in noe posture of seruice’ was, according to Bellings, ‘a greate hinderance to the royall service in the north’.145 Early intelligence of the attempt to seize Dublin castle enabled the authorities to arrest Lord Maguire of Enniskillen and his followers, and forced the insurgents in County Fermanagh to turn to his brother, Rory, for leadership. Maguire’s arrest seemed to fuel the rebel onslaught and the absence of his restraining and moderating influence might explain why the early weeks of the rising in County Fermanagh were so violent and bloody.146 For his part, Viscount Magennis of Iveagh with his men attacked Downpatrick and besieged Lord Cromwell’s house.147 Magennis granted the defenders safe quarter but then burned down Cromwell’s ‘faire goodly howse and but lately built’ and ransacked his estate in Lecale, allegedly depriving Cromwell of an annual income of £2,600.148 In June 1642 a County Down deponent described Magennis as ‘a young but a desperate and cruel rebel’.149 His mother, Mary, Lady Magennis of Iveagh, according to another deponent, was ‘so cruel against the English and Scottish’ held captive in the town of Newry that she urged the insurgents to kill them.150 The earl of Antrim, who in the spring of 1641 had been involved in ‘popish plots’ unconnected to Maguire’s, remained in Dublin and agreed to act as an intermediary with the ‘discontented gentlemen’ (as Antrim termed the insurgents). Antrim’s neutrality did not prevent his followers in County Antrim joining the rising or the Scottish army, under Robert Monro, from occupying his east Ulster patrimony. The need to recover his estates became Antrim’s priority for the next 20 years and he was prepared to do almost anything in order to secure their return. In May 1642 he travelled to Dunluce in the hope of forging a deal with Monro who instead incarcerated him in Carrickfergus castle. Six months later he escaped disguised as an invalid and fled to a waiting ship bound for Carlisle; from there he journeyed to York, where he joined his wife and Queen Henrietta Maria sometime in November. He spent most of the winter and spring plotting an invasion of Scotland with

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the queen, the details of which became public in May 1643 when a Scottish colonel recaptured him off the County Down coast. Following another dramatic escape from Carrickfergus in November, Antrim hurried to Waterford, where the third general assembly of the confederate Catholics had just convened. Almost at once he secured the support of the general assembly for an invasion of Scotland. The confederates promised to raise and transport 2,000–3,000 men to the Western Isles to join forces with troops levied by the Scottish royalists under the command of the marquis of Montrose. In June 1644 some 1,600 fully armed soldiers under the command of Alasdair MacColla left Ireland to form the backbone of Montrose’s very successful royalist army.151 By acting as a military entrepreneur, Antrim combined the royalist goal of taking the war to the Covenanters in Scotland with his own personal objective of ridding his Irish estates of the Scottish army of occupation. When this failed to remove Monro’s men from east Ulster, Antrim turned to others – first the papal nuncio and later the Cromwellians – in an effort to retrieve his patrimony. Professional career soldiers, many of whom enjoyed close kinship links with members of the resident peerage, fought alongside local lords. Generals Owen Roe O’Neill (‘a soldier since a boy, in the only martial academy of Christendom – Flanders’),152 Thomas Preston and Garret Barry were all veterans who had spent most of their careers fighting in the Spanish army of Flanders. A nephew of Hugh O’Neill, earl of Tyrone, Owen Roe O’Neill had distinguished himself at the defence of Arras (he was the governor) before returning to Ireland in July 1642 to lead the army of Ulster.152 Preston, later first Viscount Tara, was the second son of Christopher Preston, fourth Viscount Gormanston, and uncle to the sixth viscount who, as his will made clear, ‘was persuaded by the nobility and gents of Leinster to send for my uncle Thomas Preston . . . assuring me that his charges should be defrayed and my uncle at no losse which I hope they will perform’.154 Thomas Preston had fought alongside O’Neill at the much celebrated siege of Breda (1624–5), helped to relieve the siege of ’s-Hertogenbosch (1629) in Brabant and held Louvain against a French onslaught (1635) before becoming in 1641 governor of Gennepp, on the eastern borders of the United Provinces. He and his family arrived in Wexford in September 1642 to a warm reception ‘with dayly invitations, feasts and banquetts . . . gratulatorie poems, civill and martiall representations of comedies and stage playes’.155 Preston then took over the command of the army of Leinster.156 Garret Barry, who ‘from his youth had been a souldier and grew ould in the warres’ had served in Germany and the Netherlands (he too was at Breda), was a kinsman of the earl of Barrymore and initially took command of the Munster armies despite the fact that he was ‘old and unfortunate’.157 In January 1642 Mountgarret’s brother, Colonel John Butler, a professional swordsman, arrived home to

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fight alongside his kinsmen.158 These men brought with them to Ireland the latest military techniques and technologies associated with the Military Revolution. War and Politics The onset of civil war in Ireland after October 1641 shattered pre-war political groupings in the Irish parliament. The fifth session of the parliament began on 11 January 1642 and ended on 9 February 1647, but conflict pre­­ occupied the majority of peers who simply retreated to their country seats and mobilized for war. Aside from Richard, second earl of Westmeath, who took his seat in the Dublin House of Lords for the first time on 15 April 1644 and Viscount Fitzwilliam of Merrion who attended in 1645 and 1646, only a small Protestant rump of six lords ever attended. In February 1645 there were ‘not two viscounts present to accompany’ Viscount Ranelagh as he was introduced to the house and two barons had to substitute for them.159 With the outbreak of civil war in England after August 1642 the bulk of the Protestant peers – and many of the Catholic ones – initially remained loyal to Charles I (see appendix III). Determining who the royalists actually were, however, is fraught since a number changed sides and a few avoided making a commitment. It would seem that while the degree of engagement varied according to circumstances, many peers remained loyal to the king and those who joined the confederation of Kilkenny did so in the context of loyalty to the Stuarts.160 The conclusion in September 1643 of a ceasefire between the forces loyal to the Crown, led by Ormond, and the signing of the Solemn League and Covenant a few weeks later forced peers to choose between king and Parliament. After the Restoration the earl of Anglesey claimed that 14 Protestant lords (there were 34 at this point) opposed the cessation together with later peace treaties that Ormond concluded with the confederates and as a result should be regarded as supporting the parliamentary cause.161 This is an oversimplification and Protestant responses to the 1643 ceasefire, the later peace treatises and the Solemn League and Covenant varied. For instance, Sir Arthur Chichester, who succeeded his aged father as the second viscount in 1648, initially served as Ormond’s commander-in-chief in Ulster, and after Monro surprised his Belfast regiment (May 1644) Chichester retreated to Dublin where he remained for most of the 1640s and kept a low profile. Viscount Conway, whose Lisnagarvey regiment refused to take the Solemn League and Covenant in 1644, was initially a staunch loyalist but after 1646 felt that he had no alternative but to cooperate with the parliamentary forces based in Ulster. In September 1644 Lord Blayney objected to the continuation of the ceasefire between the royalists and confederates, claiming ‘None that hath an English heart in his body, a protestant face, and a Christian

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conscience, will give any obedience to such an unnatural composition of so great a quarrel, so just a war.’162 By 1646 Lord Blayney, who like Conway had initially adhered to Ormond, had joined with the Scots (he later lost his life at Benburb). Lord Castle Stewart transferred his allegiance to the parliamentarians under Michael Jones.163 Others inclined to the Westminster Parliament, which from the outset had become the effective paymaster of the Protestant troops in Munster together with the British forces and the Scottish army in Ulster. With the outbreak of war in Ireland in 1641 Lords Loftus of Ely and Mountnorris retreated to London and lobbied Parliament for aid for Ireland. However, as the war gained momentum in England, Loftus fought for Parliament and Mountnorris, who succeeded as Viscount Valentia in 1642, retired from politics and spent the 1640s and 1650s either in Ireland or on his estate at Newport Pagnell, Buckinghamshire. His eldest son, Arthur Annesley, later first earl of Anglesey, served in 1645 and again in 1647 as a parliamentary commissioner to Ireland (Annesley was one of the commissioners to whom Ormond surrendered Dublin). Purged from the Westminster Parliament in 1648, Annesley lay low during the 1650s but sat for Dublin in Richard Cromwell’s parliament early in 1659.164 The other resident peers who figured in Westminster politics were Lords Broghill and Inchiquin (until he reverted to the king in 1648), who held Munster for Parliament, together with Lord Esmond who commanded Duncannon fort prior to his death and its capture by General Preston in 1645. It is not clear which peers actually adhered to the Solemn League and Covenant. Lords Broghill probably had no choice but to sign it, along with Lords Claneboy, Folliott, Montgomery and possibly Castle Stewart, whom Parliament nominated governor of Derry in 1648.165 Hugh, second Viscount Montgomery, became the de facto leader of the Scottish planters in east Ulster and worked closely with the Scottish commander, Monro, who married his widowed mother. Montgomery initially resisted taking the Solemn League and Covenant but in June 1644 he finally acquiesced. Thereafter he served under Monro, attended the councils of war of the Ulster British forces and fought at Benburb, where he was captured.166 He languished in gaol for over a year until he could be exchanged with a confederate captive of equivalent rank (the earl of Westmeath, who had been taken prisoner after Dungan’s Hill in August 1647).167 James Hamilton, second Viscount Claneboye, also fought under Monro and probably took the Solemn League and Covenant with his men in 1644. Like Montgomery, Claneboye later supported the Engagement but in 1649 he reverted to the king’s cause. The execution of Charles I on 30 January 1649 proved a turning point for many peers who up until this point had supported Parliament, however unenthusiastically. Images of ‘the innocent streams of

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blood’ issuing from ‘his martyred body’ haunted one ‘Christian’ peer, who valued ‘true honour’.168 Confederate Catholics Over the summer and autumn of 1642 the Catholics established the Confederate Association. Bellings described it as ‘such a Government as might best suite with the condition of the times and constitution of their affayres; to which end there mett in the citty of Kilkenny a very numerous assembly of Prelates, of noblemen and trustees chosen from all the counties and Corporations haveing right to send burgesses to Parliament’.169 Another contemporary observer described the confederate ‘model of government’ as comprising ‘a countie councell to be chosen in euerie countie, a prouinciall in euery prouince, and another councell [i.e. the General Assembly] to be indifferently choosen, by the whole kingdome’, together with a supreme council.170 The architecture of confederate government and the exercise of power thus closely resembled pre-1641 structures and processes. Aside from the important difference that the general assembly was a unicameral body and, very significantly, that the executive (or the supreme council) was subordinate to the legislature, the general assembly was modelled on Parliament. By the mid-1640s there were 34 Catholic peers, 26 (76 per cent) of whom can be associated with the confederation of Kilkenny (see appendix III for details). Of those not included, John Power, fifth Baron Le Power, was a lunatic; Patrick Plunkett, ninth Lord Dunsany, had been incarcerated in Dublin castle during the early 1640s; and James, third baron of Strabane, was a minor.171 The earl of Clanricarde, Viscount Fitzwilliam of Merrion, Lord Courcy of Kinsale and the recently elevated Barnewall of Kingsland were either neutral or served in the royalist armies in England. While, as the earl of Clanricarde gleefully observed, ‘The good old earl of Westmeath [who] was nearly allied to most of the nobility of the pale . . . would not embrace their ways.’172 Old age (he was 72) kept Lord Athenry at home, but his grandson and heir later joined the confederation, as did Westmeath’s. At least 20 lords (59 per cent) took their seats in one or more of the nine confederate general assemblies that met at Kilkenny between 1642 and 1649 (in 1643 the meeting was held in Waterford).173 Sir Richard Bellings, secretary to the supreme council, noted that the general assembly met in ‘some large roome appointed for the place of meeting, seats were built to the height of three assents. Those at the upper end were designed for the Lords and Prelates. . . . The precedency of speakeing, as to the other members of the House was determined by the Prolocutor: but a nobleman or Prelate that offered to speake, was allwayes preferred.’174 Ever jealous of their privileged position in society the lords also ensured that they ‘had an upper room’ in

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Robert Shee’s house ‘for a recess for private consultation’.175 At least 13 (38 per cent) peers sat as members of at least one supreme council. For instance, in 1647 Viscounts Mountgarret and Dillon of Costello-Gallen represented Leinster; Viscount Muskerry and Baron Dunboyne stood for Munster; Viscount Mayo and Baron Athenry for Connacht; and the marquis of Antrim, Viscount Magennis of Iveagh and Antrim’s brother, Alexander MacDonnell, for Ulster. The most politically active – or at least those who sat on four or more supreme councils – were Lords Antrim, Castlehaven, Fermoy, Magennis of Iveagh, Mountgarret, Muskerry and Netterville. Viscount Mountgarret presided over every council between 1642 and 1646, and the marquis of Antrim briefly took over in 1647 as the effective head of state. The peers also served abroad as roving diplomats: Antrim travelled to Paris in 1648, Muskerry to Oxford in 1644 and to Paris in 1648, and Taaffe to the duke of Lorraine in 1651. As with the pre-war parliaments the influence of the titled nobility was clearly discernible and one contemporary noted that ‘those peeres did soe well thrive, that they perswaded, both Councell, and many of the chiefe members of [the] Assembly to theire owne opinion’.176 Despite the fact that their administrative experience was limited because they had not been allowed to hold high office in early Stuart Ireland, the lords, together with the lawyers and former MPs, continued to represent landed interests and brought to the confederate assembly experience of parliamentary procedures, practices and traditions.177 Legislative structure followed parliamentary practice and one of the first acts passed by the 1642 general assembly specifically mandated that ‘the common laws of England and Ireland . . . and all other statutes . . . shall be punctually observed within this kingdom’. Another confederate act specified that any land transfers that occurred would later have to be ratified by a free parliament, a clear recognition of the Irish parliament’s position as the supreme source of authority in Ireland.178 More innovative, but little studied, were the networks of provincial and county councils that formed an intimate part of the framework of confederate government.179 Though the details are often obscure, it appears that local lords provided political leadership at the regional level. For example, in August 1642 the Connacht provincial council selected Lords Clanmorres and Mayo and Mayo’s son, Sir Theobald Bourke, as three of their general assembly delegates (there were 12 in all). The provincial council that met at Ballinrobe appointed Lord Mayo as governor for County Mayo and ‘sat there daily for a week together and there gave out orders both for raising men and for the maintaining of them as also for the settlement of possession’.180 An oath of association, drawn up in June 1642, bound together the confederate movement. A hostile pamphleteer reported to his English audience that the oath was ‘administered and received, with twenty vain antics, ceremoniall

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superstitions and ridiculous fopperies, as crossing, sprinkling, bead-dropping, and the like’.181 Closer to home, the earl of Clanricarde heard of the ‘violent proceedings of the clergy, inforcing men to take the oath of association, both by excommunication, and keeping them from mass, and by threatening to set all others upon them’.182 Whatever the truth, a considerable number of Irish lords signed the oath of association, and at least 17 of the 34 Catholic lords (50 per cent) subscribed to the revised oath of 1647, though this figure is probably an underestimate (see appendix III). They thereby swore never to lay down arms until full toleration had been granted for the Catholic religion and the clergy had been restored to their pre-Reformation properties and privileges. Baronial Leadership The peers may have played a very prominent role in the conflict of the 1640s but yet they failed to provide either the decisive military or political leadership that the Catholic cause so desperately needed. For instance, the feud in 1644 between Lords Antrim and Castlehaven over who should be given supreme command of all the confederate armies ensured that the summer offensive against Ulster ended in a shambles. Jealousies between Viscounts Taaffe and Muskerry over who should command the army of Munster resulted in military disasters in 1647.183 Contemporaries were acutely aware of this vacuum and Bellings noted ‘the great scarsity and fatall barrenesse of abilityes among the then sett of noblemen’.184 The deaths between 1642 and 1643 of three prominent lords – Westmeath, Slane and Gormanston – combined with the neutrality of key Catholics like Clanricarde, help to explain this ‘fatall barrenesse of abilityes’ amongst the nobility.185 The other natural leaders lost at this time were William Fleming, Lord Slane, and especially Nicholas Preston, Viscount Gormanston (Thomas Preston’s nephew), who were regarded as being ‘the two best peeres of L[e]inster, for witt and loyalltie’ and ‘both yonge and reasonable’.186 Slane and Gormanston were both succeeded by young sons. In short, the Catholic war effort lacked a charismatic titled figure, an earl of Essex, who could provide decisive and overarching political, as well as military, leadership. Instead, the confederate lords either politicked amongst themselves or allowed external forces – the Crown or the clergy – to divide and rule them. Micheál Ó Siochrú has suggested that Lords Castlehaven, Mountgarret, Muskerry and Taaffe headed up the ‘peace faction’ and enjoyed the support of the lords of the Pale and the other Butler lords (Cahir, Dunboyne and Galmoy).187 Political opponents to the Confederate Association regarded the majority of peers as ‘Ormondists’ though a significant minority, led by the marquis of Antrim, favoured an agenda driven by the papal nuncio,

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Rinuccini, and his fellow clerics. As the 1640s progressed the Confederate Association became increasingly divided between the pro-clerical and proroyalist groupings, and this profoundly undermined the ability of the confederates to wage war effectively.188 Matters reached crisis point in the spring of 1648 when on 27 May Rinuccini excommunicated those who supported the truce negotiated between Lord Inchiquin and the confederates (20 May 1648). The supreme council immediately appealed to Rome against the excommunication. The peers within the confederate assembly split into those who supported the supreme council (Lords Bermingham of Athenry, Clanmalier, Dunboyne, Fingal, Galmoy, Mountgarret, Trimleston, Upper Ossory and Westmeath) and those who stood firm behind the papal nuncio (Lords Antrim, Dunsany, Gormanston, Ikerrin, Louth, Magennis of Iveagh, Maguire of Enniskillen, Mayo and Slane).189 A brief period of intense and bitter civil war followed until Ormond finally managed to conclude in January 1649 an uneasy peace treaty, which paved the way for the dissolution of the Confederate Association and the creation of a pan-archipelagic royalist coalition. The Protestant cause in civil war Ireland had no equivalent to the earl of Essex either. However, Ormond’s far-reaching kinship links, especially with the lesser Butler houses and Viscount Muskerry, combined with the influence that his clients (the ‘Ormondists’) enjoyed within the Confederate Association and his close personal relationship with Charles I, ensured that he exerted extensive political clout on confederate strategy for most of the 1640s.190 As the war in England gained momentum and the king’s hunger for Irish troops grew, Ormond became increasingly embroiled in seemingly endless negotiations with the confederates, which resulted in a ceasefire in 1643 and pacifications in 1646 and 1649. The political furore that ensued after the first Ormond Peace pushed Ormond into surrendering Dublin to Parliament and fleeing first to England and later to France. Ormond’s actions and the perception that he was looking after his own interests rather than those of his royal master attracted criticism and accusations of disloyalty. After January 1649 the confederates threw their weight behind the marquis and his royalist coalition, which included Lord Inchiquin, and their combined forces took the strategic towns of Dundalk, Newry, Trim and Drogheda. Any successes were cut short by the rout of Ormond’s forces at the battle of Rathmines (2 August 1649), a defeat that not only discredited Ormond but paved the way for the landing of Oliver Cromwell and his force of 12,000 veterans, armed with heavy artillery. Within three months the key royalist and confederate strongholds of Drogheda (11 September) and Wexford (11 October) had fallen, followed by New Ross (19 October) and Carrickfergus (2 November). Small wonder the remnants of the royalist force became mutinous. Admittedly, Ormond had managed to offset some of the disastrous

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losses by persuading Owen Roe O’Neill and the army of Ulster to join him; but O’Neill’s death (6 November), less than three weeks after the treaty had been signed, created a power vacuum and helped to pave the way for the capture of Kilkenny (27 March 1650), Clonmel (10 May), Carlow (24 July) and Charlemont (14 August), together with the defeat of the army of Ulster at Scarrifhollis in County Donegal (21 June 1650). Ormond’s ineffective attempts to rally the royalist cause and his lack of leadership left him vulnerable to criticism. The anonymous author of the Aphorismical Discovery of Treasonable Faction held him to be ‘a man of small deseruinge in martiall affaires, weake in his directions . . . and unfortunate in his actions, in whom was nothinge noble or greate but his bloude’.191 This was anathema to Ormond who, whether on or off the battlefield, wanted to be represented as a man of public honour and private virtue whose conduct was beyond reproach. On 11 December 1650 he sailed back into continental exile, leaving the marquis of Clanricarde, who took over as lord deputy, and his erstwhile confederate allies to fall out amongst themselves and to negotiate the surrenders of Limerick (27 October 1651) and finally of Galway (12 April 1652). On 12 May 1652 the army of Leinster agreed terms with the Cromwellians at Kilkenny, and Lords Clanmalier, Iveagh, Mayo, Muskerry, Slane, Westmeath and their forces laid down their arms.192 The following month Clanricarde also submitted to the Cromwellians. The war in Ireland was as good as over. Conclusion A number of conclusions can be drawn from this broadly chronological overview of the conduct of the war and the role that the peers played in it. First, the Irish lords perceived themselves as a warrior class and initially viewed the outbreak of war in Scotland as an opportunity to demonstrate their loyalty to Charles I and to court royal favour with military service. With the onset of rebellion in October 1641 the conflict spread to Ireland and the peers proved less enthusiastic about taking up arms. However, the escalation of the violence and the widespread involvement of the lower orders in the insurrection over the autumn and winter of 1641 forced the peers to engage in the conflict if only to protect their lineage and landed interests. Second, the peers may have been reluctant to fight but it was partly their intervention that made the continuation of the war possible. Lords, especially of ancient lineage, called their followers and kinsmen to arms much as their forefathers had done, while the more recently created nobles mobilized the settler community. Many peers then served as military commanders, with varying degrees of effectiveness, in the local and national arenas. In addition to mobilizing thousands of men for war, the peers also formed a critical

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component in the political infrastructures in London, Oxford, Dublin and Kilkenny that sustained these forces and offered, often with limited effect, strategic leadership for the various war efforts. Third, while some peers acted primarily in the interests of the king or, in the case of recusant lords, the Catholic Church, the majority did not. Often local circumstances and selfinterest determined military actions and political agendas and when these were combined with a lack of strategic leadership, it is remarkable that the war in Ireland lasted for as long as it did. Its duration can be attributed, at least in part, to the fact that England had dissolved into civil war. Finally, the conduct of the peers during the 1640s, especially their reaction to the 1641 rebellion and the nature and level of their military engagement, had very significant consequences for their material fortunes and political careers not simply during the 1650s, when the Cromwellians did everything possible to destroy their military potential once and for all, but also after the Restoration and beyond. The next two chapters explore this in greater detail.

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CHAPTER 10

Survival Cromwellian military victory after 1649, followed by English recon-

quest, paved the way for another round of expropriation on a scale that not even Edmund Spenser or Thomas Wentworth would have imagined possible. The completion of the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland reduced the titled nobility, especially those lords with royalist and confederate track records, to particularly low ebbs. In a world where land, wealth and power were inextricably linked, expropriation represented a profound threat to their status and their very existence as a privileged group in Irish society. Many peers preferred exile on the Continent to remaining in Ireland. Abroad, as is discussed below, they eked out existences as political refugees at the royal court in exile or as military entrepreneurs. Many peers also took their chances in Ireland and this chapter examines their fate. Some faced death after protracted war-crimes tribunals. Others simply survived and a few eventually prospered. The terms under which a lord surrendered to the new regime often determined his future and that of his lineage. While Oliver Cromwell and his generals had been willing to cut deals with prominent Catholic power brokers, the majority faced confiscation of their estates and transplantation to Connacht. This chapter examines the challenges that the Cromwellian land settlement posed for members of the resident peerage and the various strategies they developed to cope. How many peers were liable for transplantation and how many actually moved west of the River Shannon? What became of their estates? A detailed examination of the marquis of Antrim’s pre-war patrimony suggests that there was a disjuncture between the theory of confiscation and transplantation and the reality of what happened. The situation proved less threatening for the Protestant peers. Those who had supported Parliament prospered. Lord Broghill became a key figure in the political regime in Westminster and others acquired vast landed estates that facilitated further upward social mobility after 1660. Those who had supported the king eventually negotiated a satisfactory

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compromise even if, for a brief period, the Scottish peers – Lords Montgomery and Claneboye – also faced transplantation. This chapter also explores how members of the peerage, especially the pre-war Protestant lords (now termed ‘Old Protestants’), became integral to the smooth running of Ireland and how they helped to secure the restoration of Charles II. By the later 1650s the Cromwellians had become dependent on securing the goodwill of these men and did not hesitate to reach accommodations that effectively reinstated the peers as the political power brokers in their regional communities. On the whole, Catholic lords kept extremely low profiles. Political necessity forced some to spend time lobbying the new regime in London but the majority retreated from public view, some to their much diminished pre-war estates and some to new ones in the west. Though the evidence is extremely scrappy, some lords appear to have done everything possible to protect the interests of their fellow peers, to whom they were related by marriage or connected by a shared debt. Those in a position to do so also tried to prevent Cromwellian parvenus from exercising power, acquiring lands and attaining rank and status. Others did their best to secure the fortunes of their exiled king, the fount of their honour, and, working with their counterparts across the three kingdoms, a handful of peers from Ireland eventually helped to secure the restoration of Charles II. Exile Over the course of the 1640s and 1650s many resident peers and their families spent extended periods of time living abroad, often in straitened circumstances. The long-term political, social and cultural importance of the dislocation and the relationships formed amongst the exiles themselves – whether at Westminster or at the Stuart court first in Oxford and later abroad – and with their host communities in England, France and the Spanish Netherlands, are discussed elsewhere in this book (see chapter 15). They proved particularly important for the survival of Catholic peers after 1660 and for the Protestant ones during the 1650s. In the short term these periods of exile brought intense uncertainty and personal misery. Petitions submitted to the English House of Lords during the early 1640s reveal the plight of titled refugees who fled to England, especially London. Lord Baltinglass, whose estates were in County Wicklow, depended for survival on English government handouts.1 Similarly, prior to the outbreak of the rebellion Patrick Fitzmaurice, baron of Kerry and Lixnaw, owned an estate of 9,978 plantation acres in County Kerry, which was ‘competent to support him in his quality’. As a result of the insurrection Kerry, his wife and seven children fled to London where they lived in poverty.2 By 1650 Kerry, hounded by creditors and regarded as politically suspect, languished in the

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Tower of London, though he was later allowed to travel to Bath for two months ‘on security and recognizances’ of £2,000.3 The family only returned to their seat at Lixnaw during the later 1650s.4 With the outbreak of rebellion Alice, Viscountess Moore, and her two young sons (aged four and two) took refuge first in Dublin and, after her husband’s death in combat in 1643, in London.5 In 1647 she petitioned Parliament for her allowance (£1,000) and her husband’s arrears (£8,000), complaining that ‘her whole estate in Drogheda is wholly destroyed and eaten up by the army’ and that the ‘subsistence and education’ of her sons depended on ‘the charity’ of a friend.6 In the immediate aftermath of the rebellion the wider Boyle clan decamped to England where the war (and total absence of income from Ireland) forced them to live more modestly than they were accustomed. By the mid-1640s the Boyle women had established their households in London, and Lady Ranelagh’s salon offered a particularly stimulating refuge for the Irish Protestant community in exile. During the 1650s Lady Ranelagh badgered the authorities for money for her estranged husband and her immediate family.7 Lady Kildare did likewise and secured pensions and protection from the avaricious creditors who harassed her husband into his grave.8 During the 1650s a significant number of peers – Lords Antrim, Claneboye, Clanricarde, Montgomery, Netterville and Trimleston – also spent time in London as they lobbied the Cromwellian court, just as they had the Stuarts in the pre-war years (discussed below). Other lords sought refuge on the Continent. During the 1650s a significant minority, faced with sequestration and even death at home, opted to follow the Stuarts into exile where they acted as roving diplomats, secured military commands in the armies of France, Spain or Germany, or simply camped in Caen in Normandy or in The Hague in Flanders where they plotted amongst themselves.9 They included Lords Castle Connell, Castlehaven, Fitzwilliam, Gormanston, Inchiquin, Muskerry, Netterville, Ormond, Taaffe, Tara and Richard Bourke, later earl of Clanricarde. Ormond, who resided first in north-western France at Caen, then Paris and later in the southern Netherlands at Bruges, enjoyed the special favour of the king and his court in exile, and during these years he developed close relationships with figures who went on to dominate English politics, especially Edward Hyde, later earl of Clarendon, and Edward Nicholas, secretary of state.10 After the Restoration, Clarendon noted how during these years Ormond was reduced to living in a humble Parisian boarding house and to walking ‘the streets on foot, which was no honourable custom in Paris’.11 Ormond conspired with English and Irish royalists and in 1658 made a daring visit to England from his Flemish base to discuss the possibility of a restoration.12 Exiled from his immediate home and family (his eldest sons joined him only briefly) and living in reduced circumstances, these years took their toll on him and on his

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marriage.13 Writing in May 1678 Ormond reminded Richard Boyle, second earl of Cork and also earl of Burlington, of the difficulties of these years in exile: ‘I cannot possibly live over again so many ill years as we have done. I am sure a thatched house in Ireland or a grave anywhere will please me better than the Louvre or Palais Royal.’14 During their continental sojourns the peers joined forces with established communities of Irish military, intellectual and economic émigrés.15 Lord Inchiquin, for example, secured a French command despite the fact that local priests tried to block his appointment on the grounds that his actions at Cashel in 1647 made him ‘a murderer of priests, friars and such like’.16 Between 1654 and the conclusion of peace in 1659 he served in Catalonia as governor of the French-controlled regions.17 According to the earl of Castlehaven’s own account, Henry Ireton promised that ‘if I would retire and live in England, I should not only enjoy my estate, but remain in safety with esteem and favour of the parliament’.18 Yet Castlehaven opted for exile and his memoirs document his continental military career, which was reasonably distinguished. He headed the Irish regiments fighting for the French Crown in the war with Spain, holding the rank of maréchal-de-camp, or major general, and was present at major military encounters, including the sieges of Rocroi (1653) and Arras (1654) and the battle of the Dunes in 1658.19 Lord and Lady Muskerry and their children followed their eldest son, Cormac, to France where he was in military service.20 Muskerry’s daughters entered the convent at Port Royal near Paris, while the viscount roamed Europe seeking employment as a swordsman until he returned home in 1653 to bear his ‘crosses’ and stand trial before a Cromwellian court. Reprisals Viscount Muskerry stood trial charged with ‘war crimes’, allegedly committed during the early months of the insurrection when Muskerry had attempted (often unsuccessfully) to protect local Protestant refugees from the insurgents’ onslaughts and organized safe convoys for them. Interestingly, Muskerry had chosen to stand trial, returning to Ireland from exile in the Iberian Peninsula, to bear (as he put it) his ‘crosses’. Muskerry offered a spirited defence and after a three-day ordeal was acquitted, three judges having found him guilty and three innocent. In a moving speech he thanked the court, which, he believed, had acted ‘with justice’. He continued: ‘I consider that in this Court I come clear out of that blackness of blood . . . [which] is more to me than my estate. I can live without my estate, but not without my credit [i.e. honour and reputation].’21 He was retried in February 1654 for his part in royalist conspiracies, but thanks to the influence that Lady Ormond enjoyed with the Cromwellian authorities he was again acquitted. He returned to the

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Continent where he served as a confidant of Ormond and Charles II, who in 1658 elevated him to the earldom of Clancarthy in recognition of his loyalty to the Stuarts in their darkest hour. The Cromwellians conducted other war-crimes trials during the early 1650s. In 1652 a Cork court found Lord Castle Connell innocent of the charges brought against him of alleged involvement in atrocities committed in Limerick.22 Later the same year a Kilkenny court found Lord Clanmalier guilty of having committed murder but then reprieved him. Edward Butler, Viscount Mountgarret’s second son, was also found guilty of the murder of five people at Ballyraggett in 1642.23 For his part, Edward claimed that he had tried to save refugees but that a ‘guarlan ague’ kept him in bed for a month, which prevented him for protecting the English from ‘bad usage’ at the hands of his men.24 He was executed in 1653, as was Theobald, third Viscount Mayo, after a Galway court found him guilty of being involved in the murders at Shrule Bridge, County Mayo (discussed in chapter 9). In 1652 Lady Ellen Roche of Fermoy, wife of the eighth viscount, mother of the ninth, and a granddaughter of an earl on her mother’s side and a baron on her father’s, was brought before the High Court of Justice. She was tried, condemned and hanged on the evidence of a ‘strumpet’ for allegedly shooting a man even when it could be proved that she was 20 miles away.25 That the authorities treated an aristocratic woman with such dishonour and hanged her like a commoner rankled with many of her contemporaries. Nicholas French, Catholic bishop of Ferns, later claimed that Lady Fermoy had been ‘dragged before a foul multitude of heretical common people, who had once been her subjects, as though she were appearing before a council’. She ‘trembled merely to look on a naked sword-blade, and grew pale at the sound of the faintest gun-shots’. French related how she was ‘accused of handling weapons to kill Protestants’ before being ‘convicted by false witnesses and throttled by a noose of ill-repute . . . in the sight of her children and friends’.26 Even by Cromwellian standards Lady Roche’s execution was particularly brutal. Catholic Survival Just as Lord Mayo and Lady Roche perished at the hands of the Cromwellians, others managed to survive, even prosper. The terms under which they surrendered to the Cromwellians often determined their fate. The marquis of Antrim made contact with the invaders shortly after their arrival in Ireland and demonstrated his willingness to serve the Cromwellians by securing the surrender of New Ross (19 October 1649). Henry Ireton later reminded the English council of state of the ‘singular service’ Antrim had done the army ‘since the first day they came before Rosse’.27 He appears to have remained

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with the main English army for much of 1650 and tried to persuade his former followers in Ireland to surrender peacefully.28 For his part, Antrim received several important favours from the new regime. Ireton promised Antrim that he should either be allowed to compound for his estates in Ulster or be awarded lands equivalent to them elsewhere in Ireland (in the event, his wife secured lands in Connacht, discussed below).29 Early in January 1652 parliamentary commissioners requested that Antrim – ‘not having been so active as most others have against the parliament, nor being a man of designing head, or guilty of the massacres’ – might be ‘left out of the exception for life and estate’ and allowed to compound for his property.30 In the event, the administration in Dublin proved unable to restore the marquis to his estate but it rewarded him financially for his loyalty to the regime (an annual pension of £500, later increased to £800).31 This substantial regular income was supplemented throughout the 1650s by occasional, additional contributions towards everyday expenses.32 As the 1658 ‘civil list’ clearly demonstrates, Antrim received a larger allowance (£800) than any other Irish pensioner (Lord Mayo, son of the executed viscount, was his closest competitor, with a combined stipend of only £134). In fact, he was paid nearly as much as Lord Deputy Henry Cromwell, whose official annual salary was only £1,000, and considerably more than the average civil servant, who received between £20 and £30 per annum.33 To the Cromwellians, securing Antrim’s compliance was worth paying for. The marquis of Clanricarde received similar treatment. On 6 September 1652 Clanricarde concluded articles with the Cromwellians, which protected him from arrest for his debts as he journeyed through England en route to the Continent. In the event his poor health prevented him from joining the royalist court in exile, and instead he travelled in March 1653 to London, where he was ‘civilly treated by all men, as a man who had many friends, and could have no enemies but those who could not be friends to any’.34 The following year Cromwell awarded him £600 and agreed that his wife should receive 4,000 acres of profitable land from her husband’s estate in Ireland. The state even contributed £100 towards his funeral expenses when he died in May 1658 and honoured his wife’s later request for her Irish jointure lands.35 Between March and June 1652 parliamentary commanders negotiated a number of surrenders, the qualifications of which varied slightly. The most important was the surrender of the Leinster army, commanded by the earl of Westmeath, on 12 May 1652, which offered a series of concessions including ones relating to the exercise of the death penalty and other punishments, along with an undertaking that the army would intercede with the Westminster Parliament and secure favour for those who had surrendered.36 This later proved advantageous to the signatories of these treaties since, as the forensic

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research of John Cunningham has shown, Oliver Cromwell insisted, against the advice of the regime in Dublin, that the terms of the agreement be honoured.37 The example of Richard Nugent, second earl of Westmeath, illustrates how the ‘Leinster officers’ operated. Westmeath’s track record as a confederate did not prevent him from petitioning the lord deputy and asking for the return of his estates on the grounds that his loyalty was ‘so different from all other Catholics of this nation’. He had been a teenager living in England when the rebellion broke out, only returned to Ireland after the 1643 cessation and, so Westmeath alleged, ‘attended to the advancement and interests of England’ by hazarding ‘his life and fortune’ in opposing Owen Roe O’Neill and the papal nuncio.38 The state denied him access to his pre-war estates in Counties Cavan, Longford, Roscommon, Sligo and Westmeath, but in 1655–6 it awarded him 57,870 Irish acres in Counties Galway and Roscommon (see table 19 below). English connections and a legitimate jointure claim appear to have saved a number of prominent titled families. Nicholas, Viscount Barnewall of Kingsland, for example, touted his ‘Englishness’. Anxious to avoid transplantation he petitioned Oliver Cromwell in 1656 claiming that he was of English extraction and even though he had initially fled to Wales, he had always been attached to the English and Protestant interest in Ireland. Lord Broghill and a number of leading parliamentarians supported his claims and argued that he ‘carried himself in a different manner from the rest of his countrymen’.39 In 1659 Oliver, second Viscount Fitzwilliam, lived in Irishtown at Ringsend in Dublin city, which was within striking distance of his pre-war patrimony in the baronies of Balrothery, Castleknock and Rathdown. An ordinance of 1654 provided for the restoration of some of his property to his English Protestant wife (Eleanor Holles), and he then requested that this be rented to ‘my cousin Annesley’. Arthur, later earl of Anglesey, was particularly well placed to look after Fitzwilliams’s interests (see below).40 The Nettervilles of Dowth proved equally fortunate despite their active engagement in the confederation. John, later second viscount, had married Elizabeth Weston, daughter of Richard, earl of Portland. In April 1653 she secured an order allowing her one-fifth of the profits of her husband’s estates. Later she was allowed to retain temporary possession of the manors of Dowth and Proudfootstown, yielding an annual rental of £200, ‘scarce the eight part of her husband’s estate’.41 Lady Elizabeth then went to England ‘laying her case before kindred and friends’ but she died on 16 September 1654. Despite this, her supplications helped to secure in February 1657 an order allowing the family to retain Dowth and Proudfootstown.42 In short, a pre-war marriage settlement protected the Netterville lineage and enabled Lady Netterville, herself from an influential English family, to importune the Cromwellian authorities. The ‘Englishness’ of Lady Thurles also protected her. In an order dating from November 1654 the Cromwellians allowed Lady Thurles, Ormond’s

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English Catholic mother, to remain on her estate of Thurles. When they reviewed her case two years later, they justified her continued residence on the grounds that during the early months of the rebellion she had protected many English families who had been plundered and robbed (60 people in all), kept them in her own house until the 1643 ceasefire, and then paid for them to travel to Dublin or Cork. Moreover, she had supported the local English garrison. When Lord Inchiquin had campaigned in Tipperary in 1647, he looked on her as ‘English, and of English interest and affection’ and protected her and her tenants. It was the Irish insurgents who viewed Lady Thurles as an enemy, plundering her estate of 1,500 sheep, 60 cows, many horses, mares and colts, and threatening to burn her house for her refusal to cooperate with them.43 She remained in her home throughout the 1650s and according to the ‘poll-tax’ returns, she was living in Thurles in 1659–60 in a community of 518 people, 72 of whom were English and 446 Irish (appendix IV). Transplantation Individual Catholic lords may have reached an accommodation with the Cromwellians but many nevertheless faced transplantation to Connacht. The land settlement of the 1650s represented the most ambitious attempt to plant Ireland at any point in the island’s history. The Adventurers’ Act (March 1642) had begun the process of expropriation by offering Protestant speculators 2,500,000 acres belonging to Irish ‘delinquents’ who had lost their lands because of their alleged involvement in the rebellion. Legislation the following year allotted parliamentary soldiers serving in Ireland land in lieu of their pay on the same terms as the adventurers. In order to recompense these soldiers and adventurers, the English Parliament stipulated in the Act of Settlement (August 1652) that virtually all land held by Catholics should be confiscated and that many of the dispossessed should be transplanted to Connacht. The Act of Settlement classified the opponents of Parliament according to the degree of guilt imputed to them. The act exempted ‘from pardon of life and estate’ anyone who had been involved in any aspect of the rising prior to the first meeting of the general assembly in November 1642. It specifically excluded from pardon 22 peers, the bulk of whom had been Catholic confederates, together with four Protestants (Ormond, Montgomery of the Ards, Roscommon and Inchiquin, who converted to Catholicism in the mid1650s).44 Clauses six and seven mandated that those who had served against Parliament would be liable to the confiscation of two-thirds of their estate, with the remaining third providing for dependants. Catholics who could demonstrate that they had remained loyal to the Commonwealth only had to forfeit a third of their estate but were liable to transplantation.45

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Extracts from anonymous petitions by Old English persons of ‘rank’ offered a number of objections to the proposed legislation. They claimed that Connacht lay wasted and that they, who had been reduced to living on the charity of their pre-war tenants on their old estates, had no stock and could not persuade labourers to accompany them, which was particularly significant in an age that valued loyalty and the ability to command retainers. They argued that transplantation was unwarranted since their forebears had affected and continued the civility, breeding, language, lawes and manners of the English, their extraction, int’rest, education, and affection . . . whose example have beene forcible meanes to introduce among the people the same; who now be proscribed to a wilderness devoid of all accommodation is to diswont them from there [sic] accustomed civilitie and betray the same to barberities.46

Their protests and their lobbying in London did nothing to abate the process of transplantation. The Act of Satisfaction (26 September 1653) reserved the greater part of Connacht and Clare for the transplanted Irish and a further act (30 November 1654) ordered all transplantable people to move by 1 March 1655. In December 1654 Parliament appointed commissioners to sit at Athlone and Loughrea to decide on the claims of the transplanted Irish. John Cunningham has shown how these commissioners granted settlements to 1,800 claimants from 30 counties (of these 1,205 transplanters came from west of the Shannon and were assigned 40 per cent of the land earmarked for redistribution). The process of land allocation comprised, in the words of Cunningham, a complex combination ‘of truncation, redistribution, transfer and consolidation’.47 In order to secure sufficient land for the transplantees a number of Protestant lords who held land in Connacht had to surrender their holdings (it is not clear whether they were compensated with lands elsewhere). Over 40,000 Irish acres belonging to the earl of Thomond in County Clare were redistributed, together with acres belonging to Lords Cavan, Cork and Ranelagh (Sir Charles Coote, later earl of Mountrath, was also affected). As table 19 shows, seven Catholic peers – Lords Athenry, Galmoy, Ikerrin, Kingsland, Sarsfield of Kilmallock, Trimleston and Westmeath – were awarded lands in Connacht (Athenry, Trimelston and Westmeath had been exempted from pardon in the 1652 Act of Settlement but could claim under the articles of Leinster).48 The lands they received, especially when compared with the estates that they had forfeited, were modest. That said, the earl of Westmeath managed to secure a considerable estate amounting to 57,870 Irish acres in Counties Galway and Roscommon, and Viscount Galmoy 23,558 Irish acres in Counties Clare, Galway and Mayo.

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Table 19.  Peers or close family members awarded lands in Connacht.49 Transplanter surname

Christian Title held in name c.1655

1652 Act of Settlement (excepted from pardon)

County transplanted to

Irish acres (profitable)

Barnewall

Matthias

Baron Trimleston

X

Galway

2,924 [1,462]

Barnewall

Nicholas

Viscount Kingsland

Bermingham

Francis

Baron Bermingham of Athenry [and Mary, his mother]

X

Galway

7,40751 [1,062]

Bourke née Compton

Anne

Lady Clanricarde

Husband

Galway

231+

Burke

Katherine Lady Clanmorres

Galway

951

Burke

Elizabeth

daughter of Lord Castle Connell

Galway

193 [193]

Burke

Margaret

dowager of Lord Castle Connell

NS

[700]

Butler

Pierce

Viscount Ikerrin

Clare, Galway & Mayo

15,00052

Butler

Edward

Viscount Galmoy

Clare, Galway & Mayo

23,558

Fitzpatrick

Mary

baroness of Upper Ossory

Fleming

Lady Ann baroness of Slane

MacCarthy née Roche

Ellen

MacDonnell née O’Neill

Roscommon50 135+

? Husband

Galway & Roscommon

1,726 [274]

Lady Muskerry Son

Clare & Roscommon

2,000 [1,000]

Dame Rose

countess of Antrim

Galway & Mayo

26,66453 [8,888]

Nugent

Richard

earl of Westmeath

Galway & Roscommon

57,870 [11,574]

Plunkett

Nicholas

2nd son of earl Father of Fingal

Galway & Mayo

778 [389]

X

(Continued Overleaf  )

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Table 19:  Contd. Plunkett née Barnewall

Dame Mable

countess of Fingal

Plunkett

Lady Mary

Sarsfield

David

Husband

Galway

2,667

baroness of Louth

Roscommon

777

Viscount Sarsfield of Kilmallock

Galway, Mayo 3,796 & [1,448] Roscommon

The state also awarded lands to the mothers, wives, or daughters of peers, including Ladies Antrim, Castle Connell, Clanmorres, Clanricarde, Fingal, Louth, Muskerry, Slane and Upper Ossory. These estates were modest and rarely exceeded 1,000 Irish acres. The exception was Lady Rose Antrim, who secured in her own right 26,664 Irish acres of good-quality land, ‘with convenient accommodation’ (8,888 acres in County Galway and the remaining 17,776 in County Mayo).54 The Cromwellians agreed to provide her with ‘some convenient seat that is undisposed of and that doth belong unto the Commonwealth’, although there is no evidence to suggest that she ever left Ulster.55 Rose’s address in 1656 was given as ‘Dunluce’, while her husband was living in a small village (Eden) near Carrickfergus in 1657, and in Belfast when the 1660 poll tax (the so-called ‘1659 census’) was taken.56 More typical was Anne, Lady Slane, Antrim’s sister and mother both of the earl of Westmeath and Charles, fifteenth Baron Slane. No doubt Antrim and his nephew, Westmeath, exercised what influence they could on Anne’s behalf, but she also appears to have claimed the entitlement her son secured under the Leinster articles. The fact that five sisters, all daughters of Walter, eleventh earl of Ormond, also acquired acres may be attributed to the nature of their jointures or possibly to the influence that Lady Ormond might have been able to exercise on behalf of her kinswomen (also see below).57 It is not clear how many of the seven peers who received grants actually moved west. The fact that Matthias Barnewall, eighth Baron Trimleston, was buried in Kilconnell abbey, County Galway, when he died in 1667 suggests a close connection with the county and his headstone reads: ‘here lies Matthew Lord Trimleston, one of the transplanted’.58 The 1660 poll-tax returns shed light on only one of the seven peers: Viscount Sarsfield of Kilmallock was living in Tulla barony in County Clare (though he had been awarded lands in Counties Galway, Mayo and Roscommon). Viscount Kingsland does not appear to have moved and was living with other Barnewalls on his family estates in Balrothery barony in County Dublin (he had been allocated lands

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in County Roscommon).59 Though the details are lost, Viscount Galmoy also appears to have cut a deal with the Cromwellians and used his connections to avoid transplantation (despite securing 23,558 Irish acres in Counties Clare, Galway and Mayo) and to secure access to a portion of his pre-war estate and to ‘some competent pension’.60 The Case of Antrim Whether Catholic peers moved west or not, their pre-war estates were forfeited and redistributed to adventurers and Cromwellian soldiers. A detailed example from the marquis of Antrim’s estates in Ulster illustrates what appears to have happened on confiscated estates across the country, though further cadastral studies need to be undertaken in order to confirm this. In June 1653 lots were drawn for the adventurers’ lands in Ireland, and the barony of Dunluce was accordingly set aside for 16 entrepreneurs, largely Londoners, who had advanced a total of £8,656 in return for 42,611 Irish acres of land.61 In the months following the lottery the speculators either sold or exchanged their adventures. Sir John Clotworthy, later Lord Massareene, who had originally invested £2,254 and received 11,231 acres in the baronies of Massareene and Dunluce, doubled his territorial empire in County Antrim by buying up lots in the barony of Dunluce to the value of £3,187.62 In 1654 the remainder of the Antrim estate was surveyed (the ‘Civil Survey’) in order to establish how much land was available for distribution to the Commonwealth’s unpaid soldiers in lieu of wages.63 As a result, over the course of the next two years more than 65,000 acres of the Antrim estate were parcelled out to over 800 Cromwellian soldiers.64 Troops in seven separate companies were allotted ‘debentures’ in the baronies of Kilconway, Cary and Glenarm, and in the Long Liberties in neighbouring County Londonderry. The average debenture was between 9 and 15 acres, with the officers receiving substantially more than the enlisted men. For example, Captain Richard Franklin received 1,476 acres while Privates Henry Langdale and Abraham Thompson were each allotted just under two acres. The majority of Cromwell’s troops were eager for cash and merely sold their debentures and went home so that, as with the adventurers’ lots, there was an immediate redistribution.65 Three categories of individuals purchased the new acres. First, several Cromwellian officers with debentures in the area added to their own holdings by acquiring those of their men. Second, local landowners, particularly Clotworthy and Dr Ralph King, MP for Coleraine and Derry in 1654, 1656 and 1659, bought up this cheap land so as to expand and consolidate their own estates. Finally, the original tenants of the marquis’s estates, who were naturally anxious to return to their farms, also purchased debentures wherever they could.66

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This rapid turnover of personnel makes it impossible to estimate accurately the number of adventurers and soldiers who actually settled on the Antrim estates during the later 1650s. Even at the Restoration the matter was hotly disputed. Antrim’s enemies suggested that 900 persons had established themselves on the estate between 1656 and 1659, while the marquis argued that no more than five adventurers and 100 soldiers had taken up residence.67 Contemporary observers confirmed the latter figure. One noted that the only adventurer ‘of condition’ was Clotworthy, while ‘the rest [were] without names, save some citizens of London, for whom he [Clotworthy] is an undertaker’.68 The same source added that ‘there were not six English tenants placed by those into the north unto whom it was assigned’.69 Antrim himself claimed at the Restoration that those few adventurers and soldiers who had actually settled did nothing to encourage further English plantation or to improve their holdings. Only one even bothered to build a house of ‘stone and timber’, while others allowed the property on their lots to fall into disrepair. Antrim’s house at Dunluce, which had been improved during the 1630s, was totally neglected.70 Moreover, the adventurers and soldiers bled their holdings for a quick economic return on their investment, with the result that within a three-year period the adventurers whose lots fell in the barony of Dunluce were said to have ‘received treble their adventure or debenture money’. Other settlers allegedly ‘received more than seven fold’.71 Yet despite having his inheritance carved up and parcelled out to mercenary entrepreneurs, Antrim was able to maintain very close links with his estates throughout the Interregnum. This was largely thanks to the fact that considerable portions of the estate apparently were not doled out to adventurers and soldiers. Who actually ‘owned’ or, at least, controlled these acres is unclear; presumably they remained in government hands and continued to be farmed by Antrim’s pre-war tenants. Perhaps some of the land was set aside for those of Antrim’s followers who agreed to submit to the Commonwealth. This would certainly explain why a considerable portion of the estate rental continued to find its way into the marquis’s pocket. For instance, after 1652 he received a monthly allowance of £340 ‘out of the profits from his estate in Ulster’.72 In May 1654 he was awarded £100 ‘out of the rents and profits that Archibald Stewart makes out of the said Earl his estate in Ulster’.73 In addition to these legitimate stipends, Antrim was involved in endless schemes designed either to raise further revenue from the land or to re-establish his hold over it. In the barony of Cary, for example, he was somehow able to conceal from the authorities over 2,194 acres of land, which were later ‘discovered’ by Dr Ralph King. The earl also collected over £200 worth of rents in the barony of Glenarm between 1658 and 1660.74 Finally, Antrim instructed his old tenants to purchase back land for him. Thus during the later 1650s John Shaw of Ballygally bought ‘four

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town[land]s and a half ’ in the barony of Kilconway for £359-3s-9d from Alderman Thomas Miller of Limerick and other property from Captain Samuel Porter, which he conveyed to Antrim in 1666 (when it was at last safe to do so). In addition to paying the principal, the marquis allowed Shaw, as his reward, the annual rental (of £11) from the lands for 41 years.75 Presumably, Antrim made similar arrangements with the inhabitants of the barony of Glenarm who paid £2,000 to Major Smith and his men for their Glenarm holdings. The former occupier of a farm of 80 acres in the barony of Cary who was able to re-enter his holding on paying the soldier to whom it had been allotted the sum of £10. A tenant on a neighbouring farm repurchased it from soldiers for a relatively small sum, ‘that as it had become overgrown with “whins” the land was of little value!’76 The poll-tax returns suggest that Antrim’s leading Protestant tenants from the 1630s (the Boyds, Dunlops, Kennedys, Shaws and Stewarts) continued to influence local affairs and that they were only occasionally supplemented by fresh settlers such as John Galland.77 As this detailed examination of the Antrim estate highlights, the implementation of the Cromwellian land settlement proved problematic at a number of levels. First, only a small number of newcomers actually settled and ‘a projected influx of 36,000’ dwindled to 8,000 (7,500 of whom were soldiers and 500 civilians).78 Second, in some cases it proved impossible to separate lords from their hereditary lands and to resettle them west of the Shannon. By retaining close links with their pre-war tenants, many of whom had taken long leases for their farms which pre-dated the outbreak of war, lords helped to minimize disruption to their estates. The Commonwealth not only recognized as legally binding those leases made with Protestant tenants before the rebellion but did everything possible to encourage continuity of landholding at the tenant level. Impressionistic evidence suggests that many of the Catholic peers – Lords Dunsany, Fitzwilliam, Galmoy, Kingsland and Strabane – appear to have returned to their pre-war estates and developed survival strategies akin to those used by the marquis of Antrim. The 1660 poll-tax returns list the ‘tituladoes,’ or individuals with local influence and land who were obliged to pay the highest taxes (see appendix IV), together with their ethnicity and those of the inhabitants of the communities in which they resided.79 From these it is clear, for example, that Thomas Plunkett, Lord Dunsany, resided at Killeen in the barony of Skreen in County Meath on lands that had formed part of his pre-war holdings, and in a community of 105 people (98 of whom were Irish and seven English) whom he knew well.80 It would seem that other peers – Lords Fitzwilliam, Kingsland and Le Power – were in similar situations, as no doubt were other lords whose names were not recorded in the poll-tax returns.

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Protestant Survivors Members of the Protestant titled nobility also reached an accommodation with the new ruling regime, often citing the articles of Dublin that the marquis of Ormond had negotiated with Parliament in 1647.81 The example of Lady Ormond is particularly well documented.82 In 1653 she petitioned the council of state for access to the estates she held in her own right (32,291 plantation acres, largely in Counties Tipperary and Kilkenny) and her house at Dunmore.83 Lady Ormond became involved in protracted negotiations with the Cromwellians regarding the fate of the Ormond estates. And with some success: in March 1653 she was assigned Dunmore house, a cash sum of £500 and lands worth £2,000 per annum on condition that she did not send funds to or make contact with her husband (she disregarded this and the state turned a blind eye).84 She enjoyed the support of key Cromwellians such as Lord Broghill, Sir Robert King, Sir Gerard Lowther and even Henry Cromwell, which undoubtedly helped her case.85 The reaction of Sir Robert King, one of the Irish commissioners of revenue and father of John, later first Baron Kingston, was typical. ‘I did never observe more eminent virtues in any lady’, he wrote, adding ‘It is hard that she that was born to a great inheritance shall want bread for her children because of her Lord’s delinquency.’86 Their support did not prevent Ormond’s Irish and English creditors from hounding his wife.87 She resorted to borrowing on the Dublin staple, and between 1658 and 1659 Sir Gerald Lowther (to whom her husband was already indebted) and others lent her £1,800 on bond.88 These pre-war relationships, combined with a sense of respect for rank and status, helped Lady Ormond and her brood to survive the 1650s. It was 1657 before Lady Ormond and her family moved back to Ireland on a permanent basis. The problems that she then encountered were numerous. Much of her estate was unprofitable or had been let to tenants on short-term leases and without improving clauses. Yet an examination of the leases she made between 1655 and May 1660 (table 20) illustrates Table 20.  Length of leases on Lady Ormond’s estates, 1655–60.89 Length of Lease

1655

11 years

1

1656

1657

1658

1

1

8

14 years 8

31 years

1

12

8

2

99 years

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1660 (pre-May)

1

21 years

Total (44)

1659

1 10

1

1

8

16

8

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how stability returned to her holdings. By the later 1650s long-term leases (of 21 years) at economic rents with improving clauses once again became the norm and replaced the one-year leases that had characterized the 1640s and early 1650s. After a decade of warfare lands, which had yielded £2,400 in 1640 could no longer generate sufficient income to support Lady Ormond and her family, and so she requested additional help.90 She fretted about money to her exiled husband and in May 1659 complained that the children were ‘under some disadvantage . . . by want of such helps as is necessary for their education’, but she did maintain ‘them decently’.91 These years apart undoubtedly placed a strain on her relationship with her absent spouse. Richard Boyle, the second earl of Cork, had not been a particularly prominent royalist commander but claimed benefit of the Dublin articles (1647) when he returned to Ireland in May 1651. According to a fellow peer his Irish estates were in a miserable condition and the ‘rents were stopt in the tenants’ hands’.92 However, during the mid- and later 1650s, especially after the arrival of Henry Cromwell in 1655, the situation improved dramatically and, thanks to the influence of his brother, Lord Broghill, Cork was allowed to compound for his English estates and recover his Irish lands.93 By 1658 he was taking an active role in local affairs and that summer welcomed the lord deputy to his estates.94 Cork’s ability to recover his patrimony stemmed in large part from the prominence Broghill enjoyed with the ruling regime. In 1655 he headed the civil government in Scotland and in 1657 he was one of a small group that offered the crown to Oliver Cromwell. Throughout these years Broghill also watched over the interests of the wider Boyle lineage. With the death of the earl of Kildare in 1657, Broghill and his brothers took control of the young earl’s financial affairs.95 Broghill’s nephew Richard, second earl of Barrymore, a teenager when his father died in 1642, benefited from his uncle’s political connections and patronage. Presumably it was Broghill who secured a match in 1656 between Barrymore and Martha Lawrence, daughter of the president of Oliver Cromwell’s council of state, and thereby consolidated Boyle links with leading Cromwellians. Barrymore spent much of the 1650s living in England but by 1659 had returned to Ireland to reside with his mother, Joan, at the family seat of Castle Lyons, where there was a thriving community of 297 people, 86 of whom were English and 211 Irish.96 By 1654 most Protestant ‘delinquents’ had compounded for their estates by paying a fine that was equivalent to twice the annual value less the quit rents. The authorities had initially imprisoned Edward Brabazon, second earl of Meath, and when they released him they had required him ‘to pay a third of all his estate in Ireland and a fifth in England’.97 Viscount Moore of Drogheda struggled to cope with debts of £20,000 accrued during the 1630s

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and 1640s, the unpaid marriage portions for his sisters and his (reduced) compounding fine of £3,349.98 Lords Montgomery and Claneboy had negotiated terms with Lord Deputy Henry Ireton in April 1650, but nevertheless as a result of the Act of Settlement adventurers laid claim to portions of their County Down estates. More seriously, an order for the transplantation of 256 Ulster Presbyterians, issued on 23 May 1653, left them particularly vulnerable. Only after lengthy representations did they avoid transplantation and were allowed to compound for their estates: Montgomery’s fine was ‘set at £3,000 without any abatement in regard of the legacies and debts’ and Claneboy paid a fine in excess of £9,000.99 By the mid-1650s the Protestant peers, even those who had been loyal to the Stuarts, men like Lords Barrymore, Cork, Kildare, Meath and Montgomery, had reached an accommodation with the new regime, much as the royalists did in England.100 Henry Cromwell, who arrived in Ireland in July 1655, was eager to secure political stability and promoted policies of reconciliation that often involved restoring the Old Protestants (as they were now termed) to positions of authority and local influence. The fact that by the end of the 1650s so many of them had returned to live on their estates and served as poll-tax commissioners highlights this (see appendix IV). The commissioners included 10 established peers (Lords Barrymore, Cork, Chichester, Conway, Folliott, Lambert, Meath, Montgomery, Moore and St Lawrence), the majority of whom would have been supporters of the Stuarts especially in the early 1640s, along with two men (Clotworthy and Coote) who were later elevated to the peerage. For example in Ulster, Arthur, second Viscount Chichester, high sheriff of Counties Antrim and Down, lorded it over the 589 inhabitants of Belfast (366 of whom were English and 223 Irish).101 In neighbouring County Down, Viscount Montgomery served as a commissioner and held sway over the town of Newtown, which had a population of 146 (87 of whom were Scottish and English and 59 Irish).102 In the absence of a paid bureaucracy and a standing army to coerce the population, the Cromwellians instinctively turned to these traditional power brokers in order to rule the remoter regions of Ireland. The 1650s and the apparent surfeit of land ripe for redistribution presented others with opportunities to improve their status by acquiring estates and offices. As in the earlier period, many of the greediest speculators were socially ambitious members of the local Protestant landed gentry. Sir John Clotworthy, later Viscount Massareene, was an active land grabber who benefited from the marquis of Antrim’s demise (discussed above). He had kept a low political profile during the later 1640s but re-emerged in the mid1650s to bask in Cromwellian favour. He sat on a committee that determined differences among the adventurers for Irish land and on another that proposed the establishment of a college at Antrim, presumably a place where

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Presbyterian ministers could be trained.103 Sir John King, later Baron Kingston, is another example of a landed gentleman (he was the grandson of Baron Folliott of Ballyshannon) on the make who courted both the Cromwellians and Charles II. He spent the 1650s increasing his estates largely by purchasing debentures from English soldiers across Ireland. In 1641 the family had held 12,916 acres, mostly in County Roscommon. After the Restoration, Kingston was one of the largest landowners in Ireland with an estate of 104,128 plantation acres spread across 13 counties and three provinces.104 King’s great rival was Sir Charles Coote, later earl of Mountrath, who also bought up cheap Irish acres. In 1641 the Cootes had held 18,601 acres mostly in Connacht and by around 1670 this had increased to 47,231 acres in Counties Galway, Kilkenny, Leitrim, Roscommon, and King’s and Queen’s counties. Coote’s purchases were, no doubt, facilitated by his political influence (he sat in all three of the Protectorate parliaments) and his position as a commissioner for the land settlement. At Athlone (December 1654) he helped to adjudicate Catholic claims to receive lands in Connacht; at Loughrea (June 1655) he set out the lands to be awarded; and he also sat on the committees dealing with Sir William Petty’s survey and the distribution of land to the soldiers.105 The opportunistic land deals associated with Clotworthy, Coote and King during these years were reminiscent of the earl of Cork’s at the turn of the century. Land and wealth were one thing but these parvenus, like Cork before them, also craved titles and status, something that only a restored monarchy and associations with established aristocrats could deliver. The role that Clotworthy, Coote and King played in the Restoration of Charles II (discussed below) and the speed with which they acquired titles, and in the case of Coote immediately established a cadet line (that of Colooney), is hardly coincidental. By the mid-1650s a small number of Irish lords also became involved in politics at Westminster where MPs from across England, Ireland and Scotland gathered in the first ‘national’ assembly. In 1654 and 1656 Broghill sat for County Cork in the first and second Protectorate parliaments, and in 1658 he was one of the few peers to take his seat in Cromwell’s ‘other house’. No other peer from Ireland enjoyed the political influence that Broghill did, and only a few even sat in the Westminster Parliament.106 Richard, later fourth Baron Blayney, sat in the 1656 Parliament as MP for Cavan, Fermanagh and Monaghan. In the 1659 Parliament Francis Aungier, later first earl of Longford, was one of the 30 representatives from Ireland and rose to prominence as MP for Longford, Westmeath, and King’s County, and as one of Henry Cromwell’s confidants.107 Arthur Annesley, later earl of Anglesey, also sat in the 1659 Parliament and was on equally good terms with Henry Cromwell, who involved him in the planning for the foundation of a second

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college in Dublin. These men, together with the Cromwellian upstarts and others who had barely reached an accommodation with the new regime, all played a role in the return of Charles II who was proclaimed king in Dublin on 14 May 1660. Architects of Restoration The intrigues that resulted in Charles II’s restoration to the throne of the three kingdoms began long before Henry Cromwell left Ireland in June 1659. A core of Protestants loyal to the Stuarts – Sir Arthur Forbes, later earl of Granard, Mark Trevor, later Viscount Dungannon, and Hugh, Viscount Montgomery – sought out sympathetic figures in the crumbling Cromwellian regime. The Boyle kin network was particularly important. Lord Broghill was in close contact with General Monck, who on 3 February 1660 entered London to restore Parliament, and liaised with his brother Francis, later Viscount Shannon, based in The Hague, together with other family members who enjoyed access to the king and those such as Clotworthy, a relation by marriage, based in Ireland.108 In the early spring of 1660 Forbes arrived in Brussels and outlined to Charles II the extent of the support he enjoyed in Ireland.109 This core of Old Protestants maintained a strong presence in the convention that held its first meeting in Dublin on 7 February 1660.110 Richard Blayney, who succeeded to the title in 1669, sat for County Monaghan and William, Lord Caulfeild, who had fought for Parliament, sat for Lifford in County Donegal. 111 Clotworthy sat for County Antrim and held sway in neighbouring Londonderry, and enjoyed close connections with the representatives for County Tyrone and with the wider Boyle nexus. Lord Broghill’s sphere of influence encompassed Counties Cork, Down, Kerry, Leitrim, Roscommon, Tyrone and Waterford (Broghill’s nephew Richard, earl of Barrymore, sat for the county).112 Broghill himself sat for Dublin university, as did Chidley Coote. His brother, Richard Coote, later Lord Colooney, represented County Roscommon, and another, Sir Charles, later earl of Mountrath, Galway city. The Cootes held Cavan in their sway and enjoyed close associations with the representatives from Counties Armagh, Donegal, Down, King’s County, Leitrim and Sligo.113 The baronial networks nurtured by the Boyles and Cootes dominated the convention. There appears to have been some rivalry and jockeying for power between Broghill and Sir Charles Coote, who in January 1660 had been appointed joint commissioners for the government of Ireland. Of the two, contemporaries regarded Coote as the stauncher supporter of the king’s cause.114 Of real significance in this regard was the ‘unequivocally royalist influence of the Montgomery-Hamilton-Trevor-Cromwell network’, which helped to compensate for the fact that Ormond’s influence was limited to his

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wife’s cousin, Sir Patrick Wemyss, who sat for County Kilkenny and had in any case worked closely with the Cromwellians.115 Catholic royalist representation, especially by the Old English peers who had been the traditional power brokers in the pre-war parliaments, was missing. Instead the returns, as Aidan Clarke has noted, ‘reflected the newly evolving local power structures . . . they chiefly demonstrate the success with which the Old Protestant community had consolidated and extended its influence’.116 Whatever its composition, the convention declared on 1 May its support for the king’s return. Irish agents hurried to London in readiness for Charles II’s formal entry on 29 May. Three interest groups were already frantically at work in the capital. The first comprised a core of Irish Protestant peers – the earls of Conway, Cork and Meath – who approached Ormond. They also used their own court contacts to great effect and paid £3,000 to the solicitor general, Sir Heneage Finch (Conway’s brother-in-law), ‘to make his pen run the quicker’ as he drew up agreements on their behalf.117 The second group, led by Lords Aungier and Valentia (later Anglesey), busied itself by lobbying in the English Parliament for the Protestant interest and for those who had supported ‘the usurper’. Finally, Old English Catholic lords, deprived of a political voice at home, established themselves in London and appealed for help to Ormond. The Protestant interest prevailed during the early stages of the Restoration and ensured that the king’s general pardon (29 August) specifically excluded those involved in the 1641 rebellion. It was really the king’s Declaration (30 November) that provided for ‘innocent papists’, as well as confirming Cromwellians in possession of their lands.118 Significantly, the Declaration named 36 members of the Irish Catholic nobility and gentry for restoration to their former estates ‘without being put to any further proof ’. It included the names of 20 Catholic peers: Athenry, Sir Valentine Browne (later Kenmare), Clancarthy, Clanricarde, Dillon of Costello-Gallen, Dunboyne, Dunsany, Fingal, Galmoy, Gormanston, Ikerrin, Iveagh, Mountgarret, Netterville, Sir Daniel O’Brien (later Clare), Strabane, Taaffe (later Carlingford), Trimleston, Upper Ossory and Westmeath.119 Mayo, now a Protestant, was added later. The stage was now set for a particularly intense period of lobbying as Catholic and Protestant lords scrambled either to retain or recover their landed estates. Conclusion A number of conclusions can be drawn from this examination of the resident peerage in Cromwellian Ireland. First, the 1650s posed a very particular set of challenges, along with some opportunities, for the peers, many of whom had supported the Catholic or royalist cause and whom the state regarded as being potentially subversive. Those lords who opted for continental exile must have wondered whether they would ever see their families, retainers and estates

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again. Those who remained in Ireland had little choice but to make a series of compromises in order to secure their own survival. The terms under which Irish military personnel surrendered, especially the Dublin and the Leinster articles, or the deals that prominent individuals cut with Henry Ireton or Oliver Cromwell, often determined the nature of their relationship with the English conquerors, certainly during the early 1650s. A willingness on Cromwell’s part to honour these agreements, however disagreeable the Dublin government may later have found them, along with the regime’s determination to respect pre-war legal agreements, especially instruments guaranteeing debt, marriage settlements and jointures, allowed a number of peers to reach some sort of accommodation with the Cromwellians. Thankful for a modest income and even limited access to landed wealth, these peers retreated into obscurity. Second, the Cromwellian land settlement and the revolution in landholding that it initiated had the capacity to overturn the established social hierarchy in Ireland. In fact, it was never fully implemented during the 1650s and the duke of Ormond later modified it (see chapter 11 below). However, this was in the future. For those lords who faced the confiscation of estates that had been in their families for generations, or transplantation to Connacht, the land settlement represented a source of great anxiety. For others, greedy for Irish acres, the land settlement offered opportunities for the acquisition of great estates and upward social mobility. Finally, the Cromwellians may have proved reluctant to deal with their former titled Protestant opponents and initially found them unwilling allies, but as time passed and in the absence of a paid bureaucracy or a standing army they had little alternative but to work with the political elite, especially the Old Protestants, and Henry Cromwell did what he could to court these regional titled power brokers. As a result certain established lineages, especially the Boyles, exercised influence much as they had in the past. Others, especially those with English relatives or Butler connections, were also well placed to survive. These men, whose titles pre-dated the war, now rubbed shoulders with a new generation of Protestant adventurers and speculators, many of whom had lived in Ireland since the early decades of the seventeenth century and secured political office and landed wealth during the 1650s. It was the Restoration of Charles II that brought together into an uneasy coalition the Cromwellian upstarts, the Old Protestant aristocracy, exiled royalists, titled trimmers and Catholic survivors. The next two chapters examine how this apparently heterogeneous community of nobles functioned in Restoration Ireland and how the Restoration land settlement impacted on the material and political fortunes of these resident peers.

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CHAPTER 11

The Restoration Land Settlement It is commonly held that the revolution in Irish landholding, which began

with the plantations of the early seventeenth century and culminated in the Cromwellian and Restoration land settlements, reduced the Catholic share of land from 59 per cent in 1641 to 22 per cent in 1688, and thus paved the way for the Protestant ascendancy of the eighteenth century.1 More recently these figures have been revised. Kevin McKenny in a statistical interpretation of the land settlements, which draws on figures from the Books of Survey and Distribution for landholding in 1641 and c.1670 when the Restoration land settlement was largely complete, suggests that the Protestant share of land increased from 30 per cent in 1641 to 67 per cent in c.1670 and that the percentage of land held by Catholics fell from 66 per cent to 29 per cent in the same period.2 Whatever the precise percentages, these figures reflect the revolution in landholding that occurred in mid-century Ireland and the wholesale transfer of land from Catholic to Protestant hands. When viewed from the perspective of the resident peerage these figures can be interpreted differently. The amount of land controlled by the resident peerage rose by almost a half between 1641 (18 per cent) and 1670 (26 per cent). Thus the peers (collectively) increased significantly their share of Irish land in a generation, which suggests that the process of aristocratization begun by James VI and I had proved very successful. In some respects the Restoration land settlement was a windfall akin to the Munster and Ulster plantations and, as in the earlier period, the Stuarts viewed Irish land as a resource that could be exploited in the interests of wider politics. Hardly surprisingly, then, Charles II ensured that his Irish and English favourites received vast handouts. His brother James, duke of York, acquired 113,732 acres and other courtiers, including the earls of Albermarle, Arlington, Essex and Strafford, also secured Irish estates.3 In other words, the settlement needs to be considered as an exercise par excellence in the operation of patronage and clientage. The politics that lay behind the Restoration land

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settlement is fully discussed in chapter 12. Of paramount importance in this was access to the king and his royal court at Whitehall. If Charles II wanted an individual to be rewarded with new lands or restored to his estate (or a portion of it), it inevitably happened. Those close to the king, his immediate family, Ormond and the Irish Catholic lords like Viscount Taaffe and the Talbot brothers, thus enjoyed positions of very real influence. Beyond this inner circle of courtiers stood men like the earls of Anglesey and Orrery, who could also secure the ear of the king – or the ears of his immediate entourage – for their respective causes and clients. Baldly stated, those who enjoyed the patronage of these figures were the winners and prospered; those who did not suffered and lost out. The importance of spending time in London courting influencers and oiling the wheels of patronage with bribes and gifts cannot be overstated, but this, combined with the need to retain lawyers and legal teams, strained – often to breaking point – the resources of already impoverished titled families desperate to secure the return of their estates. Drawing on the voluminous documentation generated by the land settlement, especially petitions to the king, Ormond and the Irish House of Lords, and the records of the commissioners of the Court of Claims, it is possible, using broad brushstrokes, to outline the mechanics of the Restoration land settlement. It began with the Cromwellian land settlement, was continued and modified by legislation passed at the Restoration (discussed in chapter 12 below), and largely completed by 1670, though Catholics continued in their attempts to recover former estates. This chapter examines how the peers fared during the upheavals wrought by the settlement. Land underpinned the exercise of political power in early modern Ireland and so the consequences of these transfers were very real. Who were the ‘winners’, ‘survivors’ and ‘losers’? Why did some lords prosper and others not? Did Catholic peers suffer from expropriation to the same degree as their non-titled countrymen? A Revolution in Titled Landholding? The Books of Survey and Distribution identify landholders in 1641 and again in c.1670 and thus vividly recapture the upheavals associated with the land settlements. In 1641, 63 resident peers had held 1,591,109 plantation acres, or 18 per cent of Ireland (see chapter 4 for details). In c.1670 72 resident lords held 2,348,703 acres, or 26 per cent of Ireland, which meant that the total share of land held by peers increased by roughly 8 per cent. The scale and extent of Catholic estates for the top peers in 1641 and c.1670 are illustrated on maps 7 and 8, and from this a number of general observations can be made. First, the continuities between 1641 and c.1670 are notable and while the ranked position of an individual fluctuated, Lords Antrim, Clancarthy, Clanricarde and Muskerry remained major landowners. Inevitably

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Map 7. Catholic titled landholding (top 20 resident peers; ranking designated by number) in 1641 (based on the Books of Survey and Distribution) 2. earl of Clanricarde 3. earl of Antrim 5. Viscount Muskerry 10. earl of Westmeath 11. Viscount Mayo 13. Viscount Clanmalier 14. Baron Maguire of Enniskillen 17. earl of Fingal 18. Viscount Mountgarret 19. Viscount Magennis of Iveagh 20. Viscount Roche of Fermoy

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Map 8.  Catholic titled landholding (top 20 resident peers; ranking designated by number) in c.1670 (based on the Books of Survey and Distribution) 2. earl of Clancarthy 3. earl of Clanricarde 6. marquis of Antrim 10. Viscount Dillon of Costello-Gallen 11. earl of Inchiquin 12. Viscount Clare 13. Viscount Kenmare 19. earl of Carlingford

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there were some losers but they tended to be lesser lords like Clanmalier and Roche of Fermoy. Second, when viewed from a provincial standpoint the westward shift in landholding is clear and the number of Catholic lords with estates in Connacht and west Munster, much of it deemed ‘unprofitable’, increased. These estates tended to be geographically inaccessible from Dublin and London, more difficult to govern, and the land there was regarded as being less productive. The conversions of Lords Dillon of Costello-Gallen and Inchiquin to Catholicism and of Mayo to Protestantism, who all held major estates there, together with the elevations of Lords Clare and Carlingford and later Kenmare to the peerage, altered the dynamic of titled holdings in the west. Just as Catholic landholding increased in the west, it declined elsewhere. The number of Catholic lords with properties in Ulster and Leinster decreased significantly, as Lords Magennis of Iveagh and Maguire of Enniskillen forfeited their acres, and key lords of the Pale, especially the earls of Westmeath and Fingal, failed to recover their estates in the east. Those fortunate enough to acquire additional acres, like the earl of Carlingford in County Louth, did so because of their favoured position at court. A parallel set of conclusions can be drawn from a review of maps 9 and 10, which illustrate the scale and extent of Protestant landholding for the top peers in 1641 and c.1670. First, the continuities with pre-war years are striking, particularly for leading aristocrats like Lords Cork, Kildare, Ormond and Thomond, and a handful of lesser Protestant lords like Clanbrassil and Ranelagh who either retained or added to their patrimonies. Second, in 1641 the Protestant peers had amassed considerable landed bases throughout Leinster and north-east Munster, together with sizeable pockets of land in Ulster and Munster. By c.1670 Protestant titled holdings were more geographically widespread. Their presence in Leinster and east and central Munster, where some of the richest land was located, had increased very significantly and now included the holdings of newcomers like Baron Kingston. Thanks to the elevations of Lords Colooney, Massareene and Mountrath, baronial estates in Ulster and Connacht also increased and helped to compensate for the conversions to Catholicism of Lords Dillon of Costello-Gallen and Inchiquin. In short, Connacht became a Catholic redoubt and Leinster a Protestant one. There were surprisingly few big landowners in Ulster and Munster, and here the lesser nobility and gentry gained most in terms of land transfers. The size of individual properties also grew: in 1641 only 19 peers held estates of over 20,000 acres but 29 did by c.1670 (see chapter 4 above). A close scrutiny of estates that in c.1670 exceeded 20,000 acres suggests that the titled hierarchy of landholding remained remarkably stable. The figures presented in table 21 suggest that with the exception of Lords Anglesey,

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Map 9. Protestant titled landholding (top 20 resident peers; ranking designated by number) in 1641 (based on the Books of Survey and Distribution) 1. earl of Ormond 4. earl of Thomond 6. Viscount Dillon of Costello-Galen 7. earl of Cork 8. Viscount Claneboye 9. earl of Kildare 12. Baron Blayney 15. earl of Inchiquin 16. Viscount Ranelagh

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Map 10. Protestant titled landholding (top 20 resident peers) in c.1670 (based on the Books of Survey and Distribution). number designates overall top 20 1670 ranking 1. duke of Ormond 4. earl of Anglesey 5. earl of Thomond 7. Baron Kingston 8. Viscount Mayo 9. earl of Cork 14. earl of Mountrath 15. earl of Clanbrassil 16. Viscount Massareene 17. earl of Kildare 18. baron of Colooney 20. earl of Ranelagh

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Table 21.  Titled landholders in c.1670 with estates over 20,000 plantation acres.4 Ranked 1641 1

Ranked 1670 1

Surname

Title held in 1670

1641

1670

gain/ loss

Butler*

duke of Ormond

224,087

290,303a

66,216 79,592

5

2

MacCarthy*

earl of Clancarthy

  82,037

161,629b

2

3

Bourke*

earl of Clanricarde

152,131

148,970c 3,161

30

4

Annesley

earl of Anglesey

14,972

144,546

4

5

O’Brien

earl of Thomond

120,230

122,014

3

129,574 1,784 d

6

MacDonnell* marquis of Antrim

149,353

119,061

30,292

7

King

12,916

104,128

91,212

99,898e

75,006

Baron Kingston

11

8

Burke*

Viscount Mayo

24,892

 

7

9

Boyle

earl of Cork

46,257

  78,832

32,575

6

10

Dillon

Viscount Dillon of Costello-Gallen

53,629

  75,036

21,407

15

11

O’Brien

earl of Inchiquin 21,007

  69,452

48,445

12

O’Brien

Viscount Clare

  57,022

22,275

13

Browne

Viscount Kenmare

14

Coote*

earl of Mountrath

18,601

  47,231f

15

Hamilton

earl of Clanbrassil 44,569

  44,569

16

Clotworthy

Viscount Massareene

  42,429

17

Fitzgerald

earl of Kildare

18

Coote

Baron of Colooney

53

19

Taaffe

earl of Carlingford

5,377

  30,115

24,738

16

20

Jones

earl of Ranelagh

20,977

  28,636

7,659

25,480g

9,479

8

9

34,747

  54,430

41,935

  38,801

28,630 0

3,134

  38,048

27

21

Montgomery

earl of Mount Alexander

16,001

 

12

22

Blayney

Baron Blayney

24,572

  25,388

816

10

23

Nugent

earl of Westmeath

40,346

  24,723

15,624

22

24

Barry

earl of Barrymore 18,401

  23,823

5,422

22,761h

17

25

Plunkett*

earl of Fingal

20,627

 

35

26

Boyle

earl of Orrery

11,838

  22,312

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29

27

Chichester

earl of Donegal

15,605

21,300

5,695

24

28

Dillon

earl of Roscommon

17,353

20,522

3,169

21

29

Lambert

earl of Cavan

18,410

20,111

1,701

Catholics are indicated in bold; newcomers to the peerage in italics * includes lands assigned to a wife or mother, or, in the case of Antrim, a brother a

 In c. 1670 Lady Ormond held 30,974 acres and the duke of Ormond held 259,329. In addition the earl of Arran held 15,292 acres and the earl of Ossory held 5,403. b In c.1670 Lady Clancarthy held 6,387 acres. c In c.1670 Lady Clanricarde held 1,424 acres. d In c.1670 Lady Antrim held 5,906 acres. e In c.1670 Lady Mayo held 124 acres. f In c.1670 Lady Mountrath held 12,851 acres. g This includes 7,218 acres held by a ‘Montgomery’ whose address was given as the ‘Ards’. h In c.1670 Lady Fingal held 3,337 acres.

Kingston and Mayo, the top 10 landholders in c.1670 mapped on to the top 10 in 1641 and those displaced – the earls of Clanbrassil, Kildare and Westmeath – remained substantial landholders. Though the Protestant share of land held by peers undoubtedly increased, Catholic holdings remained high thanks to the significant increases achieved by established peers, particularly Lords Clancarthy, by the converts Dillon of CostelloGallen and Inchiquin, and by newcomers, such as Carlingford, Clare and Kenmare. The survival of so many Catholics can be explained by a number of factors ranging from bribery and corruption to the fact that those who exercised power in London and Dublin, beginning with the king, his brother and their courts, respected the traditional position of the titled nobility within the Irish body politic. The English lord chancellor Edward Hyde, earl of Clarendon, maintained that ‘the surest way to preserve that kingdom’ and achieve a lasting settlement was to restore handpicked Catholics, both native Irish and Old English.5 Of course, this strategy caused controversy and according to Sir Daniel O’Neill this determination ‘to restore some noble families’ generated ‘a great noise’.6 One of the commissioners of the Court of Claims went further than Clarendon, suggesting that the land settlement could only succeed if the marquis of Antrim was restored in the north, the earl of Clanricarde in the west and the earl of Clancarthy in the south: ‘Each of which beside their proper dependents have very considerable neighbours that have given good proof of their loyalty.’7 Of course, in order to remain effective instruments of government and ‘civilization’ the peers required a

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minimum level of wealth.8 In other words, it became an imperative for the smooth running of Ireland to restore to their hereditary estates those men who had supported the Stuarts during the 1640s and 1650s, those who had facilitated the king’s restoration and those who would help him to govern his third and, potentially, most troublesome kingdom. Although experiences varied from family to family, detailed examinations of how peers negotiated the Restoration land settlement suggests that success stemmed from a number of factors. First, their career during the 1640s and 1650s, particularly whether they had fought for Charles I and had shared exile with the king and his brother, James, duke of York, made a real difference. Second, close links proved essential with members of the royal family – Charles II, his brother and his mother, Henrietta Maria – and influential figures at court, such as Henry Jermyn, earl of St Albans, Sir Henry Bennet, who in 1665 became earl of Arlington, Sir Daniel O’Neill and his wife, Lady Chesterfield, and the Talbots, and in Ireland, especially the duke of Ormond and the earls of Anglesey and Orrery. Even though the king watched over the interests of the offspring of his favoured peers who had died, these sons and grandsons rarely enjoyed a direct relationship with Charles II, which left them vulnerable to avaricious speculators. Third, the greed of these key political and administrative figures created amenable allies. Bennet, for instance, ‘loves money immoderately, and would get it by all means imaginable’.9 Fourth, and linked to this, was access to corrupt officials in Dublin and Westminster, especially Secretary Morris, through whose hands all of Ormond’s letters to the king passed, and Joseph Williamson (Bennet’s secretary). In short, success or survival depended on the ability of the peers to manipulate some or all of these factors to their own advantage. Furthermore the extent to which a peer was in debt prior to 1641 or to which his estate was encumbered with mortgages, jointures and other legal obligations, also proved advantageous to many. Unpaid creditors now formed powerful pressure groups that lobbied for the restoration of indebted lords so that they could recover their outstanding obligations. The existence of pre-war marriage settlements, which provided portions for siblings as well as jointure lands, ensured that importunate mothers, wives and sisters proved effective in helping to secure the restoration of a husband, son or brother.10 The Winners When viewed from the perspective of the resident peerage, the land settlement resulted in the emergence of three groups of lords: winners, survivors and losers. Clear winners were the established Protestant lords – Anglesey, the Boyles, Mount Alexander and Ranelagh – who acquired additional acres, as

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did the Protestant newcomers to the peerage, Lords Conway, the Cootes, Kingston and Massareene. A number of Old English families – Barrymore, Bourke of Mayo, Ormond and Roscommon – prospered largely because they had espoused the English interest and religion with such enthusiasm. As has already been noted, a surprisingly large number of Catholics also augmented their holdings, especially Lords Carlingford, Clancarthy, Dillon of CostelloGallen and Galmoy, and Inchiquin. As is clear from table 22, the Ormond family remained the largest landholders in Ireland, with family estates in excess of 310,000 acres. The Act of Settlement provided for the full restoration of Ormond and his wife, who held over 30,000 acres in her own right, and the Act of Explanation settled additional acres on him and a lump sum of £60,000 to cover his arrears.11 The duke’s personal lands increased by over 60,000 acres, which though considerable was significantly less than lands acquired by Anglesey and the newcomer Kingston. Ormond consolidated his estates in the south-east, doubling his holdings in Tipperary and increasing by a quarter his Kilkenny properties, usually at the expense of lesser Butler kinsmen and cadet branches (the Mountgarrets, Dunboynes, Ikerrins and Butlers of Kilcash), together with a host of Old English landholders (the Archers, Comerfords, Keatings, Ryans, Shees, Walshes and Whites) and others of native Irish extraction (the MacGraths and O’Carrolls). Ormond also acquired for himself new lands in Queen’s County and Counties Kildare and Galway, and his sons, the earls of Ossory and Arran, became prominent landowners in Counties Galway and Clare, giving the family a considerable landed base in the west. Ormond’s personal secretary later admitted that the duke had received great ‘bounties’ without which the family ‘might have been on the borders of want’, so great were his debts.12 Having been restored to his patrimony Ormond set about rejuvenating his estates, paying his enormous debts, redeeming mortgages, attracting a cohort of ‘improving’ tenants and refurbishing Butler properties.13 Lady Ormond rebuilt her three-storey mansion at Dunmore, adding a portico, wainscoting to rooms and a carved staircase that was so large that allegedly 20 men could walk up it abrest, together with a bowling green and an ornate garden. The cost of rebuilding for the period between February 1663 and October 1664 alone was £3,308.14 A later inventory provides a glimpse of the splendid furnishings. The medieval fortress at Kilkenny was also transformed into a French château: ornamental cornices, tall chimneys and large windows replaced parapets; the interiors were remodelled and grand marble fireplaces installed, along with a classical circular banqueting house; formal gardens – replete with terraces, elaborate water features and statues made in London – were laid out by English and French gardeners in what had once been the moat.15 Extant inventories record the opulence of the interior furnishings.

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Table 22.  Winners, c.1670.16 Name

Title in 1670

Annesley

earl of Anglesey

King MacCarthy*

1670

gain

14,972

144,546

129,574

Baron Kingston

12,916

104,128

91,212

earl of Clancarthy

82,037

161,629

79,592

Bourke*

Viscount Mayo

24,892

99,898

75,006

Butler*

duke of Ormond

224,087

290,303

66,216

Butler

earl of Arran

–

Butler

earl of Ossory

–

O’Brien

earl of Inchiquin

21,007

69,452

48,445

Boyle

earl of Cork/earl of Burlington

46,257

78,832

32,575

Boyle

earl of Orrery

11,838

22,312

10,474

Coote*

earl of Mountrath

18,601

47,231

28,630

Coote

baron of Colooney

38,048

–

Taaffe

earl of Carlingford

5,377

30,115

24,738

O’Brien

Viscount Clare

34,747

57,022

22,275

Dillon

Viscount Dillon of Costello-Gallen

53,629

75,036

21,407

Montgomery

earl of Mount Alexander

16,001

25,480

9,479

Butler

Viscount Galmoy

7,692

16,278

8,586

Lane

Viscount Lanesborough

1,148

9,225

8,077

Jones

earl of Ranelagh

20,977

28,636

7,659

Forbes

earl of Granard

3,149

9,466

6,317

Chichester

earl of Donegal

15,605

21,300

5,695

Touchet*

earl of Castlehaven

2,380

8,060

5,680

Barry

earl of Barrymore

18,401

23,823

5,422

Barnewall

Viscount Kingsland

8,795

14,180

5,385

Dungan

Viscount Dungan of Clane

7,223

12,461

5,238

Trevor

Viscount Dungannon

15,054

19,080

4,026

Dillon

earl of Roscommon

17,353

20,522

3,169

Brabazon

earl of Meath

O’Brien

earl of Thomond

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1641

15,292

–

5,403

–

8,754

11,268

2,514

120,230

122,014

1,784

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Aungier*

earl of Longford

4,200

5,974

1,774

Lambert*

earl of Cavan

18,410

20,111

1,701

De Courcy

Baron Courcy of Kinsale

1,913

3,489

1,576

Roper

Viscount Baltinglass

Conway

earl of Conway

?

10,954

12,072 8,441

1,118 ?

Clotworthy

Viscount Massareene

?

42,429

?

Catholics indicated in bold and post-1641 creations in italic * includes lands assigned to a wife or mother or in the case of Lambert, a brother

One hostile commentator noted that Ormond ‘hath added as much to his own ancient estate by the new Act of Settlement in Ireland as would have satisfied all the claims of the just adventurers, and Anglesey and Kingston little less’.17 There is probably considerable truth in this. The political crises of the early 1660s created by the land settlement in Ireland and the anti-Catholicism that characterized the 1670s, especially in England, formed the explosive backdrop for the publication of three polemical and provocative accounts by Nicholas French, the Catholic bishop of Ferns.18 In all three he vented his spleen at the role that Ormond, along with the earls of Orrery and Clarendon, had played in the land settlement. French’s hope that posterity would censure Ormond’s betrayal of the Catholics, which ‘had made the noble house of Ormond an infamous den and couch of rapine whose whelps are made fat by the prey and booty made upon their neighbours’.19 This, together with French’s other works, had an immediate impact. One of Ormond’s Dublin correspondents noted how: ‘your Grace’s ill wishers both English and Irish makes it now of late their business of copying of a book entitled: A Narrative of the Earl of Clarendon’s Settlement and Sale of Ireland, and spreading the same amongst the people, wherein it is set forth publicly amongst that factious people that your Grace is the only man that destroyed the Irish nation’.20 This struck a particularly raw nerve in a man determined ‘to lie well in the chronicle’.21 Ormond attracted the greatest scorn from the pen of the poet Dáibhí Ó Bruadair. In ‘How queer this mode’ and ‘Thou sage of inanity’ Ó Bruadair excoriated Ormond for abandoning his people and the value system that his ancestors had espoused. He represented him as a traitor whose weakness had betrayed his kinsmen and who had forfeited his right to be regarded as a man of honour.22 In ‘Thou sage of inanity’ Ó Bruadair took particular issue with those who flattered the duke and represented him as Ireland’s great hero.

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He dismissed their verse as a ‘smeary stream of lies’, ‘turgid twaddle’, ‘putrid verse’ and ‘drivelling, devoid of wit’.23 The theme of betrayal pervaded Ó Bruadair’s verse. He attributed defeat in ‘A fateful wound hath made of me’ to those, like Ormond, who had curried favour with the English and collaborated with the newcomers. The poet represented them as unfaithful, disloyal, and sluttish: Nor to the shameless harlot hath the change been hateful, Who now with all in common shares her love’s embraces; Once in wealth and peace, in affluence and comfort, Amid her own she lived, without disgrace or insult.24

As a result of their treachery, Ireland had been left desolate.25 There is no doubt that Ormond and his lineage benefited as a result of the land settlement, but it is also clear, presumably because it was in the interests of his dynasty to do so, that he protected many of his kinsmen and allies from expropriation. As lord lieutenant, a favourite of Charles II and allied to some of the most powerful men at court, Ormond was ideally placed to secure his own position, that of his immediate family and more generally that of the Protestant interest. If inclined, he could also help his Catholic kin and clients. His old friend Richard Bellings captured the duke’s position of influence in a letter he wrote to him in June 1661: The nobility and gentry of this kingdom are most of them personally known to your Grace and no man living can make a clearer judgement upon their affections as having been an eye witness of their action. I am confident your Grace will . . . labour to prevent that the nation for which your Grace did so often expose yourself, among whom you have plentiful fortune, a very numerous kindred, and a large stock of friends and descendants, should be ruined and instead of them others introduce[d] . . . being the scum of England . . . a generation of mechanic base men who are strangers to all principles of religion and loyalty.

Bellings continued that there were only 100 Irish Catholics with ‘just title to be restored’.26 He could have added that Ormond was related to many of the Catholics with a ‘just title’. His dependants, friends and relations included the earls of Carlingford and Castlehaven, together with the earls of Clancarthy, Clanricarde and Fingal who were married to Ormond’s sister, aunt and niece respectively. Lords Cahir, Galmoy, Ikerrin and Mountgarret were also among Ormond’s many Butler relations who needed his patronage, along with his other nieces and nephews who had married Dillons and

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Plunketts.27 Typical was the request that Theobald Mathew, his half-brother, made when he asked Ormond to insert a clause into the Act of Settlement which confirmed Lord Cahir in his estates and which secured ‘my daughter’s jointure, his own debts, his children’s portions’. Mathew wanted to ‘prevent any trobles yt busy peeple’ may stir up for his grandson, the future Lord Cahir.28 Bishop French and others may have questioned the extent to which Ormond supported the wider Catholic interest, but there is no doubt that the duke, like Charles II, facilitated the restoration of many Catholic peers. Ormond’s support for his brother-in-law, Donough, earl of Clancarthy, and his sons illustrates this well. A devout Catholic, Clancarthy had spent most of the 1650s in exile with the Stuarts, but Ormond’s influence at the Restoration undoubtedly helped to secure his position.29 Named in the king’s 1660 Declaration, a clause in the Act of Settlement, which Clancarthy drafted himself, specifically stated that he and his heir, Charles, Viscount Muskerry are hereby restored unto their blood and honour, and shall and may derive their pedigree and descent from their and every of their ancestors, lineal and collateral, and shall be and are hereby restored unto, and shall and may have, hold, possess and enjoy unto them and their heirs respectively, all and singular the titles of honour, dignities, honours, mannours, castles, lordships, lands, tenements, reversions, remainders, and all other hereditaments, right, title, and interest whatsoever in the said kingdom of Ireland [which they held on 22 October 1641].30

Two clauses in the Act of Explanation reiterated this, included additional lands largely in the barony of Muskerry, and clarified how the land was to be held (‘in free and common socage’).31 As a result of the land settlement, the Clancarthys nearly doubled their County Cork holdings (in the baronies of Cork, Muskerry and Barretts) from 82,037 acres in 1641 to 161,629 in c.1670 and improved the tenure by which they held their estates. Thus, with the exception of 1,128 acres in Muskerry that passed to a Cromwellian soldier, Clancarthy recovered his pre-war patrimony intact. Moreover, he consolidated his lands by acquiring neighbouring acres in the baronies of Cork, Muskerry and Fermoy and the barony of Magunihy in County Kerry from a number of small Catholic landholders (Eagans, Goulds, Healys, other MacCarthys, MacSweeneys, Nagles, O’Dalys, O’Mahonys and O’Learys) whom he may have been protecting. Not only did Ormond facilitate this transfer but throughout the 1660s he protected the Clancarthy estates from litigious tenants and avaricious adventurers. He also appears to have pressured his brother-in-law to attract English head tenants, and by 1688 English

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names outnumbered those with Irish patronymics.32 Even though Clancarthy modernized his mansion at Macroom, political necessity meant that he spent little time on his estates, flitting instead between Dublin and London (he died at Ormond’s English residence of Moor Park in 1665). Of all of Ormond’s kin, Clancarthy secured the most but others, as shall be seen, clearly benefited from the duke’s protection and patronage. Of course, Ormond’s munificence extended well beyond his immediate kin to include his friends and clients. His support for the earl of Mount Alexander, a staunch royalist and a committed member of the Church of Ireland who died suddenly in 1663, illustrates this. As a result of the land settlement Mount Alexander’s total holdings increased from 16,001 to 25,480 acres. Yet he lost a portion of his estate in the baronies of Ards and Castlereagh, where his holdings were reduced from 16,001 to 13,441 acres, and he became embroiled in a lengthy dispute with a Cromwellian soldier over lands in County Kildare to which the newcomer had a legitimate claim.33 The unexpected death of the first earl in the midst of delicate negotiations left his young heir under the protection of his relations, Ormond and Charles II. Ultimately, the king – at Ormond’s behest – intervened and granted Mount Alexander the disputed estate. This, combined with debentures that had been purchased during the 1650s, left the second earl of Mount Alexander with scattered pockets of land in Counties Down, Wicklow, Wexford, Limerick, Tipperary, Leitrim and Roscommon, and Queen’s County.34 He was the only peer to hold land in all four provinces. Like Ormond, Anglesey and Orrery used their positions of influence to protect their own landed interests and to promote those of their kin and clients.35 Both the Acts of Settlement and Explanation made provision for Anglesey, who held the influential position in Ireland of vice treasurer and receiver of the king’s rents and in England was lord privy seal (1673–82).36 A well-informed contemporary described him as ‘knowing in the law’, ‘a graceful speaker’, but added that he was ‘weake and fraile and could never contend with temptations’.37 According to the Books of Survey and Distribution, he was the greatest beneficiary of the land settlement and his holdings multiplied tenfold from 14,972 acres in 1641 to an incredible 144,546 acres, 129,432 of which were deemed to be profitable, making him the fourth largest landholder in Ireland (see table 22). The bulk of the family’s pre-war estates had been in County Wexford (9,549 acres), with additional holdings in Counties Down and Tyrone (discussed in chapter 4). As a result of the mid-seventeenth century revolution in landholding, Anglesey’s acres in Wexford trebled to 30,179 acres and he also acquired lands in 17 counties.38 Anglesey’s gains were at the expense of hundreds of Catholic gentry and small farmers. Having amassed a vast territorial empire of his own, Anglesey made a series of strategic marriage alliances that aimed to extend further the landed base of

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his lineage as well as adding lustre to it. For example, in 1654 his eldest daughter, Dorothy, married Richard Power, fifth Baron Le Power and Curroghmore (Richard’s father was a lunatic and Anglesey had served as his legal guardian). Anglesey used his influence initially with the Cromwellians and later with Charles II to safeguard the family’s County Waterford estates and to secure first a viscountcy and later the earldom of Tyrone for his Catholic son-in-law (who claimed to be a Protestant). The precise details surrounding Power’s restoration remain obscure but involved securing a decree in the second Court of Claims and cutting a deal with Secretary Bennet.39 Friends, clients and kinsmen of Anglesey were also well placed to secure their own interests. In the case of Francis, third baron of Longford, family links to Anglesey combined with good relations with Orrery and Ormond undoubtedly helped him regain his pre-war estate (of 4,200 acres) in Counties Kilkenny, Leitrim and Longford, together with additional acres in Counties Louth and Westmeath that Bennet had designs on. In a frank letter to Bennet (who happened to be related to Longford’s wife), one of the commissioners of the Court of Claims noted that Lord Aungier holds out for possession of his estate and tells me to let you know there is a clause in the Bill for giving you a reprise of equal value. It is possible that he being of the Council and a peer and – what is more – related to my Lord of Anglesey (who questionless put it into his head) may give some trouble if he should not be satisfied. We had best let him have his own way for the present.40

After some tense negotiating, a clause in the Act of Explanation rendered their deal into law.41 By comparison with Lords Ormond and Anglesey, the earl of Orrery’s personal gains as a result of the land settlement were more modest but were still considerable. Whether ‘the earl [of Orrery] is too busy with the public settlement of Ireland to attend to his private estate’, as the king suggested, is debatable. His chaplain hinted at his funeral that he drew ‘up that Act of Settlement with his own hands’ and throughout ‘referred the publick good before his particular private advantage . . . making his princes interest and countries good, two inseparable companions, the compass by which he steer’d all his publick actions’.42 In the event he nearly doubled the land he held from 11,838 acres, predominantly in County Kerry, in 1641 to 22,312 in c.1670 (and of these 18,960 acres were deemed profitable). The earl gained most in County Cork at the expense of the Catholic Carews, Condons, Fitzgeralds and Powers. He invested heavily in his country seats, one at the old Fitzgerald stronghold at Castlemartyr 25 miles east of Cork city and the other at Charleville, named in honour of Charles II, 30 miles north of Cork city.

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Orrery, who designed the house, began work on Charleville in 1661. He spent £4,000 buying stone and employed dozens of workmen (masons, carpenters, bricklayers, slaters, joiners, glaziers, smiths, turners and carvers). With 56 chimneys and 65 rooms Charleville was one of the largest country houses in Ireland and consisted of lavish living quarters on one side of a walled court with flankers that could be defended with 16 guns. Orrery modelled the town of Charleville on the plantation town of Bandon in County Cork and attracted Dutch weavers and English artisans to it.43 He also developed it by building a church and school. In 1671 he secured a charter of incorporation, which made it a free borough on which was conferred the privilege of returning two MPs to the Irish parliament and thereby consolidating the political influence of the Orrery dynasty. In 1672 Orrery moved from Charleville to Castlemartyr, which he renovated to make it more ‘English like’ and more suitable for his younger son. An inventory dating from 1677 listed the contents of Castlemartyr’s chapel, dining room, 10 bedrooms (each with sizeable closets), together with the kitchen, brew house, bake house, cooling room, the stable, the laundry, pantry, hallways, wine and beer cellars.44 The interior furnishings were as lavish as those in Kilkenny castle. By 1677 Orrery reported that he had spent £20,000 ‘in building and parks and their improvement for the good of posterity’.45 The earl of Orrery also found time to watch over the tenurial interests of the wider Boyle clan.46 The holdings of his elder brother, the second earl of Cork and Burlington, increased from 46,257 acres in 1641 to 78,832 by c.1670. His younger brother, Viscount Shannon, acquired 3,684 acres; his ward and son-in-law, Viscount Powerscourt, held 1,959; and his nephews the earls of Barrymore, Ranelagh and Roscommon acquired additional lands amounting to 5,666, 7,659 and 3,169 acres respectively.47 Having helped to secure their estates, Orrery then lobbied the king and his London allies, especially Secretary Bennet, for further favours, grants and offices.48 In addition to consolidating the Boyle nexus, Orrery used his position to extend his own influence. This is clearly illustrated in the rapprochement between Orrery and his old rival, the earl of Inchiquin, which culminated in the 1665 marriage of Margaret Boyle to William O’Brien, Inchiquin’s Protestant heir and a godson of the first earl of Cork. The union and alleged impropriety that surrounded it came back to haunt Orrery four years later when he was impeached. Orrery strongly refuted the allegations that he had illegally helped to restore Inchiquin to his new seat at Rostellan, near Cork: The earl of Inchiquin, a man of eminent loyalty, whose son, the accusants say, married my daughter (I hope they do not mean this to be part of my charge; but the implication apparently is that the alliance was enacted as a

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bribe to me to do injustice, but that my relations have rather gone to law before any judge than before me) Lord Inchiquin, I say, petitioned me saying that he had been for three years in possession of Rostellon and was forcibly kept out of it, and prayed to be quieted in his possession. I called for evidence of the three years’ possession, and, on its being given, I ordered the Sheriff of the co. Cork to quiet Lord Inchiquin in his possession till he should be legally evicted.49

Whatever the rhetoric and whether ‘the alliance was enacted as a bribe to me’, Orrery’s support helps to explain why Inchiquin managed to more than treble his holdings from 21,007 acres in 1641 to 69,452 in c.1670 (albeit only 41,975 were deemed profitable). He doubled his acres in County Clare and acquired others in Counties Cork and Limerick from dispossessed Catholics, including nearly 3,000 acres in the barony of Limerick from his fellow peer, Baron Bourke of Castle Connell, who served abroad for much of the 1660s.50 Restored in 1660 to his Irish honours and estates by a private act of the English Parliament, named in the 1660 Declaration and restored in the Act of Settlement, Inchiquin was also awarded (in the Act of Explanation) £8,000 ‘as a marke of his Majestie’s favourable and gracious consideration of the losses and sufferings’.51 Thanks to years of shared exile, Inchiquin also enjoyed direct access to the king and his ministers at Whitehall, including the well-placed Secretary Bennet, whom he lobbied on his own behalf and that of his brother, Christopher. Inchiquin also maintained good relations with the earl of Carlingford, Richard Talbot and other key advocates of the Catholic cause at court.52 The fact that Inchiquin had changed sides with alarming regularity during the 1640s and had abandoned Protestantism during the late 1650s does not appear to have impacted negatively on his ability to secure his position at the Restoration. With estates primarily in the west of Ireland, Inchiquin was one of a number of western peers who navigated the Restoration land settlement with skill and success. The Bourkes of Mayo and Dillons of Costello-Gallen, who between them owned much of County Mayo and had their estates redistributed during the 1650s, did likewise.53 In February 1661 Theobald, fourth Viscount Mayo, petitioned the king and outlined how his Catholic father had suffered for the king’s cause: Theobald, late Viscount, served the King loyally in Connaught in the quality of a colonel until the Marquis of Clanricarde was overpowered and terms were made with the usurper. In the articles then made the petitioner’s father was particularly comprised; yet such was the malice against [the] petitioner’s father that he was unjustly tried and ‘shot to death’ under an illegal sentence of a High Commission Court, and his whole estate and his

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brother and sisters, being all children of tender age, repaired to England to his mother’s relations (who were of the ancient family of the Talbots, of Bashall in Yorkshire). There he has lived nearly eight years, and has been educated as a Protestant under that reverend divine Dr Roberts. His friends think he should be able to support himself. He prays for restoration to his estate.54

Not originally named in the 1660 Declaration, the House of Lords successfully petitioned for Mayo’s inclusion and he was named in the Act of Settlement.55 His uncle, Orrery, continued to lobby Bennet, Ormond and others on Mayo’s behalf, and he was also included in the Act of Explanation and restored without reprisals.56 The effort was worth it. In 1641 Mayo’s estates had comprised 24,892 acres, only 8,188 of which were regarded as being profitable, spread across five baronies in County Mayo. By c.1670 the Mayo estates had increased fourfold to comprise 99,898 acres (26,043 of which were deemed profitable). As in the case of so many others, gains had been at the expense of local Catholic landholders – Blakes, Bourkes, Darcys, Gibbons, Jordans, Keegans, MacDonnells, O’Kellys and Philbins. Though not clearly documented, it is likely that Mayo’s survival depended in part on his family connections. His mother’s English kin links to the politician and historian John Rushworth and the fourth viscount’s marriage to Ellen Loftus, the earl of Orrery’s niece, also proved invaluable.57 Lord Dillon’s experiences were similar. In 1641 Thomas, fourth viscount of Costello-Gallen, then a Protestant, held 53,629 acres primarily in County Mayo. By c.1670 Viscount Dillon, now a Catholic, held 75,039 acres, 66,191 in Mayo and the other lands in Counties Roscommon and Westmeath (only 29,988 were deemed profitable).58 The Books of Survey and Distribution show that a portion of Dillon’s pre-war estate in County Mayo passed to the duke of York, soldiers and innocent Catholics. Any losses were more than compensated by the acquisition of additional acres from dispossessed Catholics (his Dillon relatives together with Bourkes, MacLaughlins and O’Connors). Interestingly, 751 acres formerly held by the earl of Kildare in County Westmeath also passed to Lord Dillon, which may be linked to a pre-war mortgage. The precise details explaining Lord Dillon’s restoration remain vague. The fact that he had served the king ‘well both here and beyond the seas’ during the 1640s and 1650s and was named in the 1660 Declaration and the Acts of Settlement and Explanation were important but in themselves could not have guaranteed his restoration.59 Of more weight was the access he enjoyed to prominent figures at court, including those who espoused the Catholic cause. In particular his nephew, Theobald Taaffe, earl of Carlingford, watched over the affairs of his uncle, Lord Dillon.60

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First and foremost, however, the earl of Carlingford looked after his own interests. As a favoured courtier and close associate of Charles II, Carlingford was ideally placed to ensure that his modest pre-war holdings of 5,377 acres in Counties Louth, Meath and Sligo increased by nearly 25,000 acres to include lands in County Tipperary as well. Carlingford politicked in London, securing the support of Bennet and his principal secretary, Joseph Williamson, along with Sir Heneage Finch, the English solicitor general, ‘who drew my proviso, being my friend and councel’.61 He later wrote to Williamson on behalf of one of his kinswomen, adding ‘A “Papist Dog” has little cognisance of affairs in this kingdom’ yet on occasion ‘we shall be found loyal and useful’. He concluded knowingly ‘that none wishes your prosperity or would contribute more to the increase of it than your most obedient and humble servant’.62 Back in Dublin, Carlingford’s kinsman and agent, Sir John Bellew, busied himself bribing and befriending key officials and coordinating the efforts of an array of lawyers and legal counsel. Carlingford clashed with Lords Mountrath and Colooney over estates in Sligo and only a letter from the king on Carlingford’s behalf resolved the matter, much to the unease of the resident ex-soldiers. Legal disputes over lands with Lords Dungannon and Massareene and others dragged on for much of the 1660s. Bellew recorded in a notebook every bribe he paid out: three shillings to the doorkeeper at Orrery’s office; a piece of gold to Sir William Domville, the attorney general ‘to befriend my lord [Orrery]’; and payments to lawyers (including Sir Nicholas Plunkett) and the clerks to the commissioners of the Court of Claims.63 In July 1662 Carlingford relocated to Dublin. He helped to smooth the passage of the Act of Settlement, in which he was named, through the House of Lords and petitioned the Court of Claims.64 His was one of the last cases to be heard and because of his blemished track record during the 1640s it was referred for further scrutiny before a decree of innocence was finally awarded in October 1663. Delighted with the result, Carlingford celebrated by hosting a dinner party for two of the commissioners (Broderick and Churchill) and his local supporters, Lords Inchiquin and Arran, Ormond’s son.65 He then hurried back to London where, according to his own account, he was ‘feasted every day’ and passed ‘his time with satisfaction’ and pressed for the settlement in Ireland so that he ‘might shew his friends that this own fireside is more pleasing to him than anything here’.66 The Act of Explanation enshrined his gains in law and by 1677 Carlingford’s annual rental from his estates in Louth, Meath, Sligo and Tipperary exceeded £3,000.67 Of Carlingford’s good fortune, the archbishop of Armagh, Oliver Plunkett, later noted that ‘it is better that a Catholic should have them [these lands] rather than Protestants’.68 Carlingford’s peerage, like those of every lord discussed so far, dated from the pre-war years. In terms of gains as a result of the land settlement a number

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of the post-1641 Catholic creations – Lords Clare, Dungan of Clane, Galmoy and Kingsland – were also ‘winners’ (see table 22). The same held true for recent Protestant creations, especially Lords Kingston, the Coote brothers (Colooney and Mountrath) and Massareene who used the settlement as an opportunity to secure arrears of pay and to consolidate estates that they had acquired from adventurers and soldiers during the 1650s (see chapter 10).69 While each case is slightly different, successfully navigating the complexities of the settlement depended on enjoying access to influential figures in London and Dublin; the capacity to bribe and lobby, and a willingness to accommodate royal favourites by vacating lands, as in the instance of the earl of Carlingford and the Coote brothers. The Survivors The ‘survivors’ were a diverse group and comprised those who simply survived the revolution in landholding with their estates relatively intact or modestly enlarged/reduced (see table 23). Protestants like Lords Ardglass, Blayney, Cavan, Charlemont, Clanbrassil, Digby and Kerry or Catholics like Lords Slane, Tyrconnell and Trimleston all fell into this category. With the exception of the earl of Tyrconnell, the restoration of these lords proceeded without comment or controversy. Baron Trimleston had been named in the 1660 Declaration even though he had accepted lands in Connaught during the 1650s and the Acts of Settlement and Explanation provided for his full restoration.70 The Court of Claims awarded Lords Cavan, Charlemont and Slane decrees of innocence, and the Act of Explanation secured the jointure lands of Anne, lady dowager of Slane, a sister of the marquis of Antrim (see appendix VI).71 The earl of Tyrconnell was one of the few Catholic peers the Court of Claims found ‘nocent’ or guilty. Ormond immediately asked Bennet to secure ‘the King’s protection from the just severity of a judgement passed against him’.72 His English in-laws also lobbied on behalf of his wife, Eleanor Holles, a daughter of the first earl of Clare, and sister to Denzil Holles, an active parliamentarian, whose marriage portion had been used to redeem the mortgages held against the estate.73 Much to the dismay of the 1649 officers who had been awarded his estates, the king duly overturned the nocent verdict on account of Tyrconnell’s ‘endeavours in our dear father’s service do in our opinion overbalance anything that can be objected against him’.74 Two clauses in the Act of Explanation provided for Tyrconnell’s full restoration to his pre-war estates in Counties Dublin, Meath and Wicklow.75 A small number of Protestants lost lands as a result of the Restoration land settlement. The earl of Londonderry absented himself in England to the detriment of his Irish holdings. The king’s support for the baron of Howth,

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Table 23.  Survivors c.1670.76 Name

Title in 1670

1641

1670

Gain/loss

Fleming

baron of Slane

16,472

17,510

1,038

Blayney

Baron Blayney

24,572

25,388

816

Digby

Baron Digby of Geashill

7,422

8,168

746

Fitzwilliam

earl of Tyrconnell

2,761

2,923

162

Barnewall

Baron Trimleston

3,938

4,071

133

Moore

earl of Drogheda

15,780

15,837

57

Hamilton

baron of Strabane

7,069

7,069

0

Stewart

Baron Castle Stewart

2,116

2,116

0

Hamilton

earl of Clanbrassil

44,569

44,569

0

Folliott

baron of Ballyshannon

2,895

2,895

0

Fitzmaurice*

baron of Kerry

9,978

9,978

0

Cromwell

earl of Ardglass

10,968

10,968

0

Caulfeild

Viscount Charlemont

12,119

12,119

0

Ridgeway

earl of Londonderry

6,791

6,738

53

St Lawrence

baron of Howth

10,422

10,284

Bourke*

earl of Clanricarde

152,131

148,970

3,161

Fitzgerald

earl of Kildare

41,935

38,801

3,134

138

Catholics indicated in bold * includes lands assigned to a wife or mother

‘an antient nobleman, very stout, constantly in the late King’s service, never having had any reward for it’, kept his losses to a minimum.77 Wentworth Fitzgerald, seventeenth earl of Kildare, was named in the Acts of Settlement and Explanation and enjoyed the support of the king and his Uncle Orrery yet appears to have lost lands as a result of unredeemed mortgages and other acres passed to Lord Dillon of Costello-Gallen.78 Kildare’s premature (he was only 30) and unexpected death in 1664 exacerbated matters, since his young widow and infant heir were ill-equipped to negotiate the complexities of the land settlement. Clanricarde’s losses were roughly equivalent to those of Kildare (approx. 3,100 acres), yet the overall size of the estate meant that Clanricarde remained the third largest landholder in Ireland (in 1641 the family had been second). Clanricarde’s position was, however, complicated by the longevity of Anne, widow of Ulick, first marquis, and the fact that the

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marquis’s only daughter, Margaret, was heir to a considerable portion of his estates. The Court of Claims restored Anne to her jointure lands while the remainder of the marquis’s estate passed to Margaret, who had married Viscount Muskerry, and to Richard, sixth earl, who only held lands that had been granted ‘in tail’.79 Endless wrangling over jointure payments ensued and to complicate matters further the marquis had mortgaged the Clanricarde estates to the tune of £50,000, leaving his heirs vulnerable to claims from frustrated creditors who formed a powerful lobby, petitioning the king for Clanricarde’s restoration but on the condition that the sixth earl honour the debts of his predecessor.80 When compared with other Catholic peers Clanricarde’s losses were negligible (see table 23). According to the Books of Survey and Distribution, Lords Fingal, Gormanston and Ikerrin lost roughly a tenth of their pre-war holdings; Lords Antrim, Athenry and Cahir lost a fifth; Viscount Mountgarret a quarter; and Lords Brittas, Netterville and Westmeath roughly a third (though Brittas later asserted that he had been restored to even less).81 Yet for some of these Catholic peers restoration even to two-thirds (or more) of their pre-war estates Table 24.  Catholic survivors, c.1670.82 Name

Title in 1670

Butler

Viscount Ikerrin (1665 nominee)

12,882

11,933

949   7%

Plunkett*

earl of Fingal

22,761

20,627

2,134 10%

Preston

Viscount Gormanston

10,211

9,177

1,034 10%

MacDonnell* marquis of Antrim

1641

1670

Loss

As %

149,353 119,061 30,292 20%

Butler

Baron Cahir

13,694

10,896

2,798 20%

Bermingham

Baron Bermingham of Athenry (1665 nominee)

10,546

8,377

2,169 21%

Butler

Viscount Mountgarret

20,356

15,144

5,212 26%

Netterville

Viscount Netterville

6,685

4,368

2,317 35%

Nugent

earl of Westmeath (1665 nominee)

Bourke*

baron of Brittas (1665 nominee)

5,196

3,090

2,106 40%

Plunkett*

Baron Louth

8,382

3,181

5,201 62%

40,346

24,723 15,624 39%

Catholics indicated in bold 1665 nominee – to be restored to their chief seats and 2,000 adjacent acres, but only after reprisals had first been allotted to the Cromwellian occupants.83 * includes lands assigned to a wife or mother

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represented a major achievement and one that cost them dear. It often involved lengthy stays in London or Dublin, engaging expensive legal counsel and paying hefty bribes. Securing access to influential figures at court was, of course, essential. In many instances a strategic marriage alliance with an influential English family proved vital in determining a family’s long-term survival. Catholic survivalism is vividly and extensively documented in the extreme example of the marquis of Antrim and the more typical experiences of Lords Fingal, Gormanston, Louth and Netterville. Their campaigns to save their lands began with the Restoration and for many dragged on well into the 1670s. One of the most infamous cases was that of the marquis of Antrim. In August 1663 the Court of Claims had proclaimed Antrim innocent. According to one commissioner, when the judges found in Antrim’s favour a great[er] shout of joy followed in the court than was ever heard since the opening of the commission. My lord’s agent never desired any injunction to the sheriff for possession. . . . Many of the poor men [Antrim’s tenants] coming from the north to this town in expectation of this jubilee, the rest in the country making bonfires and feasts throughout the four baronies [in County Antrim].84

The soldiers and adventurers, threatened with dispossession, responded by publishing towards the end of August 1663 a pamphlet entitled Murder will out, which drew public attention to their grievances.85 After giving a detailed account of Antrim’s hearing and reproducing the king’s letter in his favour, the anonymous author of the pamphlet concluded: There never was so great a rebel, that had so much favour from so good a king. And it is very evident to me . . . that the consequence of these things will be very bad; and if God of his extraordinary mercy do not prevent it, war, and (if possible) greater judgments, cannot be far from us, where vice is patronized, and Antrim, a rebel upon record, and so lately and clearly proved one, should have no other colour for his actions but the king’s own letter, which takes all imputations from Antrim, and lays them totally upon his own father.86

Attempts were immediately made in all three kingdoms to suppress the pamphlet and to hush up the entire affair, but it was not long before it was being discussed throughout the Stuart dominions.87 In September 1663 it was reported from London that ‘The cry here is so loud against that and other late proceedings of the court of claims,’88 while Samuel Pepys recorded in his diary how the ‘king hath done himself all imaginable wrong in that business

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of my Lord Antrim in Ireland’.89 ‘That business’ was deemed important enough to merit lengthy reports in the ambassadorial dispatches of the day.90 Ultimately, the public outcry forced the king to overturn their verdict in October and to review Antrim’s case yet again.91 As a result of this inquiry the controversy between the marquis and his opponents dragged on for a further two years. But his tenacity was eventually rewarded and clause 173 of the Act of Explanation granted him a full pardon and restored him, his wife and brother to his property in County Antrim. The Antrim family holdings had dropped by 20 per cent from 149,353 to 119,061 acres. Given the marquis’s activities during the war years he was fortunate to secure even this. After initially supporting Charles I with enthusiasm, he switched allegiance to the clerical party within the confederation of Kilkenny before cutting a deal with the Cromwellians, who protected him from transplantation and provided him with a modest income during the 1650s. How did Antrim, who was after all ‘guilty’ of virtually every charge brought against him between 1660 and 1665, manage to be restored? A careful examination of the voluminous documentation, both official and personal, which deals with Antrim’s hearings and tribulations during these years, indicates four explanations: the support of his family and his patrons and his friends from the 1630s; his own ability to manipulate skilfully the corrupt and inefficient Caroline bureaucracy; the advocacy of his creditors; and the disorganization and the ineptitude of his enemies. To begin with, Antrim’s Irish and Scottish kinsmen pestered the great men involved in his case in both London and Dublin and provided him with some of the cash he so desperately needed to organize his legal defence. Their generosity was more than matched by that of his second wife, Rose O’Neill, who mortgaged her own property in order to raise the funds needed for his campaign. She lobbied on her husband’s behalf the king, his secretaries, the English Privy Council, Ormond and the lords justices. The queen mother, Henrietta Maria, and members of her court were another pressure group instrumental in securing Antrim’s restoration. Largely out of loyalty to his first wife, the duchess of Buckingham, Henrietta Maria took up his cause. She wrote numerous letters to Ormond pleading for Antrim’s restoration. She even prevailed upon her son to write similar letters pressing for the reinstatement of ‘so ancient a family to its possessions’.92 She railroaded through the controversial letter (10 July 1663) from the king ordering Ormond to arrange a hearing for Antrim before the Court of Claims. When Ormond refused to do so, it was again Henrietta Maria who insisted that a second letter (11 August) be sent directly to the commissioners.93 ‘The queen mother,’ the marquis noted at the end of July, ‘upon advice out of Ireland has moved the king that my late letter relating to my restoration may be renewed and immediately directed to the commissioners of the court of claims.’94

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Antrim’s ‘few (though very powerful) friends’ – as the earl of Clarendon dubbed them – followed Henrietta Maria’s lead and importuned the king on his behalf at every opportunity.95 His wife’s uncle, Sir Daniel O’Neill, now a groom of the bedchamber and an intimate of Charles II whom Antrim had supported during the 1630s, and who continued to receive an annual allowance of £400 from him, urged Ormond to restore the marquis because of ‘the queen mother’s concernment and the king’s intentions’.96 Other influential patrons at court included Henry Jermyn, first earl of St Albans, who at Henrietta Maria’s request pressed Antrim’s suit to maximum effect. For his efforts St Albans was awarded the annual quit rents charged on the Antrim estate.97 Orrery assured Secretary Bennet in June 1664 that ‘I have provided that my lord of Antrim shall be restored to every foot of his estate.’98 Bennet’s brother-in-law, Colonel Gilbert Talbot, had persuaded him to secure Antrim’s restoration; according to Orrery, ‘Talbot and his friends had been very industrious and useful to the said marquis to procure him his estate’, and in return the marquis had promised Talbot a 31-year lease to lands on his estate worth £300 per annum. Antrim promised financial reward to avaricious royal administrators – Bennet, Morris and Williamson – in return for information, for the speedy processing of petitions and letters, and for securing the king’s signature on letters that Antrim had drafted.99 Since Antrim was unable to pay them fully at the time, it was in their future interests to see him restored and he frequently promised ‘that if ever I be again established in my fortune, I shall endeavour a return answerable to the trouble you take in assisting my restoration, and providing for my distressed condition’.100 Particularly vocal were Antrim’s pre-war creditors whom he owed at least £40,000, plus interest. They petitioned the king for his restoration so that he would be able to pay his debts. For his part, Antrim argued that if he was not restored, those who settled on his mortgaged estates would be liable for his debts, together with his mother’s jointure and other allowances charged to the estate.101 Finally, the weakness of his opponents also facilitated Antrim’s restoration. While his enemies were extremely vocal, they were nevertheless disorganized, disunited and unprepared. Even Ormond had to admit that ‘my lord of Antrim hath gained much by the negligence of his opponents’.102 The earl of Anglesey, who had initially opposed Antrim’s restoration, made an ‘odious defection’ when his daughter, Elizabeth, married ‘without a portion’ in 1665 Antrim’s younger brother and sole heir, Alexander.103 Although the adventurers and soldiers found Ormond and the lords justices in Dublin sympathetic to their cause, even they were reluctant to cross swords consistently with the king, the queen mother and their other English benefactors. Ormond, for his part, would have been personally delighted to see Antrim receive the punishment he felt that his behaviour deserved, but he was unwilling publicly to condemn him, and this greatly undermined the opposition’s case.

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Ormond was also hamstrung by the fact that he had been instrumental in securing the restoration of other Catholics, usually his kinsmen, whose record was as dubious as Antrim’s (discussed above). Antrim therefore had precedents to appeal to, while the lord lieutenant, who had favoured others in a similar predicament, was unable justly to single out Antrim for particular persecution. For example, neither Viscount Galmoy, an active confederate and a known Cromwellian sympathizer with whom Antrim had associated during the early 1650s, nor the earl of Clancarthy (formerly Muskerry) who had been a leading confederate, nor Lord Dungan of Clane who according to one of the commissioners of the Court of Claims ‘subscribed every roll with the marquis, and one more notorious, the renunciation of the peace which the marquis never subscribed’, would have been restored without Ormond’s support.104 The same was true of Richard Butler of Kilcash (Ormond’s brother) and Lord Mountgarret (Ormond’s uncle). At the Restoration, Mountgarret also invoked Lord Vaux and his English in-laws who were keen to secure their daughter’s jointure lands.105 Yet even Ormond’s patronage had its limitations and Mountgarret still lost over 5,000 acres from his pre-war estates in Counties Kilkenny and Wexford, much of it to soldiers and adventurers and some to Ormond and Anglesey (table 24). Of course, Ormond could also have been settling old scores with Mountgarret dating back to the 1630s (see chapter 4). Ormond promoted the interests of his nephew by marriage, Luke Plunkett, third earl of Fingal, who had been 10 when his father, a confederate commander in Ormond’s royalist army, died of wounds received at the battle of Rathmines in 1649. He argued that by all rules of honour, if not strict justice, Fingal should be restored and ensured that he was included in the 1660 Declaration and in the Acts of Settlement and Explanation.106 Despite this and securing a decree of innocence from the Court of Claims for his own estates and his mother’s jointure, Fingal’s landed holdings decreased by 10 per cent.107 Moreover the costs associated with procuring his restoration (bribes, legal expenses, trips to London and so on) left him penniless and unable to honour his mother’s jointure or provide for his wife and children.108 By 1670 Fingal claimed not to have ‘a farthing of money’ and depended for survival on his royal pension, which was in arrears.109 In terms of losses suffered and the support he enjoyed from the king and Ormond, Jenico, seventh Viscount Gormanston’s position was similar to that of Fingal. Despite having been a child when war broke out, having spent the 1650s in exile, being named in both acts and securing a decree of innocence from the Court of Claims in June 1663, he struggled to regain possession of his estates, in part because the earl of Mountrath and other influential figures had acquired them.110 Gormanston’s attempts to claim by force his hereditary

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seat unnerved the incumbent, who reported back to London that ‘there was lately a most notorious riot and forceable entry made in the night time by my Lord Gormanston and about 120 Irishmen upon some men of mine in possession of the house and manor of Gormanston’.111 Four years later the matter remained unresolved. Gormanston claimed that he had exhausted ‘his whole fortune amounting to near £10,000’ in his attempts to secure his estates. He was unable to maintain his family or make provision for his English wife’s jointure (of £500 per annum), she being ‘a person of honour and a stranger whose fortune he hath spent in his preservation’.112 He had married Frances Leake, a daughter of the first earl of Scarsdale and a sister of Lord Windsor.113 In March 1667 the king intervened once again on Gormanston’s behalf and instructed the second Court of Claims to restore him and secure alternative acres for those who had been living on his estates.114 Still nothing happened and in August 1668 he travelled to England to press his case. A friend asked Joseph Williamson ‘to countenance him even if nothing else can be done for him’, adding ‘I am sure he is of too modest a nature to be troublesome or impertinent as many of my countrymen are’.115 Despite the close English connections of Nicholas, third Viscount Netterville of Dowth (in 1624 his father, John, second viscount, had married a daughter of the earl of Portland), his case proved as protracted as Gormanston’s. Viscount Netterville claimed that his father had always been loyal ‘yet, by the oaths of profligate villains since detected of perjury, he was not restored to his estate by the Court of Claims’.116 Even though it was later overturned by the king, Netterville’s failure to secure a decree of innocence from the Court of Claims was a particular setback and one that surprised Ormond.117 In March 1663 he wrote to Sir Daniel O’Neill: I was as much amazed as grieved to hear my Lord Netterville was found nocent, and that, in his own person. I thought he had been at least five years younger than the proof made of him. What remedy there is now for him I know not. That of favouring him when reprisals are had is remote and uncertain. I expect his counsel will propose something, which, if it prove practicable, shall receive all assistance from me. My Lord of Carlingford says he could have helped him to his estate at three years purchase, to have been raised out of the land. If I had known of that offer I should have advised the acceptance rather than to have run the hazard of such a lottery as the swearing of witnesses now is.118

In another letter to Bennet, Ormond lamented the fact that nothing could be done for Netterville who, since the court’s decision, could obtain neither credit nor anything else and depended for his survival on a royal pension of

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£400.119 The Books of Survey and Distribution suggest that Netterville held 4,368 plantation acres in c.1670 (in 1641 he had held 6,685), predominantly in Counties Westmeath and Galway, where he was awarded his reprisals, and thereby lost his geographically proximate pre-war holdings in Counties Dublin, Louth and Meath. In the Act of Explanation provision was made for Netterville as well as his siblings, whom the court had judged innocent, but the soldiers and adventurers remained in possession.120 Netterville continued to petition the king and Ormond but as late as 1684 he had received limited satisfaction for the reprisals he had been promised in Counties Galway and Westmeath, and a royal pension kept him going.121 Lord Louth had to wait until the 1680s before being granted letters patent to his estates.122 Oliver Plunkett, sixth baron, and his son and heir, Mathew, had fought for the confederates and then followed the king into exile. Mathew proved his innocence to the Court of Claims, thus protecting his inheritance and securing the jointure of his mother (Mary, the marquis of Antrim’s sister) and the portions of his sisters, which had been specified in his parents’ 1634 marriage settlement.123 He was, however, obliged to wait until his father died (and he lived until 1679) before being allowed to claim lands, mostly in County Louth. In the meantime his father also petitioned the second Court of Claims and on 31 May 1667 secured a decree in his favour. As these seemingly endless legalities dragged on, the Louths took every opportunity to buy back their estates from resident soldiers and adventurers.124 Miserable though Louth’s situation undoubtedly was, others fared worse still as they struggled to retrieve their lands.125 In 1674 the earl of Westmeath petitioned the king on behalf of Lords Bermingham of Athenry, Dunboyne, Ikerrin, Mountgarret, Netterville, Trimleston, Upper Ossory and others, ‘touching the manner in which they might be relieved’.126 A few years later in 1682, Westmeath begged for Ormond’s favour: ‘the charge of two of my daughters and one son, yet unpreferred, and my grandchildren, and the payment of the portion of my last daughter I marryed, will leave but a very inconsiderable estate to my grandson, unfitt to supporte the quality like to descend on him’.127 It was the late 1670s before Westmeath’s lands in Roscommon (4,184 acres) and Galway (6,983 acres) were finally confirmed to him, and this represented 60 per cent of what he had been granted in the 1650s.128 The Losers The third group were the ‘losers’ whose holdings decreased very significantly as a result of the land settlement. According to the Books of Survey and Distribution, Dunsany lost about 75 per cent of his 1641 holdings;

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Dunboyne, 88 per cent; and Upper Ossory and Magennis of Iveagh, virtually everything. Like Viscount Netterville, Patrick Plunkett, ninth Baron Dunsany, never fully recovered from being declared nocent by the first Court of Claims, despite being named in the 1660 Declaration, the Act of Settlement and the Act of Explanation, which restored him to ‘possession of the principal and capital messuages or seat, and also one third part of all and singular the castles, lands, tenements and hereditaments, rents, reversions, remainders, right, title’ held in 1641.129 According to the Books of Survey and Distribution, Dunsany (or rather his eldest son, Edward) appears to have retrieved roughly a quarter of his pre-war estates in Counties Cavan and Meath, together with more modest holdings in County Dublin. The bulk, however, passed to soldiers, adventurers and established figures like the earl of Cavan, Sir Tristram Beresford, Sir Theophilus Jones and Sir William Petty. In January 1668 Dunsany wrote a pitiful letter to Sir Edward Dering, one of the commissioners of the Court of Claims: However it comes my misfortunes are evermore the same and w[i]th the greater waight still perseveres to torment my declining days . . . the god of heaven and earth knowes my sadd and deplorable condition; my weake and aged bedd-riden condition together with that unspeakable want few knowes but myselfe.130

Dunsany’s pleas achieved little and he died a broken man two years later. In 1684 his grandson petitioned the king, noting how he had been ‘wrongfully kept out’ of an estate that had been in his family for the past 300 years.131 The situation of Piers Butler, fifth baron of Dunboyne, seemed equally dire. Ormond explained that ‘here are many of the antient nobility in miserable condition, amongst the rest here is a very sad peere call[e]d the Lord of Dunboyne of my name and family’.132 According to the Books of Survey and Distribution, he lost nearly 90 per cent of his holdings, largely in County Tipperary. Ormond, however, intervened on his behalf and recovered some of Dunboyne’s estates which he leased back to him rent free. In return, Dunboyne promised to entrust the education of his 13-year-old son to Ormond so he might ‘be bred a Protestant and a fit tutor and servant of that religion provided for him, for which I will provide allowance’.133 Like so many others, Dunboyne continued to claim his rights as a nominee in the Act of Explanation and in 1684 repeated his request that his hereditary estates in County Tipperary be restored.134 The position of Arthur, third Viscount Magennis of Iveagh, was utterly miserable. With the exception of 40 acres, the pre-war County Down estates of the viscount and his wife Sarah were carved up and shared out amongst soldiers, adventurers and established local figures like Sir George Rawdon.135

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Table 25.  Catholic losers, c.1670.136 Name

Title in 1670

Plunkett

Baron Dunsany

Butler*

1641

1670

Loss

As %

8,116

2,062

6,054

75%

baron of Dunboyne (1665 nominee)

16,220

1,989

14,231

88%

Fitzpatrick

baron of Upper Ossory (1665 nominee)

11,190

522

10,668

95%

Bourke*

Baron Bourke of Castle Connell

7,786

Sarsfield

Viscount Sarsfield of Kilmallock

10,919

Roche

Viscount Roche of Fermoy

18,656

Preston

Viscount Tara

Magennis*

Viscount Magennis of Iveagh (1665 nominee)

20,161

O’Dempsey

Viscount Clanmalier

22,457

233 40 2,179?

Catholics are indicated in bold Post-1641 creations in italics 1665 nominee – to be restored to their chief seats and 2,000 adjacent acres, but only after reprisals had first been allotted to the Cromwellian occupants.137 * includes lands assigned to a wife or mother

In 1661 the king asked that Iveagh be restored to his County Down estate and committed the welfare of ‘poor Lord Iveagh’ to Orrery’s care on the grounds that when Charles II had first came to Bruges, Iveagh had offered him a home and hospitality.138 Orrery’s patronage did little to help an impoverished Iveagh, forced ‘to live on credit in England for two years’, from being arrested for debt. During his time in London, Iveagh cultivated Colonel Talbot, Bennet and Williamson, and to some effect.139 In 1671 the king finally granted him 2,399 acres in County Limerick, ‘being parcels of the lands formerly set out upon the pretended adventures of Thomas Cunningham and Lewis Dick’.140 A 1674 petition mentioned other lands of ‘Lissiallow, Glanella, and others amounting to 1,455 acres in the barony of Ballintubber, in county Roscommon . . . and also the lands of Bunowen and others amounting to 598 acres, in the parishes of Balldoony and Moyruch, in the barony of Ballynelinch [in] county Galway’.141 In the meantime Iveagh’s hereditary estates in County Down passed to Sir George Rawdon, the earl of Conway’s factor, and the Trevors of Rosetrevor, Welsh settlers who became

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Viscounts Dungannon in 1662.142 Iveagh died in May 1683 and his widow immediately importuned Ormond for her late husband’s pension since he had ‘no estate’.143 Despite being declared innocent by the Court of Claims, Lewis O’Dempsey, Viscount Clanmalier, lost all of his lands (in excess of 20,000 acres, and allegedly worth £4,000 a year) in King’s and Queen’s Counties to the grasping royal favourite, Bennet.144 Usually sympathetic to the Catholic interest, Bennet used his extensive networks in Whitehall to marginalize Clanmalier and to secure the compliance of clients like Talbot. In May 1663 Lord Aungier, who had an interest in the Clanmalier estate, suggested that Bennet also ingratiate himself with Sir Audley Mervyn, the speaker of the Irish House of Commons, ‘whose humor it is to love courtship especially from men in your place; and I am sure three kind words from you will make him watch the most seasonable opportunities of offering the bill to the House, wherein lies no small art, especially in so populous and factious an assembly’.145 In the event Bennet did flatter Speaker Mervyn. He also turned to Sir William Domville, whose responsibility it was to help draft the Act of Settlement; to the earl of Anglesey, ‘the man who can do most in this matter’; and to Sir Winston Churchill, one of the commissioners of the Court of Claims. Bennet’s greed was matched by Clanmalier’s obstinacy and refusal to contemplate a compromise settlement.146 Lord Aungier noted in December 1662 how ‘Nature has clouded his [Clanmalier’s] brain with so gross an ignorance that nothing of reason can prevail . . . he is a man so wilful and obstinate that rather than part with one acre of his ancient inheritance he is resolved to run the risk of losing the whole.’147 The Act of Explanation did precisely this and shortly afterwards the earl of Arlington (as Bennet now was) received his letters patent. Yet as the earl of Roscommon’s speech to the House of Lords highlights (discussed in chapter 12), many felt that Clanmalier should as a matter of honour be compensated with lands elsewhere.148 Viscount Clanmalier’s experiences were the exception rather than the rule, but they were not unique. The Books of Survey and Distribution contain no data for Lords Bourke of Castle Connell, Sarsfield of Kilmallock, Roche and Tara, but other sources suggest that they suffered a fate similar to that of Clanmalier. Consider the case of Viscount Roche of Fermoy. He may have enjoyed the sympathy of his fellow peers, but without a powerful patron to look after his interests in London he was assigned land in ‘ye remotest parts of Thomond, all waste and unprofitable’, together with a meagre pension.149 In 1666 there were fears that Colonel David Roche, Lord Roche’s son, would cause trouble for, as the earl of Orrery termed it, ‘I find a storm abrewing from such sort of people in this kingdom, as well as from phanatticks [i.e. protestant fanatics].’150

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Conclusion A number of conclusions can be drawn from this analysis of the operation of the Restoration land settlement and how it impacted on the fortunes of the peers. First, the importance of patronage cannot be overstated and explains why private interests prevailed time and again. It was the most important factor that determined how a peer fared during these years. Securing royal favour or the support of a leading figure at court or within the Dublin administration ensured the survival of many lineages, especially Catholic ones, and the prosperity of others, particularly the Old Protestant families. Second, the relative cohesiveness of this community of nobles became clear during the machinations around the land settlement, as kinsmen looked after each other irrespective of their religion and as aristocratic patrons secured the interests of their titled clients. No doubt these patrons – especially Lords Ormond, Anglesey and Orrery – had particular short- and long-term motives for protecting Catholic lords, and undoubtedly acted with the specific intention of strengthening their own dynasty. Third, the amount of land controlled by the resident peerage increased by almost a half between 1641 (18 per cent) and 1670 (26 per cent), and despite the unsettled times the relative stability of the landed hierarchy is striking, with a small number of aristocrats consolidating their position at the top of the social and landed pyramid. The pre-1641 Protestant lineages, along with a select few Catholic aristocrats, did best, which was similar to the revolution in landholding that occurred in early seventeenth-century Bohemia where the old families, many of whom had converted to Catholicism, secured the bulk of confiscated lands.151 Though regional changes did occur in Ireland, particularly the westward shift in Catholic landholding, there was also considerable continuity of landholding from the pre-war years amongst the higher- and middle-ranking peers. That said, modifications to the landed hierarchy happened and upward and downward social mobility occurred. On the one hand, a new generation of land grabbers emerged, who had acquired landed empires in the 1650s and secured titles of honour at the Restoration, while, on the other, lesser nobles of ancient title lost the means to support their dignity and slipped into the ranks of the gentry. The biggest losers of all were Catholic gentry. Further research on the Books of Survey and Distribution might illuminate the relationships that the peers, especially the Catholic ones or the converts, had with these small farmers and whether they protected gentry interests or at least moderated them from the vicissitudes associated with dispossession. Finally, by the mid-1670s it became clear that the Crown had created a powerful territorial aristocracy upon whom it depended and the core of which was more loyal than ever to the Stuarts. When the peers had an

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opportunity in the 1689 Jacobite Parliament to unravel the Restoration land settlement, they – like the king himself – proved reluctant to interfere with it and pressure to reverse it came instead from the MPs in the lower house, who were the landed gentlemen who had lost out.152 The Repeal Act, which repealed the Acts of Settlement and Explanation and annulled all titles derived from them, finally became law on 22 June 1689. It authorized landholders in 1641 or their heirs to take steps to recover their property, and provided for a Court of Claims that would determine the rights of individuals to recoverable property. It also ordered the forfeiture of the lands of those who had rebelled against James, with Lord Kingston’s Irish estate passing directly to the king. If James had won the war and this act had been implemented, it would have ushered in another revolution in landholding. But William III triumphed. On 22 February 1689 he declared that he intended to confiscate the estates of all who opposed him.153 In the event the state reluctantly honoured commitments made to those who submitted under the articles of Limerick (3 October 1691) and upheld legal agreements, like marriage settlements, which limited the extent of the Williamite land settlement. Ex-Jacobite peers submitted claims for the return of their estates. Between 1692 and 1694 the Privy Council heard 491 claims and upheld 483 of these, and after 1697 a panel of judges restored an additional 783 claimants, including lords like Antrim, Barnewall of Kingsland, Bermingham, Cahir, Dunsany, Fingal, Gormanston, Kenmare, Kinsale, Mountgarret and Westmeath. As a result, many Catholic nobles saved their properties from confiscation, although pressure from the penal laws made it increasingly difficult to live as Catholic landholders and by 1703 Irish land owned by Catholics had dropped to 14 per cent.154 As in the past, the king used forfeited Irish acres to reward his favourites and his Protestant subjects grabbed land in much the same way that their predecessors had done.

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CHAPTER 12

Political Life Ireland is a kingdome subordinate to England in so absolute a manner

that ye king in his parliament of England may make laws that shall be binding in Ireland. This doctrine is so hard of digestion to Irishmen, that they will not with any patience hear of it, but it is necessary to be known by their governors, whose prudence will conteyn them from speaking of it without necessity and likewise from acting anything against it.1

This confidential memo, though it dated from 1685, captured the reality of the relationship between Ireland and England throughout the later seventeenth century. The growing influence of the Westminster Parliament and the return of a king in 1660 whose prerogative had been weakened did indeed trouble the ‘digestion’ of many Irishmen. Like it or not, Ireland was becoming more of a colony than a kingdom. Despite the very real political and economic predominance of London, Dublin also grew as a political, commercial and cultural centre during the later seventeenth century. The city, as will become apparent later in this chapter, became a magnet for resident lords especially during the 1660s when parliament was in session and Ormond and his court resided in Dublin castle. This process of social centralization occurred all over urban western Europe. Dublin’s rise was also the product of the need for a legal and governmental centre as English control over Ireland expanded. This chapter offers a detailed assessment of the role that the resident peers played in the Irish parliament of 1661–6 and more generally in late Stuart politics. The implementation of the land settlement, which defined the lives of lords for the remainder of the century, was discussed in chapter 11, but the complex legislation and cumbersome processes underpinning it are examined here. For many, the land transfers were largely complete by 1670, but for some, attempts to recover former estates dragged on for another decade and beyond. The restoration of the Stuarts created expectations amongst members

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of the Catholic peerage, especially those who had adhered to the 1649 articles, that they would be restored to their estates and be allowed to serve their king at home, as many had during the 1640s or in exile. They were to be bitterly disappointed: it was their Protestant counterparts who benefited most from the frenzied scramble for land after 1660. However, as becomes clear, the Protestant peerage did not constitute a homogeneous group during these years. Wartime experiences, never mind shared years in exile, combined with the fact that many lords enjoyed close kin links with the recusant community or with the late Cromwellian regime, determined their actions. For the time being, Irish recusant lords continued to exercise some political influence. The majority sat in the House of Lords, while the Catholic lobby in London secured royal favour for the lucky few. Inevitably, the king’s determination to restore those who had supported his cause created political instability, and many Catholic lords found it as difficult to secure office in Ireland after 1660 as they had in the pre-war years. That only changed with the accession of James II and VII in 1685, when the king favoured Catholics over Protestants and thereby alienated the ruling elite. How did the peers navigate the political factionalism and sectarianism of these years, especially during the 1670s and early 1680s when rumours of Popish plots abounded? What role did these nobles play in central and local government and what contribution did they make to the military establishment at home and abroad? To what extent did titled fortunes and advancements depend on the munificence of Ormond, who served as viceroy between 1662 and 1669 and again between 1677 and 1685? How did the brief reign of James II and VII (1685–8) impact on the fortunes of the resident peers? The Irish Parliament, 1661–6 The Irish parliament that met for its first of four sessions in May 1661, was very different to the pre-war one.2 The Commons was now exclusively Protestant, severely curtailing the ability of the Catholic peers, but not the Protestant ones, to dominate proceedings. The readmission of recusant peers to the Lords afforded some political clout to a ‘Catholic interest’.3 Initially, only those who had their outlawry removed were to be admitted, but by the end of the first session in July 1661 nearly a dozen Catholic peers had taken their seats, alongside nearly 30 Protestants (additional non-resident peers sent proxies).4 As appendix V shows, membership of the upper house fluctuated over the course of the four sessions and attendance for the second session (September 1661–March 1662) was the lowest with only 5 Catholic and 16 Protestant lords taking their seats.5 Attendance was highest at the final two sessions where the land settlement was debated and Lord Lieutenant Ormond was present. Twenty-seven resident Protestant and 15 resident Catholic lords

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regularly attended the third session, which met between 17 April 1662 and 16 April 1663. This proved to be an exceptionally productive session, passing 26 acts including the Act of Settlement (July 1662).6 A similar number of lords attended the fourth session, which sat between 26 October 1665 and 7 August 1666, when the controversial and lengthy Act of Explanation passed (December 1665). Contemporaries held this body of legislation to be ‘the Magna Carta of that kingdom’.7 Nearly one-third of the resident peers did not attend parliament at all or did so intermittently. A significant number remained in London. Lords Ormond and Anglesey, for example, lobbied the court and English Parliament as they brokered endless deals relating to the land settlement. Lords Ardglass and Londonderry stayed in England without permission and were fined for their absence, as was the earl of Carlingford whose commitment to promoting the Catholic interest at court has been well documented.8 Others – such as Lords Castle Connell and Louth – fought for the king abroad during the 1660s. Viscount Tara was a minor. Cryptic references in the Lords’ Journals suggest that Viscount Gormanston was excluded on the grounds of his father’s outlawry, but Lords Netterville and Upper Ossory ‘being only indicted and not outlawed’ were not prevented from sitting (though neither appears to have taken his seat).9 Other absences are unexplained. Particularly puzzling were those of Catholic peers who enjoyed royal favour or close connections with the house of Butler. Ormond’s nephew by marriage, the earl of Fingal, together with some of the Butler cadet branches – Cahir, Dunboyne, Ikerrin and Mountgarret – did not attend and this might be attributed to their outlawry (for many it was not until 1687 before this was reversed).10 The outlawry of some clearly precluded participation in the parliament; while reduced circumstances may have prevented others from attending. In March 1661 Viscount Roche of Fermoy (whose mother had been executed in 1652) petitioned the lords justices stating the ‘very low condition’ to which he, ‘a peer of this realm, of English extraction’ and ‘without conviction or attainder by his peers’, was reduced. The confiscation of his estates in 1652 had also resulted in the death of one of his daughters ‘for want of requisite accommodation either for her cure or diett’.11 His fellow peers rallied round him in an attempt to relieve the family’s ‘sad necessity’.12 A significant group of new peers took their seats for the first time. As ex-parliamentarians, Lords Colooney, Kingston, Massareene and Mountrath supported the Protestant interest with enthusiasm, as did other new enoblements, Lords Barry of Santry, Dungannon, Powerscourt and Shannon, but from a royalist perspective. The new Catholic lords – Clare, Dungan of Clane, Galmoy and Kingsland – were overtly loyal to Charles II. Otherwise the composition of the upper house remained largely unchanged, with a significant minority of peers having attended the 1640–1 parliament. As in

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earlier assemblies, the sons, brothers, nephews, factors and clients of peers sat in the Commons. Lord Blayney’s brother, Richard, sat for Monaghan and Lord Caulfeild’s brother, Thomas, for Charlemont. The son of the earl of Meath represented County Wicklow and that of the earl of Ardglass sat for County Down. Various members of the Boyle clan – including the younger sons of Cork and Orrery – sat as MPs, and Orrery ‘boasted how he led a cohort of “Orreronians”: at least twenty-five members for Munster constituencies’.13 The Cootes were also well represented and a number of Ormond’s clients (Caroll Bolton, Sir Allen Broderick, Sir George Lane and Sir James Wemys) held seats, together with his third son, John, Lord Gowran. In short, most Protestant peers enjoyed close links to the Commons as they had in the past. The influence of the Catholic peers in the lower house was much diminished, though leading aristocrats like Lords Antrim, Clancarthy and Inchiquin undoubtedly enjoyed close associations with MPs. As in the convention of 1660 Broghill, now earl of Orrery, and Coote, elevated to the earldom of Mountrath, and their respective networks predominated especially in the Commons where they effectively managed the elections.14 Mountrath’s unexpected death from smallpox in December 1661 took the wind from the sails of the Coote faction and strengthened the position of his fellow lord justice, Orrery. Orrery’s circle in the Lords was particularly powerful and included his brothers (Cork and Shannon), his nephews (Barrymore, Kildare and Ranelagh), and other relations and clients (Castle Stewart, Charlemont, Donegal, Kingston, Massareene, Mayo, Powerscourt and Roscommon). Initially willing to let Orrery act as his undertaker, the duke of Ormond’s arrival in Dublin in July 1662 resulted in his circle becoming predominant (he had been appointed lord lieutenant in February 1662). Ormond’s nexus of supporters in the Lords included his sons, the earls of Ossory and Arran, his kinsmen, Lords Clancarthy, Clanricarde, Donegal and Galmoy, and his confidant, Longford. The other politically active Protestant peers – Lords Charlemont, Conway, Drogheda, Howth, Kingston and Mount Alexander – closely associated themselves with either the Boyle or Butler interest (and sometimes both), sat on the all-important committee of privileges and on other ad hoc committees (see appendix V). The presence of the eldest sons of Cork, Meath and Clancarthy, summoned to sit under one of their father’s lesser titles, bolstered the government position. Ten Catholic peers were active in the Restoration Parliament. Only Clancarthy and Antrim, whose political experience dated from the 1640–1 parliament and the confederation of Kilkenny, sat on the committee of privileges. The others – Lords Athenry, Brittas, Clanricarde, Costello-Gallen, Galmoy, Inchiquin, Strabane and Westmeath – sat on various parliamentary committees that met between 1661 and 1666.15 The growing confidence of these Catholic peers is reflected in so many of them

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signing the Catholic ‘Remonstrance’ (December 1661), which declared unqualified allegiance to the king and disclaimed the Pope’s authority to absolve them from such allegiance.16 There were also worries in the late spring of 1662 that the ‘popish lords’ might try to undermine the land settlements. According to the earl of Anglesey ‘whosoever would not have Ireland settle[d] after so many yeares misery would reioyce in a new rebellion w[hi]ch the miscarrying of that bill (carryed through here with so much paines and no small difficulties) must needs sow the seeds and raise the hopes of ’.17 A broad continuity of membership in the upper house ensured that, despite the radically different political context in Restoration Ireland and the growing pre-eminence of the Westminster Parliament, matters which had dominated proceedings two decades earlier resurfaced. Disquiet over the nonresidency of peers with Irish titles and debates over the vexed issue of control over proxies (now limited to two per lord, a rule that was adhered to) echoed earlier discussions. Unresolved disputes over precedence between the earls of Clanricarde and Thomond, between Lords Courcy and Kerry and between the earls of Drogheda and Tyrconnell sparked friction.18 The upper house guarded their privileges closely and occasionally sparred with the lower house.19 In July 1666, in a free conference with the Commons, the MPs broke with custom by sitting and refusing to remove their hats. Furious about the breach of the privilege the Lords sent a messenger to enquire why. ‘Gentlemen you would all be lords?’, he asked. One MP replied ‘Another rebellion may make us so, as well as a former made your ancestors.’20 The Lords also irked the lower house by sitting in their position as highest judicial authority of the realm and hearing petitions despite protests from MPs. As a result hundreds of petitions went through a process of presentation, answer from the defendant, replication by the presenter, and perhaps further examination. During the course of the parliament at least 27 lords (14 Protestant and 13 Catholic) presented petitions (see appendix VI). Most of these dated from 1661, 1662 and 1663, and related to the (re)possession of estates and the complexities of rolling out the land settlement (discussed in chapter 11). In this way, parliament became an extension of attempts to recover lost lands or to establish control over recently acquired estates.21 Interestingly, despite the trauma of civil war and Cromwellian occupation, pre-war intermarriage had helped to forge a more traditional elite with common interests that transcended ethnic differences and religious divides.22 The assignation of parliamentary proxies often reflected these alliances. For example, in the course of the fourth session the earl of Inchiquin, whose son married in 1665 the earl of Orrery’s daughter, held proxies for Orrery and his son-in-law, Viscount Powerscourt, despite his open recusancy. Viscount Mayo’s conversion to Protestantism did not deter Catholics like Lords Carlingford, Dillon of Costello-Gallen or Clancarthy from entrusting him

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with their proxies. Equally, the extent to which bonds of friendship, clientage and economic indebtedness, largely forged in the pre-war years, survived a decade of civil war and a further decade of Cromwellian rule is striking. ‘The resident Irish peerage’, according to one historian, ‘had begun to meld into an aristocratic elite whose sense of identity transcended diverse ethnic and even different religious affiliations’.23 Increasingly, Catholic peers became dependent on their Protestant counterparts to temper the extremes of the Cromwellian and Restoration land settlements and to neutralize the perceived injustices to those who had remained loyal to the king. Initially, the earls of Mount Alexander and Kildare led this lobby. In July 1661 the Lords requested that a writ of error be passed to reverse the earl of Clancarthy’s ‘outlawry’.24 Shortly after this, instructions prepared for agents sent to London included specific supplications to the king on behalf of Lord Mayo, ‘he being of English parents and bred a Protestant’, Lords Brittas, Clanricarde and Westmeath, and the other peers named in the king’s Declaration.25 The king approved the request for Mayo but referred Brittas’s case to commissioners. The commissioners determined that Brittas was only two when the rebellion broke out and recommended that he be included in the Act of Settlement.26 In May and again in July 1662 the upper house recommended that Lords Athenry, Brittas, Galmoy, Kilmallock, Mayo and Westmeath, ‘sitting in this house, and now out of possession of their estates’, be restored before those named in the king’s Declaration of November 1660. This was to allow for ‘their better encouragement and the support of the[ir] dignity’.27 In short, their restoration had become a matter of aristocratic honour. The Politics behind the Land Settlement According to the earl of Orrery, debates over the land settlement divided the Dublin House of Lords into three camps. First were ‘the temporall Lords [who] are either Papists & such as are noe enemie to their interests’ and, second, ‘such Protestants who are not over fond of the Irish’. The third comprised 14 bishops, who ‘are all as one man & true friends to ye Protestant interest’. In terms of numbers the first two groups were equally divided and so the bishops held the casting votes.28 Predictably, the land settlement dominated the Restoration Parliament, especially the later sessions. The Act of Settlement (14 & 15 Charles II, c.2) and the Act of Explanation (17 & 18 Charles II, c.2) were the two principal statutes that regulated the redistribution of land. The former aimed to execute the king’s Declaration and vested in him all land confiscated since 23 October 1641 as a consequence of the rebellion.29 In all, 226 clauses were incorporated into the Act containing provision for 400 individuals. There were a number of key elements to the Act of Settlement that were of particular relevance to the peers. First,

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adventurers and Cromwellian soldiers were confirmed in the land they held on 7 May 1659. Second, the restoration of dispossessed proprietors, principally Catholics, was to be facilitated providing they could prove before a court that they were innocent of having participated in the 1641 rebellion. If successful, the innocent claimants were to be restored to their estates immediately and the Cromwellian occupants were to be ‘forthwith’ reprised (i.e. compensated) with lands of equal value elsewhere. Third, 36 ‘nominees’ (later increased to 54) were singled out by name as especially meriting royal favour and were deemed worthy of restoration without being put to further proof.30 Fourth, 224 ‘ensignmen’ who had served under the royal banner (or ensign) abroad were identified as being entitled to restoration, as were ‘articlemen’ (those who had fought with the confederate Catholics but had submitted to, and observed, the articles of the peace treaties of 1646 or 1649). But the nominees and ensignmen were to be restored only after the Cromwellian planters had first been reprised, and those claiming ‘articles’ who had remained in Ireland during the Interregnum and had been allotted land as transplanters were to forfeit all claim to land. As appendix VI shows, a total of 34 lords were named in the Act of Settlement (plus two others, Lords Granard and Lanesborough, who were later elevated to the peerage), including the 23 Catholic peers (plus Mayo) named in the Declaration. Furthermore 42 peers were named in the Act of Explanation. Many were included thanks to the earls of Ormond, Orrery or Anglesey, and extant correspondence captures the lengths to which individuals went to secure clauses in both bills. In particular, those who drafted the legislation in London, especially Sir Heneage Finch, were cultivated, lobbied and bribed (discussed in chapter 11).31 Yet it was one thing to be named in the Act and quite another to secure possession of long-lost estates. In 1662 even Ormond had to confess ‘I am not able to see through the end of a settlement’, adding that if all those with apparently legitimate claims were to be adequately satisfied, ‘there must be new discoveries made of a new Ireland, for the old [one] will not serve to satisfy these engagements’.32 Whether land was readily available or not, the value of being awarded a ‘decree of innocence’ was immediately evident, arising from the principle that the estate of the innocents had not been legally forfeited. Seven commissioners, who took office on 20 September 1662, were appointed to oversee the business of the Court of Claims. They were Henry Coventry (later replaced by Sir Allen Broderick), Sir Edward Dering, Sir Richard Rainsford, Sir Thomas Beverly, Sir Edward Smith, Colonel Edward Cook and Sir Winston Churchill. None had any particular connection to Ireland but it quickly became apparent that Broderick, Rainsford, Beverly and Churchill sympathized with claims by Irish Catholics and Smith, Dering and Cooke preferred the Protestant interest. In October the court

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published its strict rules about what constituted ‘innocence’ and what its procedure would be. It determined that pleas would be heard from innocents in a strict order, beginning with Leinster, then Munster, Ulster and finally Connacht. Hearings began in earnest in January 1663. As it adjudicated on cases the court drew on a variety of records: the 1641 depositions; the civil survey; and the ‘books of discrimination’ also known as the black books of Athlone, comprising records of the confederate Catholics discovered in 1654; and the Books of Survey and Distribution. When the court closed on 21 August 1663 it had issued decrees to over 800 claimants: 566 innocent ‘papists’, 141 innocent Protestants and 113 nocent (not innocent) claimants. Hundreds of claims, especially from Connacht, remained to be heard.33 Yet from the outset the court was perceived to favour Catholics, something that rattled the Protestant community. According to a leading historian of the land settlement Protestants lost approximately 850,000 acres as a result of the court’s activities.34 The extant records of the Court of Claims contain submissions and details of appearances by 23 peers (only three of whom were Protestant) or by a close female relative. With the exceptions of Lords Dunsany, Tyrconnell and Netterville of Dowth, these lords were judged innocent (see appendix VI), which, according to the Act of Settlement, entitled the claimant to immediate possession of lands without the Cromwellian owners being first reprised. Predictably, it proved difficult to enforce a decree of innocence and many, including local law officials, obstructed the work of the court. Consider the example of the earl of Castlehaven, who after 11 months finally secured a decree of innocence but then found that the earl of Barrymore refused to surrender his castle unless Ormond instructed him to.35 Those found nocent objected loudly and mobilized the king, their friends and patrons (discussed in chapter 11). The restoration of hand-picked Catholics can also be attributed to the influence exercised by the recusant interest in London through leading courtiers like the queen mother, Henry Jermyn, earl of St Albans, Sir Henry Bennet, who in 1665 became earl of Arlington, and Sir William Morris.36 The House of Commons, dominated by the Protestant interest, was horrified by the number of Catholics declared innocent by the Court of Claims. In February 1663 the Commons ‘threw out the Explanatory Act and voted a series of resolutions designed not only to narrow the definition of “innocent” catholics but to submit land claims to the verdicts of (Protestant) juries instead of to the royal commissioners’.37 Feeling that his authority was being undermined and determined to bring the Commons to heel, the king ordered Ormond to pressure them to retract their votes and even threaten to use force if necessary. A potentially explosive situation was, however, defused by Ormond’s discovery of a minor conspiracy by a small number of Protestant extremists (Colonel Blood’s plot) to take Dublin castle. As a result, on

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21 March the Commons rescinded their votes against the commissioners. The court’s decision in August 1663 to restore the marquis of Antrim threw matters back into the melting pot and almost immediately Ormond asked for permission to dissolve the Irish parliament, since ‘there will now be greater reason to apprehend their ill temper’.38 The situation was indeed serious, for the entire future of the Restoration land settlement in Ireland was threatened by ‘His Majesty restoring some few innocent papists to their estates’.39 Sir Daniel O’Neill was not alone in wondering ‘how far what is done in his [Antrim’s] favour will disfavour your act’;40 while Ormond, who had to face ‘all the clamour that can be raised by undone men’, despaired ‘of any settlement by this or any other act’.41 Moreover, if his Protestant enemies succeeded in making an example of Antrim, it would leave the other decrees made by the commissioners open to litigation. For as an anonymous observer quipped late in 1663, ‘if the king agreed to a re-trial (albeit using the same witnesses and evidence), he would be obliged to do the same for a great number of the decrees, [which] will take up more time than can be spared, and will render the settlement of Ireland so dilatory and difficult, as those now living . . . shall ever see the end thereof, which is perhaps the aim of the opposers of the decrees, who shall in the interim enjoy the profits of great quantities of lands’.42 Given the toxic atmosphere, the passage of the Bill of Explanation through the Irish parliament proved far from smooth. The earl of Conway, a particularly well-informed observer, had predicted that a bill in which ‘so much art is used to settle the Irish and to unsettle the English’ would run into trouble.43 And it did. In the Commons, Ranelagh’s son, Richard Jones, ‘in a set and studied harangue did arraign the whole Bill very fiercely’. It finally passed on 23 December 1665 but largely thanks to Orrery’s advocacy for it amongst his clients in the lower house.44 In the upper house Viscount Massareene, who had lost lands in County Antrim to Antrim, Sir Daniel O’Neill and Sir Henry O’Neill, proved a vocal opponent but one with little support.45 The Act of Explanation enshrined in law the verdicts of the Court of Claims and provided, with specified exceptions, that Cromwellians should give up one-third of their holdings to make land available for the restoration of Catholics. As appendix VI illustrates, a majority of the resident peers were specifically named in the legislation. Fifty-four royalist nominees were also singled out to be restored to their chief seats and 2,000 adjacent acres, but only after reprisals had first been allotted to the Cromwellian occupants. They included Lords Athenry, Brittas, Dunboyne, Ikerrin, Iveagh, Trimleston, Upper Ossory and Westmeath.46 Two years later in a memorandum criticizing the Irish land settlement it was alleged that ‘not one of the fifty-four nominees has got so much as a cottage, let alone his estate and 2,000 acres’.47 Lord Brittas, for example, claimed in the early 1680s that he had only been

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restored to 800 acres.48 The business of the second Court of Claims, which met for the first time on 4 January 1666 and sat until 2 January 1669, is less well documented than the first. A number of peers appeared before it including Lord Power, later earl of Tyrone, and Viscount Ikerrin, a close kinsman of Ormond who had been raised as a Protestant in England but whose grandfather had been an active confederate.49 The haggling over the land settlement continued for the remainder of the 1660s and throughout the 1670s as individuals litigated over possession of estates and petitioned the king and Ormond, with a few pleading for restoration to their estates and the bulk for the abatement of quit rents. In the aftermath of the Act of Explanation, the temporal lords rallied behind Lewis O’Dempsey, Viscount Clanmalier, who had lost his estates in King’s and Queen’s Counties to a favoured courtier, Henry Bennet, despite being declared innocent by the Court of Claims. In November 1665 Wentworth Dillon, fourth earl of Roscommon, a Protestant of Old English extraction whose uncle was the late earl of Strafford and whose wife was Orrery’s niece, made an impassioned (but carefully worded) speech to the upper house on Clanmalier’s behalf: Only give me leave to tell you that you never had a fairer opportunity to show the care you take of your own members, and that you never will hear a subject more worthy of your concern. You have now before you the case of the only peer that hath the honour to sit in this House and that is not in some manner provided for, and an honourable family reduced to great streights [sic] and the prospect of a sadder extremity. There was never any outlawry or so much as an indictment either against this Lord or his son; and all the English neighbours own that he was their protector, that he relieved their wants, that he sheltered them from persecution, that he saved their lives and did all the good offices that could be done by one that had not more interest and intimacy with the Irish. When he was tried for his life, the corruptest instruments that ever served the ends of tyranny and usurpation could not find a pretence to take it away.50

Roscommon invited his colleagues to ask Ormond to intercede with the king, ‘who since he has showed so much mercy to the guilty cannot but have reserved some pity for the unfortunate’.51 He also enlisted the support of his uncle, Orrery, in a sustained attempt to secure adequate provision for a fellow lord who no longer had the means ‘to support his dignity’.52 For his part, Clanmalier reiterated what Roscommon had said and maintained that he was now one of the few peers who had no ‘means to support and maintain himself suitable to his degree and calling’.53 Yet, despite the best efforts of Roscommon, Orrery and Ormond, Clanmalier was one of the few Catholic lords to lose his

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estates and not receive compensation elsewhere (his case is discussed in chapter 11 above).54 The land settlement undoubtedly irked many Irish Protestants but it also left many Catholics bitterly disappointed. Even though he incurred the wrath of his uncle, Ormond, Lord Muskerry criticized the settlement and queried why lands had to be confirmed to ‘the scum of Cromwell’s army, and to adventurers that advanced their money against the king’.55 Ormond then remonstrated to Muskerry’s father, the earl of Clancarthy: I am much troubled at some things I have lately heard of your son . . . he is only very assiduous in consultations held by such as would be thought much to favour the Irish (which may be allowed him considering his birth and relations, though it might also consist with prudence in him to decline the orientation of it) but that his zeal hath transported him to reviling and opprobious language of the English in this kingdom . . . any Irishman that proposed to himself being in Ireland will the more or less attain unto it, as he is the more or less believed or esteemed by the English.56

Ormond thus articulated the grim reality of the situation in Ireland and the dilemma that Lord Muskerry and other leading Catholics of Irish birth faced. They objected to the influence exercised by ‘the English’, especially with regard to securing lands and office, but in order to survive and prosper men like Muskerry had, in Ormond’s opinion, no alternative but to downplay their ‘Irishness’ (and Catholicism) and to curry English (and Protestant) favour. To be fair, Muskerry enthusiastically supported the Stuart interest in Ireland and died in royal service, in a naval engagement with the Dutch, two years after this heated exchange with his uncle. What Muskerry did take issue with was kow-towing to upstarts and social inferiors, ‘the scum of Cromwell’s army’, who, despite serving the king’s enemies, were being promoted over those who had remained loyal. Restoration Dublin During the later decades of the seventeenth century Dublin emerged as a prosperous and bustling metropole, a commercial and financial centre of importance with its own court and civic society.57 The lengthy meeting of the Restoration Parliament during the 1660s accelerated these developments just as prolonged periods of political inactivity (parliament did not meet again until 1689), combined with the lord lieutenant’s extended stays in London and the introduction of protectionist economic legislation such as the Navigation and Cattle Acts (1663 and 1667), retarded it. By 1660 Dublin was Ireland’s largest city, with a population of 30,000, and the administrative,

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commercial, cultural and educational centre of the country.58 In the pre-war years a number of peers – Lords Chichester, Cork, Charlemont and Longford – owned houses in the city but most simply rented accommodation, typically when the Irish parliament was in session.59 After the Restoration it became an increasingly popular destination and its population nearly doubled to about 50,000 by 1685. Investment in public buildings such as the Royal Hospital in Kilmainham or a new school (the King’s Hospital) or a new west front for Trinity College, together with the repair or construction of the city’s churches and bridges, the proliferation of coffee houses and shops and, above all, access to the chief governor’s court in Dublin castle, added to the city’s allure.60 Ormond actively encouraged this. Acutely aware of the importance of the visual, he oversaw the rebuilding of the Smock Alley theatre, which opened in 1662 and could hold audiences of 2,000, and was a patron of the playhouse which initially operated as a private court theatre. The first play to be staged, in February 1663, was Katherine Philips’s Pompey, a translation of Pierre Corneille’s Le Mort de Pompée. Two weeks later the great patron of the ‘the matchless Orinda’ (as Philips termed herself ), the earl of Orrery, staged his own verse comedy, The Generall. Set during a rebellion in which a legitimate king and a usurper struggle for power, it was a play about guilt and loyalty, victory and defeat, punishment and forgiveness. It would have resonated with audiences, especially as it was performed while the debates around the land settlement raged. This, no doubt, added to its political potency.61 Dublin was also a place where many lords brokered marriages, raised loans, secured offices and forged patronage bonds. Even those who resided primarily in England retained an agent in the capital to represent their interests. In 1660 peers owned 15 houses in the city.62 A generation later, in 1672, Sir William Petty suggested that over one-fifth of the country’s big houses were located in Dublin, and by the early eighteenth century it has been estimated that 25 to 30 peers maintained Dublin residences.63 Between 1660 and 1673 the city doubled its acreage. St Stephen’s Green was laid out and streets like Dame Street, Capel Street and Thomas Street were developed. The earl of Longford was a shrewd property developer and responded to the need for high-quality housing, both short-term and for purchase, by building in the area near St Stephen’s Street and College Green. Shortly after the Restoration he opened up a new street, Aungier street, which was the widest in Dublin (70 feet), and by 1667 the earl of Donegal and the countess of Mount Alexander lived in what was to become a noble residential suburb (her mansion was valued at £50).64 Hearth tax rolls suggest that during the early 1660s the peers lived in close proximity to each other in the city centre. The earl of Ranelagh lived in a house with 16 hearths and Lady Mount Alexander in one with six on Dame Street (she later moved to the larger property in Aungier Street); the earl of Carlingford lived in a house with 14 hearths in

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Winetavern Street; the earl of Anglesey lived in a property with 10 hearths in College Green; the earl of Meath in one with 12 hearths in the Glibb; and Lords Massareene, Dungannon and Fingal lived on Church Street in houses with 15, 10 and 9 hearths respectively. A description of Fingal’s house suggests that its frontage was about 80 feet and 150 feet in depth. There were stables, a malting house and outhouses to the rear.65 Lords Kingston and Longford had properties – of 19 and 14 hearths respectively – in the nearby parish of St Andrew. The earl of Roscommon lived in St Michan’s parish in a house with 14 hearths; the earl of Antrim in one of 14 hearths in St Audoen’s parish; and the earl of Cork owned a vast mansion with 27 hearths in St Warburgh’s parish.66 Ormond held court in sumptuous state apartments in Dublin castle. The drawing room, where the lord lieutenant greeted and entertained his guests, contained ‘five pieces of Lambeth hangings of horses, ten foot and a half deep’, ‘six pieces of fine imagery and forest work hangings, eight foot deep’, and a large picture of the queen in a gilt frame, all lit by candles held in eight silver sconces. There were 16 elbow-chairs of crimson velvet with a fringe cased with crimson colour serge, a silver table and stands; ornate silver fire irons, a looking-glass table and stands, varnished with gold and silver, and a large ‘Portugal mat’. The dining room was also furnished to impress. Turkish carpets of varying sizes covered the floor and side-boards, 24 ‘Turkey-work chairs of festoon pattern and two elbow-chairs of Paris Turkey-work’ surrounded the table. Seven gilt sconces provided lighting to show off the hundreds of silver items that would have adorned the table and adjoining public rooms: large and small bowls, flagons, round and oval basins, ewers, cutlery, serving spoons, ladles, dishes, plates, salvers, tankards, tumblers, teapots, salt and pepper pots, candlesticks and so on.67 Dublin castle stood as the social and cultural centre for fashionable society and the Ormonds used it to display their wealth and to make important statements about the status and pre-eminence of their lineage, as well as the civility of aristocratic society in Restoration Ireland. Later Stuart Politics As a patron Ormond’s influence during these years was ubiquitous, as he consolidated his hold over the Irish administration, judiciary, army and Church. His long career began in 1642 when he became commander-in-chief of the king’s forces in Ireland and spanned three periods as lord lieutenant (1644–50, 1662–9, 1677–85), as lord steward of the royal household, and as chancellor of Oxford University and Trinity College, Dublin. ‘His potential for the exercise of patronage was,’ as one historian noted, ‘therefore quite exceptional, both in scope and duration.’68 During the early 1660s

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he trafficked minor household appointments and as lord lieutenant he distributed Irish acres, administrative and political offices, ecclesiastical positions and military posts to his clients and kinsmen. Ormond was also a great literary patron, which allowed him to control popular opinion, to shape political reputations and be represented as a man of honour and as a loyal, royal servant (see chapter 3 above).69 From Dublin castle Ormond ruled Ireland much as his predecessors had in the pre-war years. Resident peers continued to serve as prominent members of the Privy Council (see appendix II). During the 1660s, 1670s and early 1680s there were roughly 60 privy councillors, including Lords Anglesey, Ardglass, Arran, Barrymore, Blessington, Clanbrassil, Colooney, Conway, Cork, Drogheda, Granard, Inchiquin, Lanesborough, Longford, Massareene, Meath, Mount Alexander, Mountjoy, Ranelagh, Roscommon, Shannon, Thomond, Tyrone, Orrery and Ossory.70 Of the 18 Catholic councillors, 10 held this coveted office after the accession of James VII and II in 1685. Prior to that it was the fortunate few who sat as members of the Irish Privy Council and after 1660 they included the earls of Carlingford, Clanricarde, Inchiquin and Tyrone.71 Ormond was a privy councillor in all three of the Stuart kingdoms, an unusual accolade reserved for the greatest aristocratic houses. Eight Irish lords (3 per cent) sat on both the Irish and English Privy Councils. In the pre-war years only Lord Chichester and the first earl of Cork enjoyed this privilege but in the later part of the century the second duke of Ormond and the earls of Anglesey, Conway, Cork, Orrery, Ossory and Ranelagh all did, and George Lane, later first Viscount Lanesborough, served as its clerk until he sold the office in 1664 for nearly £2,000 to a fellow Irishman. The administration of the Irish revenue fell first to the earl of Anglesey, then in 1670 to Ormond’s confidant, Francis, Lord Aungier (later viscount and then earl of Longford), who was regarded as a skilled financier. In 1674 Orrery’s nephew, Richard Jones, second viscount and later first earl of Ranelagh, was appointed vice treasurer. He was efficient but more corrupt and pragmatic than most and undoubtedly used his position to acquire a very considerable fortune.72 Other Protestant peers held other key (and lucrative) administrative offices.73 In terms of local politics the peers continued to exercise tremendous power. As lord president of Munster, Orrery lorded it over the province until the office was abolished in 1672. At a local level the influence of individual lords, especially Protestant ones, was pervasive, much as it had been in the pre-war years (see appendix II for details). At his funeral Orrery’s chaplain, Thomas Morris, noted the work that the earl undertook as an arbitrator, composing many ‘differences betwixt jarring neighbours’. According to Morris, he was ‘the very cement of the country gentry where he lived’ which, he feared, would now fall ‘asunder again, upon the loss of this their common ligament’.74 By the early 1670s even Catholic peers – Lords Gormanston, Slane

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and Trimleston – served as magistrates. Important though it undoubtedly was to be active locally, for a peer to prosper he had no alternative but to spend more extended periods of time in Dublin than was required before 1641. Ideally he also needed to reside regularly in London, the real seat of power. The earl of Conway did his best in 1680 to persuade the earl of Granard to join him in London on the grounds that, ‘how can a man that lives in the County of Longford do any other business but his own private affairs’.75 Granard’s apparent reluctance to do so immediately deprived him of important patronage relationships that sustained the exercise of power during these years. When the final session of the Irish parliament ended in August 1666 the political centre of gravity shifted decisively to London, where the richest Irish aristocrats owned or rented residences. In 1667 the earl of Cork bought Burlington House, which had been designed by Hugh May, in Piccadilly but after 1672 focused on remodelling his country seat at Londesborough in Yorkshire, with its 70 rooms, extensive formal gardens and bowling green.76 His brother, Orrery, kept Marston House in Somerset, which he refurbished in 1676–7, and rented property in London; Anglesey had Bletchingdon in Oxfordshire; and Conway had an impressive seat at Ragley in Warwickshire. Ormond owned a fine three-storey London mansion, with 11 bay windows and 36 rooms, in St James’s Square, Chelsea (he paid £9,000 for it). The property was set on 16 acres and was surrounded ‘with several large gardens and courts all walled in and planted with the choicest fruits that could be collected either from abroad or in England. The whole house is in perfect good repair.’ A 1685 inventory of the house reveals that its contents were as lavish as those in Ormond’s Irish properties and some of his finest paintings were hung there.77 In 1663 the duke acquired (for £13,200) a country estate, Moor Park, near Rickmansworth in Hertfordshire, 20 miles from London.78 The earl of Anglesey described Moor Park as ‘neat and convenient for the bigness. . . . The gardens are extraordinary, full of delightful walks and fountains and terraces with covered walks for rainy weather.’79 Towards the end of his life Ormond sold Moor Park and acquired a more modest property, Kingston Hall, in Dorsetshire.80 The earl of Thomond spent the bulk of his time on his wealthy wife’s English estates in Northamptonshire. The Digbys effectively relocated to Sherbourne in Dorset and successive generations became more involved in English political affairs and less in Irish ones. Those lords who resided on their English estates often held local office, usually as lord lieutenants. Those without English titles stood for election to the English Commons. For example, Charles Boyle, Lord Dungarvan and later third earl of Cork, sat as an MP in the parliaments of 1670, 1679 and 1685 before taking his seat in the English Lords in 1689. Others proved less successful at becoming MPs. In March 1679 ‘tricks and foul play’ lost the earl

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of Longford an election in Surrey even though he had spent £2,000 in attempting to secure the seat.81 Intermarriage with leading English noble families consolidated these personal and political links (see chapter 6). Leading Protestant aristocrats, the Corks, the Ormonds and the Thomonds, entered into a more English, even British, social and political orbit. English titles and positions of honour afforded Lords Anglesey, Conway, Cork, Ormond and Ossory seats in the House of Lords in London where they formed an influential clique, complaining bitterly against the Navigation and Cattle Acts (1663 and 1667) and legislation controlling the woollen industry. In September 1665 the earl of Anglesey, then in Dublin, warned the earl of Arlington that ‘the country here is in a more sad and miserable condition than I ever knew it before’ and predicted that any prohibition against the transport of cattle, combined with the ongoing Dutch war, would cause ‘desolation and no possibility to maintain the army, there being no such thing as money or trade’.82 Nearly two years later Anglesey’s doomsday prediction was realized. ‘The poverty caused by the prohibition against the export of cattle’, he lamented, ‘is so universal that it is past the skill or power of the government to supply a remedy.’83 Others proved equally pessimistic about Ireland’s future prosperity. As the months passed Conway’s rage reached boiling point. ‘The Bill against our cattle is carried on with that violence as if all the liberties and charters of England were concerned in it, as if there were no other grievance, no other inconvenience by the wars, by the plague or other destruction upon this kingdom, but only from Irish cattle’, he fumed to Rawdon in October 1666, adding ‘and yet I hope we shall procure some qualifications to the Bill’.84 Ormond felt as frustrated as Conway and feared that ‘total prohibition of the importation . . . of live cattle . . . beef, pork, bacon and fish’ would leave ‘us in Ireland in a worse condition than we were in before’. Ormond asked the king to form an emergency committee of Lords Anglesey, Conway, Cork and Ossory, whose remit was ‘to prevent the ruin of his Irish subjects’.85 As the punitive legislation made its way through the English Parliament, Ormond’s letters to London became ever more desperate.86 Tensions flared at Westminster as the faction, led by the duke of Buckingham, which favoured the legislation clashed with those, led by the earl of Ossory, Ormond’s son, who opposed it. Samuel Pepys recorded in his diary the exchange of ‘hard words’ on 25 October 1666 following a debate on the proposed Cattle Acts in the English House of Lords between Buckingham and Ossory. Ossory then challenged the duke to a duel and Buckingham complained to the house, resulting in the brief incarceration of both men. Yet, much to Pepys’s amusement, the ‘hot words’ continued until Ossory was instructed the following month to apologize for his ‘indecent expression’.87 Their efforts achieved little and the earl of Orrery complained

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to Ormond that the Cattle Act, which became law in January 1667, ‘will not only wound our estates but our titles’.88 As in the pre-war years, many young lords spent time at court and the king admitted the favoured few into his household. The first duke of Ormond held the privileged position of lord steward to the royal household, bearing the crown at the coronations of both Charles II and James II. His son, the earl of Ossory, was chamberlain to Queen Catherine of Braganza and Lady Fingal (Ormond’s Catholic niece) was one of her ladies-in-waiting.89 Claude, fifth baron Hamilton of Strabane, and Richard, first earl of Ranelagh, were grooms of the bedchamber to Charles II. The king’s affection for Ranelagh was such that Charles bequeathed him a snuff bottle studded with gold nails which, Ranelagh maintained, his ‘dear master King Charles wore upon his wrist to his dying day’.90 James, second duke of Ormond, and Donough, fourth earl of Clancarthy, were members of the bedchamber of James II.91 Some of those closest to the royal family, including Lady Fingal and Lords Carlingford and Strabane, were recusants and were well placed at Whitehall to promote the Catholic interest and their own political and landed agendas with the same energy and sophistication as their predecessors had done. They colluded with other prominent Irish recusants – especially the Talbots – who gathered around the court of James, duke of York, and helped to facilitate the Catholic ‘survivalism’ discussed in the previous chapter.92 Yet even political veterans like Ormond fell victim to factionalism. In an attack orchestrated by Lord Buckingham and Ashley (to whom Orrery had allied himself ) Ormond was dismissed from the lord lieutenancy in 1669. He returned to office eight years later amid rumours of Popish plots and foreign invasions.93 Matters reached fever pitch in the autumn of 1678 as details of an alleged Jesuit plot to assassinate Charles II caused panic in England, especially in London. Orrery did much to stoke the paranoia in Ireland and Ormond held him to be an irresponsible troublemaker.94 Orrery’s death in October 1679 put an end to the ‘pen war’, but Ormond was nevertheless instructed to apprehend suspects, including Lord Mountgarret and his sonin-law.95 With reluctance he arrested and interrogated the accused men but drew the line at Mountgarret, who ‘was not in a condition of health to be removed from his habitation, being above eighty years of age and bedrid’.96 Ormond’s moderation, especially in the face of Orrery’s hysteria, left him vulnerable to accusations of putting ‘greater confidence in the Papists than the Protestants’.97 Early in 1681 Ormond also rallied behind Lord Clare, even though Clare’s wavering commitment to Protestantism concerned him. According to a hostile account, Clare had ‘made his wife a Papist and left her in a nunnery in France, that he has been in Spain and there went to Mass, that his son is or was page to the French King’. Yet Ormond maintained that Clare was loyal:

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He is a man of known courage, conduct and intrigue, of a broken and indeed desperate fortune, burdened with a title very unsuitable to it. He is of a noble family, of great esteem and numerous dependances among the Irish Papists.98

During the late 1670s and early 1680s, allegations of Popish plotting clung to the earl of Tyrone, who maintained that he was an innocent Protestant. A local informant, Hubert Bourke, who allegedly drank, gamed and hunted with Tyrone, claimed that the earl planned to secure French aid for the Irish cause.99 Anglesey, his Protestant and avaricious father-in-law, supported him as did other peers, including Lords Roscommon, Mount Alexander and Carlingford, who stood bail for him when he was released from the gatehouse at Westminster after four years of incarceration.100 Anglesey’s lobbying was such that by November 1680 one correspondent informed Ormond that ‘my Lord Anglesey had so great credit amongst the Papists that they prayed for him at Mass, and he heard his parish priest often pray for him’.101 The way that the Protestant aristocrats, especially Ormond and his circle, vouched for their fellow peers is striking and helps to explain the more muted reaction to the Popish Plot in Ireland. The Army During the 1650s the Cromwellians had done everything possible to demilitarize Ireland and to dismantle the baronial networks that had underpinned the exercise of violence there. And while the numbers of Irish ‘military peers’ decreased to 57 per cent by 1670 (in 1605 the number had stood at 72 per cent), Protestant lords continued to dominate the military establishment at home and Catholic peers, unable to take up arms in Ireland, sought service abroad. Chivalric values survived, as did the belief that peers needed to authenticate individual honour both off and on the battlefield.102 For some resident peers their power stemmed from the military commands that they held and the income these generated. For others the army enhanced opportunities for social and political advancement, and became an increasingly important destination for younger sons of aristocrats and the heirs of lesser lords.103 These commands represented an important source of income, especially for the impoverished lords. For example, in 1687–8, Viscount Ikerrin drew down an allowance of £235 4s 0d as a captain of grenadiers and Tyrconnell’s annual salary as lieutenant general of the army was £1,410.104 Military or naval commissions were jealously guarded and highly prized, in part because a commission, as Hamish Scott has noted, ‘was usually sanctioned and sometimes personally bestowed by the ruler [and] was especially valued by the élite, since it seemed to strengthen the bonds between nobleman and king’.105 The

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jockeying that followed the death of Viscount Dungannon in January 1670 highlights how lords scrambled for military honour. On hearing of Dungannon’s death three urgent letters were sent to London, one on behalf of the earl of Roscommon to the earl of Orrery, the second from the earl of Drogheda to a leading courtier, Lord Ashley, and the third from the earl of Arran to his father Ormond, on behalf of Sir Arthur Forbes, later earl of Granard.106 Predictably, during the 1660s, 1670s and early 1680s Protestant peers dominated the military establishment. Ormond enjoyed nominal command of a regiment of horse and of foot, as did Orrery. Lords Anglesey, Barrymore, Colooney, Conway, Donegal, Drogheda, Dungannon, Longford, Roscommon and Shannon all held cavalry commands. Lords Arran, Folliott and Power were captains of infantry.107 Catholics were eager to take up arms in royal service. For example, Thomas Dungan, later second earl of Limerick and a nephew of the earl of Tyrconnell, and his brothers joined the king’s forces ‘as soon as they were old enough to bear arms’ and fought with the royalist armies in England and then on the Continent.108 In 1678 Dungan was given command of a regiment to be levied in Ireland with Catholic officers, including Piers, third Viscount Galmoy, but the anxieties caused by the unfolding of Popish plots forced Ormond to reconsider this strategy.109 Late in 1678 he suggested that Colonel Dungan’s regiment, ‘the men having been as quietly raised and kept together as it was possible they could be’, should serve the king overseas rather than at home.110 A number of prominent resident peers – Lords Castlehaven, Inchiquin, Muskerry, Ossory and Taaffe – held senior commands abroad and took great pride in bringing honour to their king and country as they fought in the continental theatres of war. In the early 1660s Castlehaven offered troops to the Venetians, who refused his advances.111 The following year he importuned Charles II for the command of ‘3,000 or 4,000 men who must either starve or be troublesome to the peace of this kingdom’ and who were destined for Portugal. Two years later Castlehaven asked to be included in an ‘expedition to the Dutch war’.112 After 1660 William O’Brien, later second earl of Inchiquin, who had been reared a Protestant and had married Orrery’s daughter, served in his father-in-law’s regiment. In 1675 he became governor of Tangiers, a post he held for six years, and in 1690 William III appointed him governor of Jamaica.113 Most distinguished of all was Thomas Butler, earl of Ossory, who in 1677–8 commanded the English forces in the Netherlands and served with William of Orange against the French. In 1680 the king appointed him governor of Tangier and instructed him ‘to regaine the losses we had lately suffer’d from the Moores, when Inchqueene was Governor’. Ossory, however, took offence when his force was drastically reduced in size. But ‘being an exceeding brave & valiant person’, Ossory determined to take on the challenge and assured his

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great friend, the diarist John Evelyn, ‘he would go to Tangier with ten men, if his Majestie Commanded him’. In the event he never had the opportunity and he died suddenly, shortly after this exchange with Evelyn.114 Irish lords also served foreign princes, in some cases with distinction. In 1677 Justin MacCarthy, later Viscount Mountcashel, asked Ormond to allow him to continue in French service.115 The earl of Carlingford’s younger brother served in the imperial army and fought against the Turks at the siege of Vienna in 1683. His vivid and detailed letters to his brother circulated in print. Count Taaffe, described as ‘a cavalier of a high reputation’, was held up as an example to others.116 According to the family chronicler the Forbes menfolk, Protestants of Scottish provenance, were ‘addicted to the profession of arms’ and were ‘bred as soldiers’. Arthur, first earl of Granard, was commander-in-chief of the Irish army after 1670 and his sons also took up the sword. He and his wife, Catherine Newcomen, lost three (of their five) sons in battle, along with their son-in-law and their eldest grandson. Their eldest son, also Arthur, served in the French army and fought at the siege of Buda in 1686 (which claimed the life of his brother), and was colonel in Tyrconnell’s regiment.117 The sacrifices made by the Forbes family were extreme but they highlight the importance of military service to noble families. James II In 1685 the Catholic King James II acceded to the throne. Almost at once recusant peers replaced their Protestant counterparts in positions of power and influence across Ireland. A flurry of Catholic ennoblements and elevations in 1689 underscored Richard Talbot, earl of Tyrconnell’s determination to recreate a vibrant Catholic peerage (see chapter 2).118 The king actively promoted Catholics to military commands, often alongside Protestant lords. In March 1686 Lords Ardglass, Forbes, Mountjoy, Ormond, Ossory and Tyrconnell commanded regiments, together with Justin McCarthy, later Viscount Mountcashel. Many of their captains were lesser Catholic peers who had lost out as a result of the land settlement: Lords Brittas, Dunboyne, Dungan, Dunsany, Galmoy, Gormanston, Ikerrin, Louth, Maguire of Enniskillen, Netterville and Upper Ossory.119 Needless to say, these military reforms generated protests ‘from many gentlemen who are displaced, who having perhaps laid out all their patrimony to purchase a command, are now by this displacement reduced to want and perhaps to beggary’.120 In response Tyrconnell assured the earl of Clarendon, then lord lieutenant, that he did not distinguish between Catholics and Protestants but commissioned those who were loyal servants of the king. Tyrconnell, however, insisted to the earl of Roscommon that only Catholics should be admitted to Ormond’s regiment. Clarendon’s personal secretary captured the sense of panic that this unleashed:

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You can imagine how this report on a sudden, like lightning, dispersed itself into all parts, and what a terror it strikes to the hearts of the English, and a damp to the English interest. The Irish talk of nothing now but of recovering their lands and bringing the English under their subjection, which they who have been masters for above 400 years know not how well to bear.121

While many Protestant lords remained in Ireland, others, fearing Catholic revenge akin to that unleashed in 1641, sought refuge in England, and with the outbreak of war in 1688 the majority of Protestant lords rallied behind William of Orange. When war did break out in December 1688 with the shutting of Derry’s gates against the earl of Antrim’s men, the recusant lords with military experience fought for James II, much as their predecessors had supported his father, Charles I. The fourth earl of Clancarthy and his uncle, Justin MacCarthy, later Viscount Mountcashel, first took Cork and then Bandon, clearing the way for James II to land at Kinsale in March 1689.122 James spent a night at Lismore before travelling to Dublin for the opening of his ‘patriot’ parliament.123 Thirty-six of the resident peers did not attend James’s parliament, which assembled on 7 May 1689.124 Thirty-five established peers, seven of whom were Protestant, did attend, together with five new ennoblements (Baron Bourke of Bophin, Baron Fytton of Gosworth, Baron Nugent of Riverston and Viscount Kenmare) and four Protestant bishops (the Catholic ones were not invited to sit).125 In addition to Lord Deputy Tyrconnell, who was elevated to a dukedom on 30 March 1689, there were eight earls: the Catholic earls of Antrim, Clancarthy, Limerick and Tyrone, and the Protestant earls of Barrymore, Cavan, Granard and Longford. On 23 May Justin MacCarthy was created first Viscount Mountcashel and took his seat in the House of Lords the following day.126 Of the viscounts present in parliament, only Bourke of Mayo conformed and of the barons only St Lawrence of Howth and Blayney were Protestant. Most of these viscounts and barons comprised lords of Old English and native Irish provenance who had been marginalized since the 1650s but seized this opportunity to take the political initiative. On 10 May a bill for the repeal of the land settlement was introduced into the House of Commons and on 22 June an Act passed that restored land to the 1641 owners. The Commons also introduced on 15 May a bill for the repeal of Poyning’s Law, but this was later dropped on account of the king’s opposition. The parliament sat until 18 July when the attention of all able-bodied peers turned to the battlefield. Over the winter of 1689 and the spring of 1690 Catholic fortunes lurched from defeat to defeat, culminating in the Williamite victories at the battle of the Boyne (1 July 1690), which allowed William III to occupy Dublin a few days later. Ultimately, James’s defeat

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proved disastrous for the Catholic peerage. Some lost their lives: Nicholas Taaffe, second earl of Carlingford, died at the battle of the Boyne, and Theobald, seventh Viscount Dillon of Costello-Gallen, at Aughrim (12 July 1691). The military articles of the Treaty of Limerick (3 October) provided the option for some to go to France and to continue fighting for James. The earl of Clancarthy, for example, opted to do this and commanded a troop of King James’s Guards until the peace of Ryswick in 1697 when he retired to live on an island on the Elbe near Hamburg (where he died in 1734), even though his attainder had been reversed and his honours restored in 1721.127 Lords Brittas, Maguire of Enniskillen and Sarsfield of Kilmallock also followed the Stuarts into exile.128 The civil articles, which were never fully honoured, promised Catholics the religious privileges they had enjoyed under Charles II and provided for some security of property. In 1691 the titles and lands of 13 Catholic peers were forfeited.129 The only Protestant peer to be deprived of his titles and lands in the Jacobite cause was the second duke of Ormond. In August 1715 the Westminster Parliament attainted him and the following year confiscated his estates.130 Conclusion Of course, by supporting James II with such enthusiasm Catholic peers had confirmed the worst fears that their Protestant counterparts, the English Parliament and the new sovereigns already harboured about them. Those who remained in Ireland faced fresh rounds of expropriation and of religious and political persecution. A significant number did eventually reach an accommodation with the Williamite regime, including Lords Antrim, Bermingham of Athenry, Barnewall of Kingsland, Butler of Cahir, Butler of Dunboyne Butler of Mountgarret, Fitzwilliam of Merrion, Nugent of Westmeath, Plunkett of Dunsany and of Fingal, and Preston of Gormanston, who all secured pardons and were restored to estates or portions of them. The few lords who had clung on to their Catholicism throughout the seventeenth century (Antrim was the obvious example, together with many of the recusant lords of the Pale such as Costello-Gallen and Kingsland) eventually succumbed to Protestantism (though, interestingly, they continued to enjoy Jacobite sympathies). Increasingly, an oligarchy comprised of conforming and ambitious Anglo-Irish administrators came to the fore. Their power and influence rested on draconian penal legislation, together with the Williamite land settlement, just as the power of their predecessors had stemmed from the Restoration land settlement discussed in the previous chapter. The conclusion of the war marked the end of an era for the Stuart service nobility, and the new Williamite regime set about creating a Protestant ascendancy.

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PART III The Sinews of Power

The final section of this book returns to a thematic discussion of the vertical bonds that sustained the peerage: income, wealth, borrowing, expenditure, kinship, family, education and death. Chapter 13 attempts to determine levels of wealth and landed income and explores how the peers made their money. Expenditure is the focus for chapter 14. It examines patterns of conspicuous consumption and the strategies that families adopted for dealing with short- and long-term indebtedness. Chapter 15 focuses on the continuing importance of good lordship for the exercise of baronial power and explores how lineages prepared the young for their dynastic responsibilities. Chapter 16 analyzes death, the final rite of passage, and discusses how noble families used death and especially funerals to mark the achievements – past, present and future – of the wider lineage.

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CHAPTER 13

Income One government official, writing in the early seventeenth century,

predicted that ‘the love of [money] will sooner effect civility than any other persuasion whatsoever’.1 He had a point. One of the key features of the seventeenth century was the emergence of a more commercially oriented, moneydriven economy, which privileged relationships between a lord and his tenant and focused on the production of marketable goods that could be exchanged for cash. Moreover, the nobility now needed access to money – or credit – in order to fund lifestyles commensurate with their status and privileged position in society. Across early modern Europe land was the primary source for noble income, and effective husbanding of landed resources was critical to ensure the financial security of a lineage and its continued prosperity.2 In Ireland land was also the principal source of wealth, and agriculture drove wider economic developments. Resident peers sought to improve the productive capacity of their estates, to introduce innovative farming techniques, to collect rents in cash rather than in kind, to exploit natural resources, especially timber and fishing rights, and to reinvest profits in development and commercial diversification. They also did their utmost to attract and retain good ‘British’ tenants, often at the expense of native Irish ones, and to ‘improve’ holdings by draining, fencing, planting gardens and orchards, and building. They did so in the name of ‘civility’, but it comes as little surprise to learn that greed, self-interest and the need to generate cash for conspicuous expenditure invariably lay behind many of their agricultural initiatives and commercial enterprises. This chapter examines these developments. First, it attempts to determine levels of wealth – landed income, together with capital and moveable assets – by analyzing testamentary records, the 1641 depositions and subsidy assessments. Second, it explores the relationship between wealth and status, something of which contemporaries were acutely aware. Lord Deputy Chichester blocked one ambitious young man on the grounds that ‘his means . . . are unequal to

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support greatness, and though honour is the reward of virtue, yet virtue and honour have need of wealth and living to support and grace it’.3 Interestingly, at the height of civil war the confederates suggested to the king that no peer with an Irish title should be admitted to the House of Lords unless he owned property that generated a minimum income. A baron was expected to have an annual landed income of at least £200, a viscount £400 and an earl £600. Those who did not were ‘to lose their votes in Parliament’.4 As it turned out, these thresholds were modest. The revenue streams of many peers, as shall be seen, greatly exceeded these amounts. Third, this chapter looks at how the peers made their money. Detailed case studies for leading aristocrats highlight the extent to which lords behaved as landed entrepreneurs and improving landlords, maximizing returns from mixed farming and agriculture and diversifying their income streams through proto-industrial activities or by acting as moneylenders. It is always difficult to generalize from a few well-documented examples but impressionistic evidence does suggest that many peers were opportunistic entrepreneurs, eager to acquire the wealth needed to sustain their status and honour even if this meant riding roughshod over traditional responsibilities associated with lordship, which then impacted on their relations with their followers, many of whom were gentry farmers or yeomen. Finally, this chapter examines the economic infrastructure that the peers established as they developed urban settlements and internal communications, provided funding and leadership for commercial and proto-industrial enterprises and, increasingly, involved themselves in trading networks and overseas expansionism. The prolonged inflation of the sixteenth century and the associated rise in prices was followed by a period of relative economic stability and then falling prices, which resulted in stagnation in the wider European economy. Economic developments in Ireland bucked this general trend, where prices appear to have been stable and inflation remained low.5 The early decades of the seventeenth century were ones of intense growth and prosperity, which contrasted sharply with the disruption and instability associated with the previous century that had retarded economic development. The close connection to England helped to insulate Ireland from prevailing economic conditions, and low prices made Irish goods particularly competitive. The English population had nearly doubled over the course of the sixteenth century and this combined with the unprecedented growth of London made England a very important market for Irish agricultural produce, especially beef and wool, together with fish and timber. The growth of the English port towns of Chester and Liverpool reflects the importance of Anglo-Irish trade. In Chester imports of Irish hides in 1639 were twenty times greater than in the late 1580s and imports of wool had increased thirty fold over a comparable period. The export of livestock to England soared and by c.1641 Ireland

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dispatched, according to official estimates, up to 45,000 cattle and 35,000 sheep across the St George’s Channel. Grain production rose but was consumed locally by the growing domestic market. Thanks in large part to high levels of immigration the Irish population increased dramatically from between some 750,000 to 1.4 million people in 1600 to between 1.5 and 2.1 million in c.1641.6 This occurred when population levels across Europe were consumed by warfare and stagnated or declined. The Crown actively encouraged Ireland’s transformation from a redistributive economy to one based on money, markets and consumption as part of its civilizing mission, by promoting the development of towns and urban networks (discussed below) and reforming the Irish currency. In 1600 the monetary conditions in Ireland were chaotic as a result of previous debasements and the wide circulation of English and other European currencies. Within a relatively short period, however, the state had stabilized matters, even if specie remained in short supply for much of the century, and prevented currency flowing out of the country. Stable exchange rates reflected the improved situation. In fact, aside from the war years, especially the 1640s and early 1650s, and periods when weather conditions were particularly poor (late 1630s and the 1670s), the economy was expansionist and prosperous. Prices and inflation remained low, labour was cheap, the population grew along with the volume of trade, and landed rentals, which were increasingly paid in cash rather than kind, rose steadily. When viewed from the perspective of a landed peerage the wider economic environment for much of the seventeenth century, especially the early decades, was very favourable indeed, and it was the ‘land-owning class’, not the state, that was the ‘main agent of economic change’.7 Levels of Wealth Determining levels of wealth is problematic since it is often difficult to distinguish income from capital and landed income from other revenue streams. Moreover, there is a distinct bias towards the aristocratic families whose papers are extant – the Antrims, Clanricardes, Corks, Ormonds and Thomonds – and a tendency to overlook the lesser lords whose archives rarely survive.8 Even where records do survive, contemporaries either exaggerated their earnings or failed to disclose fully their assets and income. Towards the end of his life the earl of Cork revealingly admitted that ‘I did euer desire to conceale my estate, and m[ake it] seem less then it was.’9 Baldly stated, lordly income derived primarily from landed rentals, which were paid in fixed instalments for defined periods of time and in cash (in-kind payments continued but on a very limited basis), and which steadily increased especially during the later decades of the seventeenth century. In addition lords received income from the

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sale of agricultural produce, especially livestock, wool and grain, and from river and coastal fishing (salmon, eels and pilchards). The sale of raw materials, especially timber, together with manufactured goods (iron, textiles, glassware and leather products), could also be considerable, along with income from dowries, moneylending, government handouts and pensions, and official administrative and military salaries. Only the lucky few, such as the duke of Ormond, made significant sums from the offices they held (see chapter 7). Lord Deputy Chichester probably underestimated his earnings when he claimed that his expenses (£4,000) as chief governor exceeded his income.10 When he died in 1625 his total landed assets were valued at ‘£7,000 or £8,000 a year’ and his heir’s annual rental in 1630 was £4,000.11 Chichester’s annual income from land appears to have been fairly typical of most middleranking resident peers. During the early decades of the seventeenth century Viscount Conway’s Irish acres generated £2,000 and Lord Mountnorris’s about £4,000. The 1641 depositions provide an invaluable albeit impressionistic insight into pre-war levels of income. Lord Blayney estimated that he lost an annual rental of £2,250 (in 1641 he held 24,572 plantation acres in County Monaghan) as a result of the rising.12 Viscount Loftus of Ely allegedly lost £2,000 in rental from estates comprising 18,368 plantation acres in Counties Dublin, Kildare and King’s and Queen’s Counties, plus £250 in arrears of rent.13 The earl of Meath lost £700 in annual rents from his County Dublin lands (figures for the lands he held elsewhere are not given) and Viscount Lecale lost £2,600. The countess of Westmeath alleged that her husband lost £3,000 per year in rents from his estates (40,346 plantation acres in Counties Cavan, Dublin, Leitrim, Longford and Westmeath). Determining the accuracy of these figures is difficult. Consider the example of Viscount Netterville. Making a deposition in 1642, Lady Mary Netterville suggested that the insurgents deprived her husband of an annual rental of £394 (his 6,685 plantation acres lay mostly in Counties Meath and Westmeath), which barely accorded with the minimum income (£400 for a viscount) recommended by the confederates a few years later.14 Yet a decade later her daughter-in-law claimed that the manors of Dowth and Proudfootstown yielded an annual rental of £200, which was ‘scarce the eight part of her husband’s estate’. From this it can be inferred that the total rental was in the region of £1,600, but even this figure may not accurately reflect the profitability of the Netterville estate during peacetime.15 Whatever the details, the family’s income was deemed sufficient to attract a daughter of Richard Weston, earl of Portland, lord treasurer to Charles I (whose own gross rental in 1641 was approximately £2,000 and whose borrowings were around £21,000) as a bride for John, later second viscount.16 While it is critical to authenticate the accuracy of the claims recorded in the depositions from other extant sources, they nevertheless suggest that the

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Irish titled nobility was reasonably prosperous on the eve of civil war. Evidence from estate records and the 1641 depositions suggests that many noble families enjoyed landed incomes of between £2,000 and £3,000. Only a handful of aristocratic families claimed incomes greater than the average. The earl of Ormond’s rental in 1610 was £3,000 and by 1641 had risen to £8,000.17 In the pre-war years the earl of Thomond’s annual income was £7,000 and the earl of Antrim’s £20,000, but his wife’s wealth accounted for a significant portion of this, leaving him a landed rental of some £8,000.18 According to the earl of Clarendon, the marquis of Clanricarde had the ‘greatest fortune’ of any native peer but whether his income was £29,000, as alleged, seems unlikely though his rentals from his English estates on the eve of civil war were about £10,000 and his Irish properties would have generated a considerable sum.19 The earl of Cork’s total income by 1641 was between £18,000 and £20,000, and about £15,000 of this was from his landed rentals (see below). The standard rate in England for the valuation of land was 20 years’ purchase, which would suggest that in the pre-war years Thomond’s lands could be valued at £140,000, Antrim’s and Ormond’s lands at £160,000, and Cork’s at £300,000.20 The disruption of the 1640s and 1650s had a dramatic impact on landed revenue. During the early months of the war widespread looting of Protestant property and the theft of livestock occurred, which was often associated with pre-war economic tensions. Indiscriminate plunder and pillage together with the destruction of property quickly became hallmarks of the Irish conflict. In an offensive in May 1642 Ormond ‘caused divers houses to be burnt and pillaged and amongst the best some of the Lords houses of the pale’.21 In September 1642 the lords justices took delight in reporting the destruction of the houses and castles belonging to the earl of Fingal and Viscount Gormanston, adding that their forces had also burned the neighbouring villages and towns along with ‘all the corn, hay and turf in all that country round about them’.22 In Munster and Ulster the story was similar. The earl of Castlehaven claimed that he lost all of his estate in Carbery, County Cork.23 A Protestant planter, Lord Lambert, later claimed that his former County Cavan tenants and neighbours robbed him of his cattle, horses and household goods before burning his home and farm, together with the neighbouring town, mill and church. The total damage to Lambert’s property was estimated by local deponents to be £6,740.24 By 1660 Lambert suggested that the destruction to his estate and the consequent loss of income amounted to £43,000.25 In his will, drawn up in July 1657, Barnabas O’Brien, sixth earl of Thomond, claimed that the ‘unnatural actings of his nearest relations in the rebellion’ had deprived him of ‘near £100,000’, much of it in lost rentals.26 Determining the accuracy of his claim is impossible (and other estimates suggest a lower figure of £45,412). Thomond’s pre-war patrimony

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probably generated £7,000 per annum, but his Michaelmas rents for 1656 only amounted to £824 in cash rentals, plus 164 hogs, 152 sheep, 301 capons and 36 hens.27 By the 1670s estates appear to have recovered and incomes exceeded their pre-war levels. Cork’s increased estates probably generated an annual income of £30,000; the properties owned by Viscount Granard, £1,700; those owned by the earl of Carlingford, £3,000; and the earl of Drogheda’s, £4,159.28 By the 1680s the earl of Kildare’s Irish annual landed rental was £6,800 and his English one was £200.29 The marriage negotiations between the earl of Clancarthy and Lady Elizabeth Spencer, the earl of Sunderland’s youngest daughter, revealed that by the 1680s his estate was worth ‘above 7,000 l. per annum’.30 By the 1680s Ormond’s Irish rentals yielded as much as £24,000.31 How then did the incomes of these resident lords compare with peers elsewhere? Figures for the higher nobility in Scotland suggest that the average annual income for the early seventeenth century was £5,000.32 Lawrence Stone has calculated that in England in 1641 nine peers enjoyed gross rental incomes in excess of £10,000 and that the mean figure for 121 peers was £4,170. When other income streams are included the mean gross figure increased to £6,030.33 Though the Irish evidence is less conclusive, it suggests that the incomes of middle-ranking peers (£2,000–£3,000) were lower than those of their Scottish and English counterparts (£5,000–£6,000) but that aristocratic incomes were on a par with the greatest English dynasties. So much for annual incomes. What of other forms of capital and moveable wealth? At his death in 1642 the lords justices estimated the fortune of Sir Charles Coote, father of the future earl of Mountrath, to be nearly £4,000.34 The financial details often extant in testamentary records provide valuable insights into the economic health of individuals. Wills often include lists of debts owed and due, of mortgaged lands, jointures, annuities and other encumbrances, together with details of disposable wealth. Three examples illustrate this. First, when he died in 1639 Henry O’Brien, fifth earl of Thomond, left moveable goods valued at £3,292 9s 7d, including £1,153 6s 3d in cash and a silver collection of over 140 items (weighing 2,500 ounces) valued at £733 7s 4d. Thomond’s five daughters each had a generous portion and he made a series of individual bequests of plate (worth between £100 and £1,000), racehorses and jewellery (a great sapphire, a diamond chain, a pearl chain and a small cross set in diamonds).35 Whether an annual income of £7,000 was sufficient to fund these obligations is not clear, but with the outbreak of war after 1641 it proved impossible to do so. In his will of 1657 Barnabas, sixth earl of Thomond, claimed that the conflict had prevented him from paying his brother’s debts and honouring these bequests.36 The second example is of Donough MacCarthy, earl of Clancarthy, who had inherited a profitable and unencumbered estate from his father in 1640

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and died in 1665 a very wealthy man, which is unsurprising given how well he did in the Restoration land settlement (see chapters 4 and 11).37 His estate, which passed to his grandson, Charles James, provided a vast jointure of £2,000 for his wife (Ellen, Ormond’s twin) and another for his daughter-inlaw (Margaret, the only daughter of the marquis of Clanricarde); annuities of £500 for his younger sons; and payments of £100 for 99 years to his brotherin-law and his wife (i.e. the duke and duchess of Ormond), his nephew and Ormond’s heir (the earl of Ossory) and his wife. He also made specific bequests to his daughters, other family members, friends, servants and his physician. Clancarthy appears to have had few outstanding debts, but his will recorded the bonds and mortgages the earl held and arrears he was owed. The third example is of another Catholic, Richard Nugent, second earl of Westmeath, who was one of the big losers in the Restoration land settlement and remained dependent on Ormond’s patronage for the rest of his life.38 Despite pleading poverty throughout the 1660s and 1670s and struggling to secure the return of his hereditary estates in the Pale, Westmeath’s will suggests that he had recovered some of his fortune by the time of his death in 1684. His will provided for ‘the discharge of his debts’ and ‘bequeathed 2,000 sheep, 50 head of black cattle, with their calves, 20 stud mares with their colts and fillies, 40 plow horses, 6 coach-horses, with his coaches, and his 5 saddle-horses to be equally divided between his two daughters, Alice and Jane, and his son William’. He also left them his silver, his ‘arras hangings’, his furniture and household goods.39 No mention was made of his estates or of his other livestock, which presumably passed directly to his grandson and heir. Though it is difficult to calculate precisely, it is clear that despite everything Westmeath died a relatively wealthy man. His will captures the sheer resilience of the family in the face of very real economic hardship and political instability. Rich though the detail is, only a limited number of wills are extant. Equally problematic, yet useful, are the subsidy assessments that highlight the extremes of wealth within the peerage. Subsidies were a form of direct taxation approved by the Irish parliament and subsidy acts determined the rates. For most of the seventeenth century moveable wealth – coin, plate, household goods and jewellery – was assessed at 2s and 8d ‘of every pound’, and the rate of tax for landowners with land worth more than 20 shillings was 8 shillings for every pound (in 1639–40 this fell to 4s for every pound and this rate prevailed for the rest of the century). Commissioners were appointed to assess and check certified values.40 Raymond Gillespie has used subsidy figures to determine the landed wealth of the peers living in East Ulster in c.1635.41 As Gillespie’s figures, presented here in table 26, suggest the first earl of Antrim was the wealthiest man in east Ulster, followed by Lords Chichester, Hamilton, Montgomery of the Ards

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and Cromwell of Lecale (the latter two were assessed at exactly the same level). Lord Magennis of Iveagh also enjoyed considerable landed and moveable wealth. The figures in table 26 also allow for the comparison of levels of wealth in c.1635 with lands held in 1641 (as recorded in the Books of Survey and Distribution). From this the relationship between levels of wealth and the total number of acres held becomes clear. With the exceptions of Lords Hamilton and Magennis, the number of plantation acres held in 1641 correlates with levels of wealth in 1635, and in the case of Magennis of Iveagh the discrepancy may be attributed to the poorer quality of his lands. The figures for later subsidies were published in The Present state of Ireland (London, 1673) and in Richard Lawrence’s The interest of Ireland (Dublin, 1682).42 These figures have been compared and presented in table 27, together with details of lands held in c.1670 (as recorded in the Books of Survey and Distribution). Extremes of wealth, as reflected in the subsidy assessments, become clear. After the Restoration they ranged from £110 to be levied on the earl of Cork and Burlington, £100 on the duke of Ormond, £71 13s on the marquis of Antrim and his wife, £56 13s on the earl of Kildare, £50 on the earl of Donegal, to a mere £2 10s expected from Lords Cavan and Castlehaven, £2 from Lord Courcy and £1 from Baron Bermingham of Athenry. A significant number of peers were assessed at between £30 and £40 (Lords Annesley, Barrymore, Clancarthy, Clanricarde, Conway and Thomond). For the majority the amount to be levied ranged from £10 to

Table 26.  Estimates of landed wealth in c.1635 of titled nobles in east Ulster.43 Name

Subsidy payable

Wealth

Total

Land held

In land

In goods

In land

In goods

1641

MacDonnell of Antrim

£2,000

£400

£10,000

£3,077

Chichester of Belfast

£1,500

£300

£7,500

£2,308

£9,808

15,605

Hamilton of Claneboy

£750

£150

£3,750

£1,154

£4,904

44,569

Montgomery of the Ards

£400

£80

£2,000

£615

£2,615

16,001

Cromwell of Lecale

£400

£80

£2,000

£615

£2,615

10,968

Magennis of Iveagh*

£275

£55

£1,375

£423

£1,798

20,161

£13,077 149,353

* includes Lady Magennis

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£20. Those of the highest rank paid the most (earl, marquis and duke), yet three earls (Castlehaven, Cavan and Mount Alexander) were returned with lower subsidy assessments than most viscounts and barons. This reflects the downward trajectory of these families who, as the years passed, faded into obscurity. Ormond may have been the greatest landowner in Ireland but it was Cork who topped the subsidy assessment, something that reflects the nature of the family’s meteoric – and untypical – rise during the pre-war period. The amounts paid by newcomers to the peerage, who also owned large estates like John, first Baron Kingston, equalled those of higher rank and ancient lineage, like the earl of Inchiquin. In addition subsidies of considerable amounts were levied on 11 women, and in the case of Lady Mount Alexander her levy (£6) exceeded that of her husband (£5).44 In general, as the figures in table 27 show, there was a strong correlation between rank, wealth and the size of estates. The precise process whereby the rates were set remains obscure and presumably peers did everything possible to keep subsidy payments to a minimum. In June 1671 an advisor to Lord Conway instructed him to tell the commissioners responsible for levying the English subsidy that the ‘greatest part’ of his estate lay in Ireland. He also suggested that Conway should tell them that his mother’s funeral had eaten up his reserves of cash and that he owed more in debts than he expected to receive. The advisor concluded with the recommendation that ‘if their Lordships think fit to assess you for 1,000 l. you shall readily submit to it’.45 A considerable number of peers were not mentioned in the published subsidy lists. They included men who lost out as a result of the mid-century revolution in landholding: Lords Clanmalier, Magennis of Iveagh, Roche of Fermoy, Sarsfield of Kilmallock and Upper Ossory. The absence of others, especially those who survived the Restoration land settlement, is surprising and remains unexplained. They include Barons Blayney, Dunsany, Louth, Slane, Trimleston, and Viscounts Baltinglass, Gormanston and Netterville. Ormond’s wife, a substantial landowner in her own right, together with a number of his kinsmen – the earl of Fingal, Viscounts Mountgarret and Ikerrin and the baron of Dunboyne – were also conspicuous by their absence. However crude these subsidies are as indicators of income, they nevertheless clearly underscore the relationship between land, wealth and status in that those with the senior titles usually owned vast, well-located estates and paid the largest subsidies. However, having property was one thing, generating an income from it capable of supporting a peer and his family was quite another. In this, the geographic location of estates, the quality of the land and of those who worked it, the extent of neighbouring natural resources, together with the entrepreneurial ability of a given lord, were critical.

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Table 27.  Subsidy assessments after the Restoration and landholding in c.1670.46 Surname

Title held in c.1670

Subsidy 1660+

Boyle

earl of Cork and Burlington

110-0-0

78,832

9

Butler*

duke of Ormond

100-0-0

290,303

1

MacDonnell

marquis of Antrim

60-0-0

11-13-0 119,061

6

Fitzgerald*

earl of Kildare

56-13-0

38,801

17

Chichester

earl of Donegal

50-0-0

21,300

27

O’Brien

earl of Thomond

40-0-0

122,014

5

Moore*

earl of Drogheda

40-0-0

15,837

MacCarthy*

earl of Clancarthy

40-0-0

15-0-0

161,629

2

Bourke*

earl of Clanricarde

35-0-0

20-0-0

148,970

3

Hamilton

earl of Clanbrassil

30-0-0

10-0-0

44,569

15

Conway

earl of Conway

30-0-0

8,441

Barry

earl of Barrymore

30-0-0

23,823

24

Annesley

earl of Anglesey

30-0-0

144,546

4

O’Brien

Viscount Clare

20-0-0

57,022

12

Dillon

Viscount Dillon of Costello

20-0-0

75,036

6

Cromwell

earl of Ardglass

20-0-0

10,968

Boyle

earl of Orrery

20-0-0

Barnewall

Viscount Kingsland 20-0-0

14,180

Taaffe

earl of Carlingford

15-0-0

30,115

19

Power

earl of Tyrone

15-0-048

Jones

earl of Ranelagh

15-0-049

28,636

20

Folliott

Baron of Ballyshannon

15-0-0

Dillon

earl of Roscommon

15-0-0

Coote

earl of Mountrath

15-0-0

47,231

Butler

earl of Arran

15-0-0

15,292

Brabazon

earl of Meath

15-0-0

11,268

Aungier*

earl of Longford

15-0-050

Trevor

Viscount Dungannon

12-10

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Female subsidy

Land c.1670

20-0-0

22,312

Rankings c.167047

26

? 2,895 5-0-0

20,522 14

5,974 19,080

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Loftus

Viscount Loftus of Ely

12-10s

11,168

Boyle

Viscount Shannon

12-1s

3,684

Wingfield

Viscount Powerscourt

10-0-0

1,959

Ridgeway

earl of Londonderry

10-0-0

O’Brien

earl of Inchiquin

10-0-0

Lane

Viscount Lanesborough

10-0-0

9,225

King

Baron Kingston

10-0-0

104,128

Forbes

earl of Granard (cr. 1684)

10-0-0

9,466

Fitzmaurice

baron of Kerry

10-0-0

9,978

Dungan

viscount of Clane

10-0-0

12,461

Digby

Baron of Geashill

10-0-0

8,168

Coote

Baron of Colooney

10-0-0

38,048

Clotworthy

Viscount Massareene 10-0-0

Caulfeild*

Viscount Charlemont

10-0-0

12,119

16

Bourke

Viscount Mayo

10-0-0

99,898

 8

Barry

Baron Barry of Santry

10-0-0

833

St Lawrence

Baron of Howth

5-0-0

Montgomery

earl of Mount Alexander

5-0-0

6-0-0

25,480

Hamilton

baron of Strabane

5-0-0

2-0-0

6,166

Butler

Baron Cahir

5-0-0

Butler

viscount of Galmoy 3-0-0

Tuchet*

earl of Castlehaven

2-10-0

8,060

Lambert*

earl of Cavan

2-10-0

20,111

De Courcy

baron Courcy of Kinsale

2-0-0

3,489

1-0-0

8,377

Bermingham baron of Athenry

6,738 10-0-0

5-0-0

69,452

11

7

18

42,429

10,284

10,896 3-0-0

16,278

Catholics are indicated in bold * includes lands of a wife or in Lambert’s case his brother

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Landed Entrepreneurs and Improving Landlords Irish lords took a keen interest in their estates, which were the financial lifeblood of any noble family and produced very significant landed incomes (discussed above). Aside from the aristocratic elite the majority of lords resided on their estates, and those who were temporarily absent in London or Dublin, especially during the meeting of parliament, delegated control to trusted agents and close family members, such as a mother, wife or son. Their concern for their properties is reflected in the obsessive references in their conversations and correspondence to variations in the weather, the ability of their tenants to pay rents, attempts to secure stock and to sell produce. For example, bad weather resulted in a run of poor harvests during the mid1620s, and the earl of Clanricarde blamed his insolvency on this and his inability to collect his rents in either cash or kind.51 Similarly, between 1636 and 1639 poor weather prevented the earl of Cork’s agents from collecting in full his rentals;52 and threatened continued prosperity on the Antrim estates, causing the earl to fear that ‘I am not like to receive the half of my rents in money.’53 The weather during the 1670s (1670–1, 1674 and 1678) was also exceptionally poor. An exchange between Viscount Conway and his agent, Sir George Rawdon, outlined the miserable situation in County Down in 1672: ‘I found on my return [to Lisburn] a very great alteration by the excessive drought, all the grass burnt up, cattle so weak and poor, especially such as were driven daily for water, the mills dry, so that bread is very scarce, and one barrel offered for grinding another, and no trade or money to be had, nor indeed is any butter to be had yet, if any would buy it. I cannot imagine what farmers will have to pay their rents.’54 No doubt this communication, which illustrates how variations in the weather determined the well-being of an economy rooted in agriculture, was typical of others that are no longer extant. Conway’s intermittent residence in Ireland explains the survival of so many letters about his estates, his building projects and his commercial ventures. The same held true for the Ormonds, who resided in England for lengthy periods of time after the Restoration and entrusted the management of their territorial empire to an array of factors, many of whom were close kinsmen. One of Ormond’s most trusted agents was his half-brother, George Mathew, who had married Eleanor Butler, a daughter of the third Lord Dunboyne. As agent, Mathew was privy to the Ormonds’ personal finances and public business and used his position to enrich himself. The duke also employed other kinsmen such as Toby Purcell, whom he described ‘as honest a creature as lives, very brave and well experienced’ and ‘a protestant by conviction and not for interest’.55 The duchess brought her nephew George Hamilton into service with the family at Dublin castle.56 Extensive correspondence survives between the Ormonds and their agents, which provides a vivid picture of the

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complexities involved in running their vast patrimony and would be worthy of further scrutiny since it illustrates the lengths to which aristocrats went to ensure that their estates were effectively and efficiently administered and might help to recover their relationships with the gentry farmers who paid them rents. During the 1630s and after the Restoration Ormond did everything possible to improve his landed patrimony (see chapters 4 and 11). To qualify as an ‘improving’ landlord a peer needed to do a number of things (or, at least, a combination of these).57 First, he encouraged English and Scottish tenants, ideally Protestant ones, to settle on his estates. Second, he changed his attitude towards estate management and did everything possible to make his properties commercially viable, and to produce crops and livestock that might be sold for cash in a local market or for export.58 Many carved their estates into manageable units of around one or more townlands, which were then leased to men of substance who were prepared to invest time and capital in improving the property. These individuals (described in the leases as ‘gentlemen’ or occasionally as ‘yeomen’) were made responsible for finding suitable subtenants to farm and improve the land. These subtenants presumably repeated the process by subletting holdings to a silent and undocumented rural peasantry, which was undoubtedly as diverse and stratified as the hierarchy above it.59 Third, an improving lord insisted that rents be paid in cash rather than in kind, as had been the custom, thus stimulating – in theory at least – the development of a market economy. Fourth, he encouraged his tenants to enclose poor land, to mark boundaries, to build stone houses and to plant trees.60 Fifth, he embraced agricultural innovation, especially stock breeding and the construction of mills for the processing of grain, on the lands he farmed directly, and he encouraged his tenants to do likewise. Sixth, he husbanded the land’s natural resources with a view to generating an income from it. Fishing rights (especially for salmon) were parsimoniously handed out to a select coterie of favoured tenants, while liberty to cut wood and turf was carefully monitored. All rights to coal and mineral deposits, such as salt, were jealously guarded and channelled into proto-industrial activity (discussed below). Finally, an improving lord refurbished his principal seats and surrounding demesnes, oversaw neighbouring urban developments and improved internal communications, especially roads and bridges. There is considerable evidence to suggest that aristocrats like the earls of Antrim, Clanricarde, Cork, Kildare and Thomond, together with middleranking nobles like Lords Barrymore, Chichester, Clanbrassil, Conway, Dillon of Costello-Gallen, Montgomery, Muskerry, Netterville and Westmeath all acted as ‘improving landlords’ in the pre-war years and ensured that their estates were run efficiently and effectively. Since the improving activities of many of these lords are discussed in chapter 4 above, one brief example

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illustrates the point here. During the early seventeenth century Donough O’Brien, fourth earl of Thomond, was held up as the exemplar for those willing ‘to embrace civil plantations’. A senior government official in Ireland paid a further tribute to him: ‘In the ordering of his house or governing of his country, his course has always been English, striving to bring in English customs and to beat down all barbarous Irish usages, that he might in time make his country civil, and bring the inhabitants in love with English laws and government.’61 A 1639 inventory of Bunratty castle estate illustrates his anglicizing agricultural and economic practices and innovations. From this and other estate records it is possible to reconstruct how Thomond introduced new breeds of sheep and cattle; improved his lands by promoting tillage; maximized profits from his mills; and exploited the estate’s natural resources. In addition to renovating and beautifying his principal seat and rebuilding the parish church there, the earl nurtured urban development (especially at Ennis, Kilrush and Sixmilebridge), improved internal communications by building bridges, and encouraged English and Dutch tenants to settle on his estates, particularly their more fertile areas.62 An abstract of a 1626 rental of nine baronies of Clare shows 49 per cent of the tenants had Gaelic Irish names, 47 per cent English and 4 per cent Dutch.63 The scrappy and often indirect evidence that survives for lesser lords suggests that they also did everything possible to reconfigure their estates in order to benefit from the new economic order. Writing to his son in 1686, Lord Trimleston instructed him to take particular care of the family estate (roughly 4,000 acres in Counties Dublin, Galway and Meath), for, as Trimleston noted, ‘I have, dear son, taken a great deal of pains to acquire the most part of this estate for you. I have also made some considerable improvements thereon.’64 In the pre-war years the Nettervilles appear to have done likewise. In March 1642 Mary Netterville, second wife of Nicholas, first Viscount Netterville, listed the family’s losses: 2,000 sheep worth £600; 70 milk cows worth £210; 42 oxen and 3 bulls worth £135; 40 mares and colts worth £120; corn ‘in the haggard’, corn in the ground and ground corn worth £1,020; sheep and lamb’s wool worth £720; and ‘debts due by specialties and otherwise’.65 From this it is clear that the Nettervilles successfully engaged in mixed farming and produced a considerable surplus (of sheep, wool and grain) which they processed locally, presumably with the intention of trading it in the local markets along the Boyne Valley or in Drogheda, Dundalk or Dublin. The reference to ‘debts due’ also suggests that the viscount may have invested any cash surpluses in moneylending. A close examination of the losses sustained by nobles as recorded in the 1641 depositions indicates that the Nettervilles were fairly typical. The economy of the Thomond and Netterville estates was rooted in agriculture and agriculture-related processes such as milling, brewing and

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possibly tanning, but on other noble estates there is evidence of protoindustrial and commercial activities. Baronial understanding of the need to diversify income generation became increasingly common as the seventeenth century progressed.66 The availability of natural resources, combined with an individual’s entrepreneurial flair, enabled some peers to set up ironworks, glassworks, textile production, mining, pipe-stave manufacture, shipbuilding, and to develop river and coastal fisheries. Typical was Viscount Loftus of Ely, who had three major pre-war income streams: rentals from his estates (£2,000); revenue from his ironworks; and income from moneylending (in 1641 ‘people in Dublin, Kildare and Queen’s County’ owed him £1,000).67 The fact that Loftus of Ely engaged in moneylending suggests that he made a profit from his rentals, farming and ironworks. Throughout Ireland lords sought to exploit the natural resources on their estates. They keenly watched over hunting and fishing rights, especially for salmon and eels. Lords Antrim, Chichester, Claneboy, Conway and Sir John Clotworthy, later Lord Massareene, clashed over lucrative fishing rights to the River Bann, and the fortune amassed by Massareene stemmed in part from the fishing rights he held to Lough Neagh and the Bann.68 Elsewhere Lords Baltinglass, Cork and Howth developed coastal fisheries and Lords Cork and Londonderry built fish pools on their estates.69 Access to woodlands was guarded equally jealously since timber was a particularly important asset, as a source of game, fuel and building material. An abundant supply of woodland resulted in the development of local industries (iron-making, leather tanning and shipbuilding) and drove the export of pipe staves.70 A dispute brought to the English Court of Chancery over allegations of asset stripping was typical of the many cases that the Irish and English courts heard during these years. In the early 1630s Viscount Chichester accused Viscount Wilmot of Athlone of running down his woodlands, especially his oak forests, ‘for the building and erecting of another ironwork’.71 Wilmot of Athlone denied the charge but the case dragged on. Much was at stake since by the 1630s the timber industry had taken off and Irish ports, especially Arklow, New Ross and Wexford, exported pipe staves to England, the Northern Netherlands, France and Spain.72 Access to woodlands, together with some cash, also facilitated the production of cast and wrought iron.73 One contemporary estimated that £3,000 was required to set up an ironworks. The start-up costs included construction of one or more forges, together with water mills (to provide power), storehouses, and housing for skilled craftsmen and labourers.74 Viscount Loftus had an ironworks in which he had invested £1,000 in ‘the stocke and improvement thereuppon’.75 Sir Charles Coote, father of Lords Mountrath and Colooney, promoted iron-smelting in Counties Cavan, Leitrim and Sligo. His agent suggested that Coote had invested £7,548 7s in the venture, much

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of it in capital equipment, and calculated the annual profit of the forges and his landed rentals to be £1,194.76 The earl of Cork’s ironworks have attracted considerable interest, but as the figures in table 28 highlight the income from them was erratic. In 1639 they brought in £2,123 but the following year they yielded nothing (at their height in the 1620s the annual income was in the region of £4,000). Moreover, they required capital investment in equipment and skilled labour and Cork’s ironworks may have represented a drain on resources, especially after 1630 when the boom ended.77 In his diary the earl carefully noted any transactions – income, losses, sales, investment and new developments – relating to his ironworks and how after the outbreak of war in 1641 he kept them running ‘least they should be robbed, or for want of use fall to decaie’.78 Over a period of 36 years it has been estimated that the earl invested £70,000 in ironmaking and made sales of £95,000.79 Significant though Cork’s income from iron was, it represented only one of a number of income streams. On the eve of civil war Cork was, as figure 4 illustrates, one of the richest men in the three kingdoms with an annual income of roughly £18,000–£20,000. Cork himself later claimed that his pre-war ‘revenue, besides my houses, demesnes, parkes and other royalties did yeald me £50 a day rent [or £18,200 per annum]’ and in another letter suggested that his income was £20,000.80 In the pre-war years income from land provided the most important source of revenue, and in 1641 his estates comprised 46,569 plantation acres largely in Munster (for a full discussion of Cork’s estates see chapter 4). Determining the precise level of Cork’s landed income is problematic. Extant rentals (see figure 4 and table 28), which included arrears of rent but could still be incomplete, suggest figures of between £14,412 (1638) and £14,692 (1641) and £558 (1644).81 In 1638 rent arrears (as a percentage of landed income) comprised roughly 15 per cent; in 1639 the poor harvest saw this figure rise to 20 per cent; problems in collecting rents and a shortage of coin caused an increase to 22 per cent in 1640.82 What is clear is that the outbreak of war reduced the earl’s annual rental from about £15,000 in the late 1630s to roughly £612 in 1642 and arrears accounted for 48 per cent of this. In January 1642 Cork reported to his tailor in London that ‘noe man in the K[ings] dominions is soe great a looser by this generall rebellion, as I am, f[or] although heretofore I did euer desire to conceale my estate, and m[ake it] seem less then it was, yet I pray beleeue this great truth from me, that the 18th of October when I landed in Ireland, I did not owe fy[ve] pounds in the Kingdome, and my revenue was about 20,000 li a yeare’.83 After 1642, tenants on the Boyle estates clamoured to surrender their leases, rather than pay rent, and the army regularly siphoned off any spare cash the earl of Cork managed to accumulate and confiscated his livestock. In the spring of 1642 the earl of Cork’s agent complained that he could collect no rents and that soldiers garrisoned at Lismore did more harm to the Irish

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tenants than the insurgents did.84 It proved particularly hard to attract tenants to the Boyle estates. For example, of 107 leases made in the spring of 1643, 72 (67 per cent) were for one year; 9 (8.4 per cent) for three years; and 19 (17.7 per cent) for 21 years. In the case of these long leases the earl charged no rent for the first three years, during which time he required the tenant ‘to build up the ruyned house in the state it was before the rebellion’.85 By February 1643 Cork lamented to his son that ‘my money being wholly spent and no hope of receaving any more rents’.86 He died shortly afterwards, bankrupted. Table 28.  The earl of Cork’s income, 1638–44.87 Landed income (rents and arrears)

Interest payments on loans

iron works

total income

1638

£14,412

£1,793

£558

£18,789

1639

£15,227

£643

£2,123

£20,109

1640

£15,098

£914

0

£16,926

1641

£14,692

£573

£425

£16,263

1642

£612

0

0

£612

1643

£673

0

0

£673

1644

£558

0

£617

£1,792

Figure 4.  The earl of Cork’s income, 1638–44.88

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In the pre-war years the earl derived a significant income from lending money, or usury. In fact, Cork’s reputation for usury was so great that one commentator saw the serious fire of 1622 in Cork city as God’s punishment for the sin.89 It appears that between 1637 and his death in 1643 Cork lent out in the region of £60,000. First, he disbursed large sums to his children, immediate family and Charles I. Usually he gifted the money to them; if not, he rarely charged them interest or required collateral to secure the debt. For example, the first earl of Barrymore turned to his father-in-law for money, as did Barrymore’s creditors who had sued Cork for the liabilities of his young ward.90 Barrymore’s debts continued to accumulate and in 1637 Cork lent him £2,000 ‘to cleer his crying debts upon the mortgage of Buttevant’.91 The respite was temporary and in March 1640 all building at Castle Lyons stopped ‘for want of money to pay the workmen’. By December 1640 Barrymore and his wife owed Cork an additional £770, plus 100 pieces of gold.92 Cork’s willingness to subsidize Barrymore and other immediate family members should not surprise us and was very different in nature to his other lending. This was not about making money or acquiring land but about ensuring that a junior branch of his lineage prospered, adding to the greater glorification of the wider Boyle dynasty. Second, Cork lent cash – secured largely by mortgage – to local figures, his tenants, and to a host of Irish knights and peers including his fellow Lords Docwra, Fitzwilliam of Merrion, Lambert, Muskerry, Roscommon and Sarsfield of Kilmallock. He assiduously noted their names in his diary, along with details of the mortgaged lands and when, if ever, he received repayment.93 Between 1632 and 1635, he also lent nearly £10,000 on bond, the bulk of it to native Irishmen from Clare, Limerick and Tipperary. It would seem that this money was never repaid and presumably the lands of these men then passed to the earl. In fact, the majority of his debtors defaulted on their payments, enabling Cork to expand and consolidate his estates, largely – though not exclusively – at the expense of the native Irish who became leaseholders rather than landowners. Finally, using bonds, bills and the statute staple as collateral, he loaned money to London and Dublin officials and merchants (such as William Perkins, the London tailor, or Thomas Watson, a Dublin alderman). In return he expected speedy repayment and charged interest rates of between 8 and 10 per cent. Prior to 1641 he made considerable amounts from interest charges. For example, in 1638 he received £1,793 from interest payments, together with some capital repayment (£1,285).94 With the outbreak of war, however, Cork received no interest payments and it proved impossible to recover his loans at a time when he desperately needed cash to fund the war effort. During peacetime, however, moneylending represented a significant income stream.

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Other peers also acted as moneylenders and used this as a means of investing cash surpluses. Many of the 1641 depositions include long lists of debts often amounting to thousands of pounds and provide a fascinating insight is to the importance of moneylending and indebtedness at a local level in the pre-war years.95 Enjoying access to cash was important, especially given the limited specie that circulated in Ireland, as was access to sources of credit. The Irish statute staple records contain a wealth of detail on the activities of titled creditors and are worthy of in depth analysis since they provide a fascinating insight into the credit network that helped to sustain much economic activity during these years. Of course, borrowing on the staple may well have resulted in lands becoming mortgaged, but this in itself could prove an indispensable tool of prudent estate management whereby land was converted into consumable wealth without selling it.96 The cash it generated could allow landowners to improve their estates, develop industry and build grander houses (discussed in chapter 14). Over the course of the seventeenth century 36 peers were recorded as creditors on the staple, loaning considerable sums. These titled creditors were both Catholic and Protestant, from all ethnic backgrounds and members of the established peerage (Lords Dunboyne, Mountgarret, Slane and Westmeath), as well as many newcomers like Cork. Space precludes a detailed analysis of their lending and the economic webs of interdependence that these transactions spawned, but the staple and other loans made by Francis Annesley, Baron Mountnorris, were fairly typical of the new peers who were well placed in the Dublin administration and had spare cash to invest. Between 1630 and 1635 Mountnorris loaned on bond £12,770. The size of the bond varied from £120 to £3,000, but all 14 transactions were secured on the Dublin staple. Mountnorris’s creditors, who had English and Irish surnames, were members of the local gentry (‘esquires’, ‘gentlemen’ and ‘knights’) from Counties Armagh, Carlow, Cork and Wexford, together with a Dublin merchant. Of these bonds, only £2,200 was repaid, usually to George Hull, Mountnorris’s agent. Those who defaulted on their repayments – and presumably forfeited land as a result – included John Stanley, a Dublin merchant, Cavanaghs from Counties Carlow and Wexford, along with Anthony Cope and Sir William Brownlow from County Armagh.97 It is likely that Mountnorris secured other bonds on the Dublin or the Ulster and Munster staples, the details of which have not survived. Certainly during the 1630s Mountnorris loaned monies on non-staple bonds to Lords Barrymore, Dillon of Costello-Gallen, Louth and Taaffe.98 This glimpse of his lending suggests that Mountnorris had access to considerable amounts of disposable income which he invested on the staple both for the interest payments and for the additional lands it allowed him to acquire.

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The number of peeresses who loaned on the staple is particularly striking, as are the amounts of cash they appear to have had at their disposal. Between 1628 and 1685, 14 women loaned on bond £38,300. The size of the bond ranged from £200 to £5,000 and the average amount was nearly £2,000 (there were 20 transactions in all). In the majority of cases, these peeresses loaned money to their kinsmen, usually their sons. For example, in 1676 Lady Mary Brabazon lent on bond £4,000 to her son, Chambre, later fifth earl of Meath, possibly to pay for his sojourn at the Inner Temple.99 Lord and Lady Mountgarret jointly loaned £5,000 on bond to their son Richard, later fifth viscount, and his wife Emilia, whom he had married in 1661. The staple transaction, dating from 14 December 1670, recited a tripartite deed of the previous day and possibly related to their marriage settlement or the establishment of a family trust.100 Others, especially widows, appear to have been acting as moneylenders. Lady Elizabeth Kildare, the widow of the fourteenth earl, made a series of loans between 1628 and 1639 to local Catholic landed gentlemen (the Berminghams, Cheevers, Darcys and Nangles) and a Drogheda merchant (Bartholomew Staples). Lady Kildare was a shrewd businesswoman but it is also possible that these transactions were linked to her support for the Jesuits. During the late 1670s and early 1680s Lady Alice Moore loaned on bond considerable sums to local gentlemen, such as the Allens, Colvills and Nugents, along with the earl of Donegal.101 When their debtors failed to repay these loans the peeresses did not hesitate to take them to court. Access to national and international credit networks was central to the success of any landed or commercial enterprise. In a country starved of coinage, urban centres, especially the staple towns, were particularly important sources of credit as wealthy merchants, lawyers, civic patricians and townsmen offered landed lords loans, mortgages, bills of exchange and letters of credit. The records of the Court of Claims illustrate the extent to which lands were mortgaged to local merchants or townsmen in the pre-war years. For example, in 1636 Thomas Coppinger of Cork held a mortgage of £1,222 from Maurice, eighth Viscount Roche.102 John Arthur, a Dublin merchant, held mortgages from John, Viscount Taaffe (dating from 1638 for £1,700) and Thomas, Viscount Costello-Gallen (dating from 1636 for £630).103 Once again it is often difficult to determine why these transactions occurred. Whatever the reason, they reflected economic interdependence and the emergence of relationships based on mutual trust and sometimes kinship.104 The onset of war temporarily dissolved these webs of indebtedness. However, the speed with which they became re-established after 1660 is also worth noting. Detailed analysis of extant financial records would help to recover the nature of the relationships between those who loaned and borrowed money, especially between lords and local merchants and members of the gentry.

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Urbanization and Commercialization During the early seventeenth century the earl of Cork assiduously promoted commercial developments such as the wool, timber and cattle trade at Youghal, the textile industry at Bandon, and the pilchard industry at Kinsale. As extant estate records vividly recapture, he attracted considerable numbers of artisans, weavers, fullers, tanners, coopers, together with fishermen, iron and timber workers, shipbuilders and merchants to his various industrial and commercial enterprises.105 Thanks to the level of investment that men like Cork brought, Munster experienced an unprecedented level of commercial growth during the early seventeenth century and the customs receipts for Youghal, Cork and Kinsale increased sixfold between 1615–18 and 1640.106 Cork, eager to exploit the Munster ports as entrepôts for transatlantic trade, also encouraged English merchants to settle on his estates and in return tapped into their commercial and trading networks. Thus Cork and his Munster neighbours cultivated trading networks with England, Scandinavia, India, South-East Asia and the West Indies, and thereby helped to lay the foundations for future mercantile links with the English Atlantic empire and to reinforce imperial developments both at home and abroad.107 Cork’s proto-industrial activities in Munster were replicated by peers across Ireland. The 1641 depositions reveal much about pre-war settlement patterns, and from this it is possible to determine the numbers of craftsmen and skilled workmen resident on a lord’s estate or in a neighbouring town.108 During the early decades of the seventeenth century, the Scottish planter Andrew Stewart, Lord Ochiltree (later Baron Castle Stewart), oversaw the growth of Stewartstown, County Tyrone, into a proto-industrial settlement of three gentlemen, 24 tradesmen – a ditcher, shoemaker, tailor, carpenter, butcher, malt maker and some weavers – and a schoolmaster.109 Similarly, evidence from the 1641 depositions highlights how urban settlement in Queen’s County in Leinster depended on the local Protestant elite.110 The Cootes had settled at Mountrath; the Ridgeways, earls of Londonderry, held the manor of Galen Ridgeway near Ballinakill; part of Viscount Loftus of Ely’s estates was at Monasterevin and Mountmellick; and Lord Digby also held lands there. Seventy-nine (out of 187) of the county’s deponents were urban dwellers and mostly from Coote’s settlement at Mountrath (45) or Londonderry’s town of Ballinakill (17) or Loftus of Ely’s at Mountmellick (7). During the early decades of the seventeenth century these lords all invested heavily in developing the area, building castles, towns and villages. Thomas Ridgeway, earl of Londonderry, planted a ‘collony of English’ on his estate and built his castle, which resembled a tower house, between 1606 and 1612. He built ‘fish-ponds neare the castle . . . besides that the towne since it had beene planted was well inhabited’.111 He also fostered proto-industrial

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initiatives and Londonderry’s ‘iron mill . . . kept many lustie men at worke’, as did the ironworks run by Coote and Loftus of Ely.112 Skilled foreign workers brought innovation and cutting-edge technologies to the area. For example, Walloons from the city of Liège (a major iron-industry centre) were employed at the ironworks at Ballinakill, where cannon were manufactured in the early 1630s and early 1640s.113 In order to maximize cash incomes landlords promoted the development of commercial infrastructure in the form of towns, fairs and markets. Towns, especially corporate towns on the English model, were regarded as key features of the civilizing and commercializing process. Towns, according to one recent historian, ‘provided a focus for the diverse elements of rural society by means of regional gatherings, such as assizes and quarter sessions, and acted as engines of economic growth, centres of trade, and points from which new ideas and technology could be diffused’.114 They also allowed lords to develop business interests. In 1614 Lord Blayney received a licence to sell ‘strong waters’ (i.e. whisky) in Monaghan.115 In 1629 the second earl of Roscommon and a son of Lord Folliott of Ballyshannon received a licence to ‘keep taverns, and sell all manner of wholesome wines and to make and sell aqua-vitae’ in the town of Ballyshannon.116 Urban centres also hosted weekly markets and annual fairs. For example, in 1616 the earl of Clanricarde received a patent to hold a Tuesday and Saturday market at Kilconnel and a Saturday market at Millicke in County Galway, and a Saturday market at Rathwire in County Westmeath, together with annual fairs at Kilconnel, Loughrea and Rathwire.117 Grants such as this were dispensed to leading lords across the country, and between 1600 and 1640 the Crown issued patents for 560 markets and 680 fairs. Sixty-five new patents were issued for new markets and fairs in south Munster, and in Ulster 153 patents for markets and 85 for fairs were handed out.118 Yet these early seventeenth-century urban initiatives did not always achieve the effects that the king had originally envisaged. While many of these towns permanently transformed the Irish landscape, the urban network never developed as fully as its English or Scottish counterpart and was overly dependent on baronial oversight and investment.119 By 1670, of the 28 corporate towns that had been established in Ulster, only four (the medieval town of Carrickfergus and the planter towns of Belfast, Coleraine and Derry) enjoyed adult populations of over 500.120 Elsewhere more modest settlements of between 30 and 100 adults, comprising mostly tradesmen and artisans, dominated the urban landscape.121 The civil wars of the 1640s shattered these baronial developments and totally disrupted the trade and proto-industry that had grown up around many landed estates and the neighbouring towns and villages. Some never fully recovered from the ravages associated with the conflict; others had to wait until the late 1650s, 1660s and 1670 before doing so.122

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The 1640s and 1650s marked a watershed in other respects. After 1660 London emerged as a major financial and commercial centre and trade increasingly became a determining reason of state. As a result Ireland’s colonial status became more apparent than ever during the later decades of the seventeenth century.123 In short, priorities shifted from conquest, colonization and civilization to commercialization and economic protectionism, and these years witnessed the emergence of a new concept of empire, one firmly grounded on English economic and political domination.124 In Restoration Ireland, unlike contemporary France, there was no social stigma associated with involvement in trade and commerce. The artificial distinction, on the one hand, between the acquisition of personal wealth and material gain and the perception that this was base and dishonourable, and, on the other, the need for the nobility to display valour, loyalty and piety without remuneration, did not exist in Ireland. Many peers, however, would have been exposed to these social attitudes during their lengthy sojourns on the Continent, especially during the 1650s.125 Moreover, the custom of derogation, which excluded nobles from engaging in trade and thereby created a major obstacle to commercial expansionism, was not practised in Ireland. On the contrary, writers and entrepreneurs, like Richard Lawrence, argued that commerce should be considered an honourable profession. Lawrence suggested that members of the titled nobility should invest their capital and energy in enterprise and raise their sons to be merchants as well as ‘Divines, Souldiers, Lawyers, [and] Physicians’.126 For their part, resident peers had no qualms about being involved in commerce. On his deathbed in 1671 William St Lawrence, twelfth baron Howth, instructed that his underage sons be committed to the earl of Ossory’s care and asked that the younger one, Charles, be ‘sent to study the laws of England, or bound unto some merchant’.127 The Butlers of Ormond had long been entrepreneurs, something Lawrence highlighted when he dedicated his pamphlet, The interest of Ireland, to the duke of Ormond’s grandson and heir, James, earl of Ossory. In the epistle dedicatory Lawrence extolled the family’s ancientness, virtue, loyalty and their exemplary record of service to the Crown. He praised their commitment ‘for the Improvement of the Trade . . . for the erecting and incouraging Manufactures, &c. [in] Chappellizod, Clonmell, Carrick, and about twelve places more’. He commended the duke of Ormond for spending ‘so much time in conference with men of Mechanick and Mercantile Rank and Breeding’, so ‘that he might understand the Interest and Intrigue of Trade to promote it, as the only means to improve the Wealth of his Country’.128 Lawrence wrote with the duke’s approbation. Ormond later admitted to his son, the earl of Arran, that ‘I did peruse [The interest of Ireland] in manuscript and encouraged him [Lawrence] to print’. More importantly, Ormond urged

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Arran to act on a number of Lawrence’s recommendations, especially regarding the establishment of a ‘land bank’ and ‘his propositions for reducing the coin of Ireland to a more certain standard’.129 The duke’s commitment to the economic reinvigoration of Ireland was very real and he used his political influence to full effect. After 1660, the Irish parliament established a standing committee for trade and Ormond took a personal interest in nurturing the nation’s economic development.130 Ormond set out to improve the manufacture of Irish textiles, especially in the towns he effectively controlled on his own estates in Counties Dublin, Kilkenny and Tipperary. By the late 1660s English planters dominated cloth production in the county palatinate town of Clonmel, ousting the Old English merchant elite as the town’s wealthiest members. Ormond attempted to do something similar in Callan and provided a Dublin clothier, William Middleton, with wool and ‘a convenient dwelling-house and other conveniences for workhouses’ so that he could weave ‘broad cloth’.131 In 1671 the duke instructed Lawrence to develop the linen industry at Chapelizod, County Dublin. Cloth making at Chapelizod dated back to the early decades of the seventeenth century (with ventures by Sir Henry Power, later Viscount Valentia, and Sir Thomas Roper, later Viscount Baltinglass, at nearby Dolphin’s Barn) and a tuck mill operated there in the mid-1650s.132 Craftsmen from Brabant, La Rochelle and the Isle of Rhé, all skilled in the latest manufacturing techniques, relocated to Dublin after 1660.133 By October 1673 Lawrence calculated ‘his Grace’s returns to be 12,000 pounds per annum at least’, despite the difficulties in selling wool in England caused by the Anglo-Dutch wars.134 Elsewhere centres of industry emerged in areas that had seen investment in the pre-war years. The development of the clothing trades in Munster owed much to the patronage of Henry, seventh earl of Thomond (in and around Carlow), the second earl of Cork (at Bandon) and his brother, the earl of Orrery (at Castlemartyr), and the expertise that skilled English and Dutch artificers brought to these regions.135 In Ulster Lord Conway had been assiduously encouraging manufacture in ‘ye native commodities of all sortes (whereof there is already a reasonable plenty)’.136 Shortly after the Restoration, Conway wrote from his English seat at Ragley in Warwickshire to George Rawdon, his local factor, informing him of the ‘abundance of people that speake of going into Ireland with me, many tradesmen and men of good estates’. The earl proposed relocating between 10 and 20 ‘poore kritters’ in order to weave local wool into stockings.137 Conway also underwrote the costs of building a tuckmill on his estates and invested £100 in developing a glassworks.138 He imported potash to promote soap-making and by the late 1670s had become a major producer of butter, which he traded with Belfast merchants.139 A few years later, Conway encouraged Rawdon to develop a coalmine found on his estates.140 Conway’s entrepreneurialism may be more

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fully documented than most, but these sorts of activities were replicated on estates of nobles across Ireland. Thanks to domestic innovation and decades of peace, many Irish towns and ports prospered. From the late seventeenth century Dublin became the second largest city in the English empire, with a population of 62,000 by 1706. Yet, despite the development of textile manufacturing and the growth of Dublin, Ireland became economically (as well as politically) more reliant than ever on England. After 1660 england regulated Ireland’s burgeoning economy with restrictive statutes, such as the Navigation and Cattle Acts (1663 and 1667) or legislation controlling the woollen industry (discussed in chapter 12). Overseas Expansionism Of course, the Cattle Acts prevented Ireland from trading ‘with foreign countries and the plantations’, as well as ‘our chief trade with England’.141 This dependence on England also defined Ireland’s commercial relationship with other imperial dominions during the later seventeenth century. Yet those with access to capital, credit and markets outside Ireland, in London, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Hamburg, Lisbon and other North Atlantic ports, flourished. Certainly enterprising Irishmen, particularly those who resided in London, enjoyed enhanced access to later Stuart imperial ventures.142 These men included Catholic merchants and influential entrepreneurs such as the earl of Anglesey, one of the key political figures in Restoration Ireland.143 As entries in Annesley’s diary record, whilst in London he regularly attended meetings at the ‘Gambia Company’, at the Committee of Trade and Plantations, or with commissioners from New England and Tangiers, and entertained other Irish entrepreneurs who shared his imperial business interests.144 One of Annesley’s dinner guests was William O’Brien, second earl of Inchiquin, son of the pragmatic, enterprising and Catholic Morrough, first earl. During the later 1640s the first earl of Inchiquin, like Lords Antrim and Ormond, ran a profitable, privateering business in Ireland and acted as a military contractor, exporting mercenaries to France and Spain in return for financial or military assistance.145 Inchiquin’s maritime ventures allowed him access to continental trading networks, which he later exploited. In 1663 he had received for 21 years (in recompense for his loss of the presidency of Munster in 1648) ‘the sole licence for seven years of importing yearly into this kingdom [Ireland] from Holland 2,000 tons of whalebone, fins and oil, custom free’. Inchiquin wanted these ‘for the making of soap, and for the making and scouring of woollen cloth’.146 Inchiquin’s Protestant son shared the earl’s entrepreneurial flair. During the 1650s he had entered French service with his father. In 1660 they were dispatched to serve alongside the Portuguese, but Algerian pirates captured

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their ship before it reached Lisbon (the English council of state eventually ransomed them). These adventures prepared the second earl for his later career as a commander of Charles II’s forces in Africa and a governor of Tangiers.147 By the 1670s Inchiquin was trading in the Caribbean.148 In 1689 he became governor of Jamaica, which England had acquired from Spain in 1655 (as part of Oliver Cromwell’s ‘Western Design’), and had quickly colonized the island, developing it as a ‘sugar and slavery’ colony. Inchiquin died prematurely in 1692, which meant that he spent only 16 months lording it over Jamaica, where of the 717 property owners, at least 10 per cent were of Irish extraction.149 However, the earl’s will reflected his business acumen, his Irish interests and his imperial priorities.150 His extensive ancestral patrimony in Connacht, which his Catholic father, Murrough, had managed to enlarge after the Restoration (see chapter 11), passed to his eldest son, William. The second earl’s younger son, James, who had accompanied him to the West Indies, received an annuity of £250 (from the manor of O’Brien’s Bridge in Ireland), his father’s estate in County Cavan, ‘all money and other effects and revenues in the Assiento and all other his estate in America’, together with the earl’s interest in a ship called the Adventure (and her cargo).151 Inchiquin’s secretary, George Reeve, inherited the earl’s share in ‘the sloope Queene Mary’ and became the manager of the Adventure. Given the economic importance of the West Indies, driven in large part by Irish demand for tobacco and sugar, and the fact that prior to 1690 ‘Ireland dominated the provisioning trade’ to the Caribbean, Inchiquin’s involvement in commerce is entirely understandable and it undoubtedly helped to bolster the family’s fortunes back in Ireland.152 Catholic lords also engaged in colonial activity in North America. Though non-resident, the Calverts of Baltimore encouraged Irish Catholic migrants to settle in their colony of Maryland.153 Later in the century Thomas Dungan, the brother and heir of Viscount Dungan of Clane, was appointed governor of New York in 1683. During his five-year governorship he persuaded the predominantly Dutch freeholders to pass a charter of liberties, which provided for freedom of religion and taxation only by consent and, fearful of the growth of French influence in Canada, established a protectorate over the local Iroquois Indians. With the accession of James II in 1685 the colony became a royal province.154 A decade later Richard Coote, baron of Colooney and earl of Bellamont, was made governor of Massachusetts, New York and New Hampshire, and became very involved in transatlantic trading ventures.155 Another of the earl of Annesley’s dinner guests was Francis Aungier, third baron and first earl of Longford, who was his kinsman, a confidant of the duke of Ormond and a nephew of the earl of Kildare. Thanks to the business successes of his younger brother, Gerald, Longford took a keen interest in the East India Company. Trade with Asia underpinned the development of the

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East India Company, which by the later seventeenth century made the bulk of its profits from importing cheap Indian calicoes to England. Jealously guarded by a narrow circle of London merchants and entrepreneurs, the East India Company, initially at least, offered few openings to Irishmen.156 There were, however, exceptions, especially for those with connections to London’s financial community. Gerald’s grandfather, Francis, Lord Longford, had served as master of the rolls in Ireland and had played an active part in the plantations of Leitrim, Longford, Ulster and Wexford. Ultimately, however, it was Gerald’s family links with Sir Thomas Roe that secured his introduction to the directors of the East India Company. In 1669 Gerald became governor of Bombay, which the Portuguese had ceded to England as part of Charles II’s marriage settlement. He was the first to recognize Bombay’s potential. During his eight-year tenure of office Aungier oversaw the draining of the swamps, the building of the first Protestant church, the establishment of a judiciary and the construction of new-style fortifications around Bombay castle. He also reformed the revenue system.157 Writing after his death, one colleague noted how Aungier transformed Bombay ‘from a dunghill to what it now is’.158 From Bombay, he became president of Surat, the chief English factory in India and the principal centre for the calico trade, where he died a childless widower in 1677. Like the earl of Inchiquin, he left a considerable fortune, which enriched the coffers of his equally ambitious elder brother, Francis, earl of Longford, who held a variety of important political and administrative offices in Ireland, had a nose for business and was a major property developer in Restoration Dublin, where he probably used this Indian fortune to underwrite his construction business.159 The combination of capital and access to credit, excellent political contacts and business acumen made Longford one of seventeenth-century Ireland’s most successful entrepreneurs. Conclusion Three broad conclusions emerge from this discussion of how the peers made money. First, it highlights the important role they played in encouraging the economic development of the country, especially during the early decades of the century. Their interventions help to explain the speed with which the redistributive medieval economy was transformed into a commercially oriented one. As major landowners who enjoyed access to cash rentals and capital, along with political influence in Dublin and London, the peers helped to drive wider economic developments, particularly those around urbanization, the development of sophisticated credit networks grounded in trust and honour, and the introduction of innovative farming practices, especially the raising of livestock for export. They added intensity to Ireland’s

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economic prosperity during the early decades of the century, played a key role in fostering recovery in the wake of the mid-century wars, and from the late 1660s led the response to England’s need to regulate Ireland’s expansionist economy with restrictive legislation. Second, agricultural and commercial opportunism among the peerage appear to have been widespread and were not limited to wealthy aristocrats and high-profile entrepreneurs like the earls of Cork and Longford. The majority of lords quickly realized that in order to survive and prosper they had little alternative but to become improving landlords, diversify their income streams and embrace the new commercial ideologies that spread across Ireland on the coat tails of the plantations. Landed income remained the principal source of wealth for many titled families, but a significant minority also developed proto-industry or became involved in trading activities and overseas expansion. Finally, the peers, with considerable amounts of cash or credit at their disposal, were important consumers, especially of luxury items. Their need to lead a life of conspicuous consumption commensurate with their status and position in society ensured that they did everything possible to generate significant incomes. In short, the love of money did do more to ‘effect civility than any other persuasion whatsoever’.160 How the peers spent their money and the debts that many ran up thanks to their excessive spending is the subject of the next chapter.

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CHAPTER 14

Expenditure Much expenditure for seventeenth-century resident peers was unavoid-

able and driven by the necessities of daily life and the wider needs of the lineage. Major outgoings included taxation, provisions for wives, widows and children, education, marriage, litigation, and costs associated with public service that appear to have increased after 1660 (and were usually belatedly recompensed). Many financial burdens also stemmed from the fact that resident lords, like their English and Scottish counterparts, increasingly felt the need to live a life of conspicuous consumption. Members of the titled nobility were expected to live in a style commensurate with their rank and status, and nobles across early modern Europe ‘could be identified by their lifestyle, by patterns of consumption and expenditure’.1 While this did not represent a revolutionary departure for Irish lords, who had traditionally indulged in elaborate feasts and costly entertainment, the scale and the form of expenditure underwent radical change after 1603. In order to demonstrate publicly their superior social status, their ‘civility’ and, above all, their ‘Englishness’, Irish magnates now had no alternative but to engage in almost frenzied spending, which often involved heavy borrowing. Lawrence Stone’s The Crisis of the Aristocracy (first published in 1965) argued that during the later sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, the English nobility underwent an economic, political and intellectual crisis which shook the very foundations of Stuart society, and that indebtedness was the yardstick by which one measured their distress.2 Stone’s ‘crisis’ framework set the scholarly agenda for the next 20 years as historians across early modern Europe looked for debt as a sign of economic ill health.3 There is now widespread recognition that debt cannot be viewed simply as an index of economic distress which in extreme circumstances triggered terminal decline. Every case was different and debt can equally be viewed as a source of strength as of necessity. This chapter has two goals. First, it examines levels of indebtedness amongst the resident peers. The context in which these early modern

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aristocrats operated and their attitudes towards debt need to be noted at the outset, if only because they were so different from modern pejorative notions about indebtedness. These lords rarely added up income and expenditure or even attempted to balance their books. They viewed cash as essential for the wider needs of the lineage and raised it in any way they could. For many and perhaps most families, borrowing was a normal part of their domestic economies and while excessive loans might threaten to overwhelm some lords, this did not prevent them from continuing to borrow. Short- and long-term loans, some of which were secured against land, represented an important income stream and can often be associated with key moments – the education of an heir or the marriage of an eldest son or provision for daughters – in the life cycle of a lineage or with particular capital expenditure, especially acquiring a title, building a great house, or funding improvements to an estate. Fairly typical were the experiences of the Plunketts of Louth, a lesser Catholic family of Old English provenance. Oliver, eighth-baron, noted in his will of 1707 that his father had died in debt ‘in acquireing or bettering his estate w[hi]ch came to me’ and had borrowed ‘for preferring his children’.4 Of course, extant information on the borrowings of these lesser lords is limited and this chapter focuses on the more fully documented borrowings of Antrim, Clanricarde and Ormond. These are analyzed over the course of the century, with a view to identifying patterns of consumption and the strategies that these families adopted for dealing with short- and long-term indebtedness. What factors determined why one lineage prospered and others became so impoverished that they no longer had the means to support their honour? The second goal of this chapter is to examine how resident lords spent their money. The earl of Cork’s expenditure between 1637 and 1641 is exceptionally fully documented; but how ‘typical’ was Cork of other lords? What, for example, did aristocrats spend on capital developments, especially building projects, or on ‘family economics’ (birth, death, marriage and education)? How much of their income was devoted to personal, family or household expenditure, or to other outgoings, such as taxation, careers, political and military activity or legal expenses? Levels of Borrowing On the eve of the Irish rebellion of October 1641 virtually every peer in Ireland had borrowed and, with the exception of the earl of Cork who owed no money, debts encumbered most baronial estates. Increased borrowing was undoubtedly linked to the wider availability of credit, while the ability to finance it was related to landed income. The debts of the second earl and first marquis of Antrim, who enjoyed an annual income (with his wife) of roughly £20,000, hovered around £40,000 during the late 1630s.5 Considering that

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his Irish estates yielded annual rentals of some £8,000 and these properties were probably worth £160,000 (at twenty years’ purchase), his borrowings were high but not excessive. By 1637 the leading Old English magnate in Connaught, the fifth earl and first marquis of Clanricarde – who also enjoyed estates in Kent and sat in the English House of Lords, as the earl of St Albans – was £25,000 in debt.6 On the eve of the outbreak of civil war the future lord lieutenant of Ireland, the twelfth earl and first duke of Ormond, whose pre-war landed income was £8,000, owed between £40,000 and £50,000. He was so financially embarrassed that by 1642 he feared his interest payments would soon exceed his debts.7 Lesser Irish nobles and many of their wives also borrowed.8 By 1625, the year of his death, Viscount Chichester had acquired debts of £10,000 (his landed income in 1630 was £4,000).9 In 1640 Lord Conway’s debts amounted to £20,000 (his Irish estates yielded £2,000 but he also received significant income from his English and Welsh ones).10 Lords Cromwell, Fitzwilliam of Merrion, Lambert, Londonderry, Magennis of Iveagh and Maguire of Enniskillen were in a similar predicament.11 For example, jointures and debts of £4,500 encumbered the pre-war Iveagh estates, which were apparently worth £1,300.12 The scale of the earl of Kildare’s borrowings landed him in a debtor’s prison on a number of occasions.13 These borrowings by nobles may have been considerable by Irish standards but they were not out of line with England. By 1642, 57 of 121 English peers were in debt, and the borrowings of the earls of Suffolk (£99,000), Strafford (£107,000) and Arundel (£124,000) put those of the earls of Antrim, Clanricarde and Ormond into perspective.14 A decade of warfare during the 1640s often bankrupted the lesser Catholic peers who were in debt prior to the war and left others financially crippled and living in fear of arrest from their creditors.15 Viscount Claneboye, later earl of Clanbrassil, had been ‘forced to contract debts of £30,000 at 20 per cent’ and these haunted his heirs for generations.16 Plagued by chronic debts and continued poverty, Viscount Montgomery, later earl of Mount Alexander, became depressed and took solace in drink.17 Mount Alexander’s debts escalated and during the 1670s he sold (for roughly £20,000) most of his estates in County Down to the Colvills, a local gentry family determined to move up in the world. Shortly afterwards his avaricious English wife insisted that he move to England.18 The earl of Roscommon claimed to have lost £50,000.19 The marquis of Antrim alleged that the take-over of his Ulster estates by a Scottish army of occupation deprived him of £150,000 in rents.20 Viscount Cromwell of Lecale echoed this, as did titled landowners from across Ireland.21 Lecale, who had commanded a royalist regiment and as his reward was elevated to the earldom of Ardglass, died in 1653 and listed in his will debts of £4,025. He had asked that these be repaid from the £7,295 16s 2d owed to him in arrears for military service, dating back to 1640 and

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his time in the ‘new army’.22 Ironically, in some instances, such as the marquises of Antrim and Clanricarde, indebtedness also had a positive side. After 1660 creditors formed a powerful pressure group which lobbied for their restoration principally to ensure that outstanding debts, dating from the late 1630s, might at last be repaid. After the Restoration the scale of indebtedness also reached unprecedented heights as lords, many of whom were deprived of their landed income for much of the 1650s, struggled to rebuild their patrimonies and acquire the luxuries denied them during the war years. Debt was ubiquitous and large-scale borrowing was not unusual or a problem in itself, though it could be depending on circumstances. While contemporaries expressed concern in their conversations, diaries, letters and wills about excessive debts, and compiled seemingly endless lists of their liabilities, they were less preoccupied with them than later commentators.23 It was accepted that large sums were required at particular moments to fund the usual rites of passage, especially marriage. Of course, external factors – poor harvests, warfare and expropriation – created financial problems, even major crises, for many peers, together with opportunities for a few. Biological accident, such as the early death of a father followed by a period of wardship, or the need to provide dowries for too many daughters or the longevity of the wives of peers who held jointures on the estate, also profoundly impacted on the economic fortunes of a family. Typically, women lived longer than their husbands and many estates – like those of the second earl of Mount Alexander, the second earl of Clanbrassil or the marquis of Antrim – were encumbered with at least two jointures for most of the century.24 In the short term this represented a considerable drain on resources, but in the medium and longer term these legal liabilities had the unexpected benefit of helping to secure estates for a specific family, particularly during the turbulent decades of the mid-seventeenth century. In an economy where capital and coinage were particularly scarce, it was critical that there be access to credit systems where bills and bonds might be exchanged in good faith, and to mortgages concluded in mutual trust and confidence. An individual’s credit-worthiness meant everything. A peer’s ability to repay a debt was also tied to his sense of honour and his worth, itself ‘a central component of masculine identity’, and as a result peers did everything possible to meet financial obligations and thereby maintain their honour, credit-worthiness and manliness.25 Creditors provided peers with loans, mortgages and bills of exchange. Letters of credit set great stock by reputation and honesty, while disgruntled creditors resorted to the courts reluctantly and usually as a last resort.26 Over time there emerged intricate (and little understood) webs of indebtedness, involving peers, their family members, the mercantile and professional classes and civic patricians, which in turn underpinned complex credit and mortgage systems that operated in

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early modern Ireland. The financial bonds between members of the peerage, who often stood surety for each other’s debts, or between a lord and his factor, lawyer or a local tradesman, promoted economic interdependence which, at certain key moments, such as in the 1640s or Restoration Irish parliaments or during the Popish Plot scares of the late 1670s, also had important political manifestations (see chapters 7 and 12). The social and cultural significance of economic interdependence was also far-reaching, as it broke down the sectarian and ethnic divides that characterized Irish society and facilitated the emergence of the peerage as a distinct social and economic group. Credit was more readily available in an economy that was increasingly monetarized and urbanized. The Irish statute staple, which was discussed in the previous chapter, served a particularly important function as a national paper credit system.27 The staple records list far more titled debtors – 77 men and 4 women – than creditors.28 In fact, there was hardly a noble family that did not borrow on the staple at some point during the century. Many were involved in multiple transactions and appeared in the staple records (at different times) as both creditors and debtors, or as co-borrowers and co-lenders alongside wives, sons or business associates. What is clear is that these extant records only provide a flavour of the borrowing that occurred. Unfortunately, debtors rarely divulged the nature of their obligation – whether it was for a loan, land sale, mortgage, commercial agreement or property development or whether the staple was being used to secure a transaction, such as a jointure or marriage portion. Why, for example, did Richard Barry, second earl of Barrymore, borrow at least £35,000 on bond on the staple between 1656 and 1684? The bulk of this was recorded in the Chancery volumes and therefore probably only represents a fraction of the total amount that he borrowed on the staples at Dublin, Youghal and, above all, Cork. His creditors largely hailed from Cork (a few others were from Limerick, Tipperary, Waterford and England) and described themselves as ‘gentlemen’, ‘esquires’ and ‘merchants’. The Townsends, a Cork merchant family, lent Barrymore £7,600 on bonds while Richard Peard, a soldier turned gentleman, lent him a further £7,700. By the 1670s Barrymore appeared unable to borrow at all unless others – his kinsmen, his son, the Townsends or the Peards (the latter also ranked among his creditors) – co-signed the bond. In social and economic terms credit was a levelling force within the community, and reciprocal bonds of indebtedness bound rich and poor alike irrespective of ethnicity or religion and facilitated social mobility. A single example illustrates this. Alexander and Robert Colvill, prominent local officials and landowners with estates in Counties Antrim and Down, were a gentry family that made extensive use of the statute staple to enrich themselves and to ascend the social ladder, often at the expense of members of the titled nobility with whom they then intermarried (discussed in chapter 6).29

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Over a period of 30 years (1655–85) father and son, using the staples in Dublin and Carrickfergus, lent at least £46,000 on bond (the total amount that they lent probably greatly exceeded this figure).30 With only one exception, they lent to local men, often of considerable importance: Sir John Clotworthy, later Lord Massareene; Arthur Chichester, earl of Donegal; Sir George Rawdon; and Hugh Montgomery, earl of Mount Alexander (he borrowed some £15,500 in a single year, 1675).31 As the example of the Colvills highlights, wealth (or lack of it) lubricated social mobility in both directions and brought social acceptance even in those older families where snobbery was endemic.32 Aristocratic Borrowings A detailed analysis of the borrowings over the course of the century of some of the top aristocrats – the MacDonnells of Antrim, the Bourkes of Clanricarde and the Butlers of Ormond – highlights the financial strategies that characterized other members of the peerage. The scale of the borrowings of these three lineages and the access they enjoyed to credit networks outside Ireland surpassed those of the lesser lords. That said, the challenges these aristocrats faced in raising cash and servicing their creditors were common to many peers, as were the schemes they developed for dealing with their debts either by mortgaging land or, increasingly, by establishing trusts for the payment of debts.33 Any discussion of borrowings must include an analysis of expenditure. How did the first earls of Antrim and Cork manage to ensure that their incomes were sufficient to fund their lavish lifestyles, yet the borrowings of their heirs were such that their lineages became embroiled in debt? To what extent can these excessive debts, together with those of the Clanricardes and Ormonds, be attributed to conspicuous consumption? Despite the fact that the first earl of Antrim had a large family (five daughters and four sons, two of whom were legitimate), his finances appear to have been healthy and this was no doubt linked to the wise way in which he ordered and managed his landed estates and utilized his natural resources (discussed in chapter 4). Only a few records relating to their financial activities survive. On 10 May 1627 he appeared as a creditor on the Dublin statute staple, when he lent on bond £2,000 to Neal Oge O’Neill of Killelagh in County Antrim, whom his daughter, Sarah, had married. For his part O’Neill, who died in 1628, mortgaged the lands of Killelagh to Antrim and the earl then bequeathed these mortgaged lands to his grandson, Henry O’Neill. Two days later, on 12 May, Antrim lent on bond £4,000 to Donnough O’Connor of Sligo. It is not clear whether this related to the O’Neill transaction, but it is worth noting that Sarah later married O’Connor as her second husband.34

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The second earl was not as prudent as his father and borrowed heavily.35 According to Clarendon, Antrim ‘lived in the court in great expense and some lustre’,36 entertaining at York House, attending masques, gambling and giving generous gifts to his family, friends and benefactors.37 His creditors included three individual goldsmiths, five jewellers, three merchants, four widows, the court painter (Anthony Van Dyck), two physicians, and a veritable array of haberdashers, linen drapers, mercers, milliners, seamsters, seamstresses, shoemakers, stocking sellers, tailors, upholsterers and woollen drapers.38 In addition he borrowed nearly £30,000 on bond from family members, tenants, friends, fellow courtiers and royal servants. The earl even pawned for £900 ‘the two pendant pearles given my Lady by the Queen, and hangings of [the story of ] Alexander’. The pawnbroker was found to have resold these treasures by the time he went to redeem them.39 Borrowing, however, was one thing; repaying overdue loans or outstanding debts was quite another. Antrim was rarely able to repay his creditors on time and was occasionally taken to court for this failure. In an effort to achieve solvency Antrim and his wife retired to Ireland during the late 1630s and cut back on the amount spent in educating the duchess’s sons from her first marriage. When this failed to pay off their ‘great debt in England’, they took the drastic steps of selling her English estate at Bramshill and the family jewels. Early in 1639 the Irish lord deputy delighted in letting it be known that the earl had failed to scrape £300 together in Dublin ‘to stay a seisure which in default was ready to issue against his land’.40 On the eve of civil war Antrim’s credit rating was low yet he persuaded his sister Sarah to lend him £2,000 and Lady Alice Hamilton a further £800 (on a staple bond for £1,600).41 However, in 1641 Antrim was hard pressed to find the £6,700 that he owed the king in subsidies and extraordinary taxation, and it is not clear whether he ever repaid this.42 During the 1640s, 1650s and after the Restoration, Antrim accrued additional debts but, assisted by his second wife who was known as ‘a very careful woman in her credit’, made valiant attempts to satisfy these pre-war liabilities.43 Nevertheless the marquis became entangled in endless lawsuits with frustrated, unpaid creditors and shortly before he died in 1683 mortgaged his entire estate for 31 years so that his financial obligations to roughly 220 individuals – some incurred nearly 50 years before – could be honoured.44 Antrim had, it seemed, finally succumbed to his creditors. The Bourkes of Clanricarde were in a similar position. The fourth and fifth earls had done much to ‘improve’ their estates during the early decades of the seventeenth century, attracting English tenants who built stone houses, planted trees and enclosed land, as well as promoting urbanization, commerce and proto-industry (iron and fishing).45 This combined with effective management ensured that their Connacht estates were highly profitable and

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served as collateral for borrowings that funded major construction projects. Determined to consolidate his landed interests and ‘restore that tortured and much impaired Earldom’, the fourth earl built in c.1618 an exquisite, threestorey, rectangular mansion house at Portumna near Galway with an impressive entrance over a basement. Distinctive Renaissance features, such as the Dutch gables, highlight the importance of continental influences.46 Of course, Portumna is a grand English house, with its mullioned bay windows, freezes and ornate plasterwork, and was also fortified in that the projecting, angled towers had gun loops that provided flanking fire and inner and outer bawns, albeit ones that took the form of gardens.47 Portumna cost the fourth earl £10,000 to build.48 In 1628 the earl mortgaged part of his Connacht estate to raise his daughter’s dowry, to pay for his English earldom and to fund his English estate. He died in 1635 with debts of £25,000.49 The need to reduce his father’s debt and to generate further capital forced the fifth earl to mortgage in May 1637 his English estates of Summerhill for seven years ‘in return for debts and sureties of £20,000’.50 Overwhelming debt finally forced the earl and his family to return in 1641 to live on his Irish estates at Portumna. The outbreak of war left Clanricarde’s English estate vulnerable to sequestration and only the influence of the earl of Essex, the parliamentary general and his stepbrother, helped to secure them for the family. The confederates prevented the earl of Clanrciarde from collecting rents from his estates in Mayo and Sligo, and those lands he did possess had been ‘barbarously ransacked by rude, disorderly people’. By 1644 Clanricarde, now overwhelmed by his debts and feeling totally isolated (‘forsaken or forgotten by my friends in England, suspected and discountenanced formally by the State here’), complained that his Irish estates lay ‘spoiled and pillaged by both English and Irish, what one left always destroyed by the other’.51 He found it extremely difficult to borrow cash or to mortgage property. In 1647 he failed even to sell lands despite offering ‘easy bargains’ which in peacetime would have been quickly snapped up by greedy speculators.52 By the end of the 1640s Clanricarde had allegedly contracted debts amounting to £60,000.53 During the 1650s Clanricarde’s financial situation improved somewhat as he, like many of his Catholic and royalist counterparts, turned to the Cromwellians for assistance (see chapter 10). The hefty debts contracted by Clanricarde, combined with substantial allowances awarded to his daughter and widow who continued to live in Portumna after his death, severely strained the resources of his heir, who inherited the title and an encumbered estate, allegedly only worth £4,700 per annum.54 In the 1680s William, seventh earl, despaired of his situation and the fact that ‘His debts have been very much increased by many lawsuits commenced against him by his creditors, when they saw all his hopes of

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discharging the said encumbrances fatally frustrated by the unfortunate marriage of his eldest son.’55 Richard, later eighth earl, had married in 1670 much against his family’s wishes Elizabeth, the daughter of a court page. At the time Lady Ormond wrote that his ‘marriage has extremely troubled all his friends’ and noted ‘the ruin that this unhappy young man has brought on himself and his family’.56 Clanricarde punished his son by refusing to pay his allowance. Elizabeth retorted by complaining to leading figures at court and claiming ‘I alone am the occasion of the earl’s hard dealing with us, by reason of my steadfast resolution in continuing in the protestant religion.’57 The endless wrangling and toxic exchanges left the family poorly equipped to deal with the upheavals associated with the Wars of the Three Kings, and only the eighth earl’s conversion to Protestantism, however unpopular with his father, helped to secure the survival of the house of Clanricarde (see chapter 5). The financial fortunes of the Butlers of Ormond also ebbed and flowed. The twelfth earl of Ormond may have been the largest titled landowner in Ireland but he was as deeply in debt (in excess of £45,000) as his fellow aristocrats when he succeeded to the earldom at the age of 22. His predecessor Walter, eleventh earl, incurred debts of roughly £10,000 during his incarceration in the Tower of London during the 1620s, and by 1628 his total debts could have been twice this. This combined with the need of the fourth earl to recompense the guardian of his bride (Elizabeth Preston, daughter and sole heir of the earl of Desmond) with £15,000, and the king’s decision that Ormond should pay her father’s debts from the proceeds of their reunified estate, severely stretched the earl’s already limited resources.58 Throughout the 1630s, Ormond acted as an improving landlord and reorganized his estates (see chapter 4), realizing at least £25,000 through sales and mortgages.59 Between 1635 and 1640 Ormond borrowed a further £14,000 on bond on the Kilkenny and Dublin staples, and borrowed heavily on unsecured bonds and tradesmen’s bills.60 For example, a bond for £4,440, dated 14 January 1640, contracted on the Kilkenny staple, was accompanied by an indenture that recited a transaction made on 4 January whereby Sir John Temple loaned Ormond £4,440 on an unsecured bond.61 The outbreak of war exacerbated the situation. Ormond’s biographer, Thomas Carte, estimated that between 1641 and 1660 the marquis’s total wartime losses exceeded £1,000,000, while a contemporary calculated his losses to be £1,253,999 19s 6d ‘not recokoning w[ha]t was recoverable from ye possessors of his estate, nor w[ha]t was due to him from ye crown’ (i.e. a further £886,764 3s 4d).62 During the 1640s Ormond continued to borrow heavily. He turned to foreign merchants, such as Adrian Van Haute of Waterford, for loans and importuned local merchants including Patrick Archer of Kilkenny, who at the Restoration claimed that Ormond owed him

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Figure 5.  Monies borrowed by the duke of Ormond, 1641–50.63

£10,000. Despite the fact that Ormond had alienated so many of his former clients and that the confederates occupied much of his inheritance during the 1640s, he managed to use his estates as collateral for cash and raised at least £20,000. This is probably an underestimate of his obligations, though whether he borrowed £40,000 as he later claimed is unclear.64 As figure 5 illustrates, Ormond amassed the bulk (nearly £13,000) between the conclusion in September 1643 of a cessation of arms and the declaration of the first Ormond peace in 1646, and the remainder after the declaration of the second Ormond peace in 1649. Significantly, the confederate supreme council approved and endorsed every transaction. Thus between 1641 and 1650 Ormond borrowed £20,460 in relatively small amounts of money (under £300) from 55 individuals, who rarely lent him money more than once. A few (5 per cent) were prominent figures (Dr Thomas Arthur and lawyers Richard Martin, Geoffrey Brown and Patrick Kirwan). The majority of his creditors were local men: 66 per cent resided in Kilkenny county or city and 27 per cent came from Tipperary. They included nine Butlers and some leading merchants such as Richard Comerford and Robert Tobyn, merchants from Callan and Kilkenny and civic officials (Patrick Murphy, a Kilkenny alderman, and Peter Shee, mayor

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of Kilkenny). The majority were gentlemen tenants and local farmers who obviously saw this as an opportunity to buy the land they had formerly leased or to expand their existing holdings (figure 6). On 17 November 1643 James Comerford, a gentleman from Aghnemolt in County Kilkenny, loaned Ormond £300 in ‘pure silver’ in return for a mortgage to lands in County Kilkenny.65 In August 1644 Andrew O’Hagan, a Tipperary farmer who was unable to sign the deed, secured lands in the barony of Iffa and Offa, in return for £180. Two years later Andrew and his brother, Edmund, added further acres in the same barony in return for an additional £180.66 Only a small number of these mortgages (worth £2,440) appear to have been redeemed after the Restoration.67 These dealings horrified Ormond’s agent, Edward Comerford, who in 1644 cautioned Ormond against alienating his estates for ‘I must confesse that these are pr[ej]uditiall bargains w[hi]ch hinder pr[e]sent improvement.’68 The situation deteriorated further during the 1650s (discussed in chapter 10), though the articles of Dublin (1647) did offer Ormond and his wife some protection from their creditors.69 At the Restoration, Ormond’s personal secretary suggested that his debts were at least £80,000.70 Public office, like funding a prolonged stay at court, brought access to patronage and many other rewards, but in the immediate term it also cost the family dear and was imperfectly and belatedly recompensed. Lady Ormond later complained of the ‘expense of our keeping a great table’ but continued that it could not ‘be avoided, having daily the resort of all strangers and ambassadors, and all the nobility beside’.71 As their building projects after the Restoration and inventories of their properties highlight, she and her duke lived in a style commensurate with their rank and honour but this public display of grandeur was tempered by their ability to secure credit. The duke had a particular passion for gambling and John Evelyn recorded how on one occasion in January 1662 he won about £1,000 playing cards; on other

Figure 6.  The occupations of the duke of Ormond’s creditors, 1641–50.

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occasions he was less fortunate. Normally a staunch supporter of Ormond, Evelyn confided to his diary his horror that such ‘a wretched Custome as play to that excesse should be countenanc’d in a Court, which ought to be an example of Virtue to the rest of the kingdome’.72 Sustaining this level of conspicuous expenditure proved impossible even for the richest of aristocrats. The matter reached crisis point for Ormond in 1668–9. Poor harvests, trade restrictions and intermittent war with the Dutch brought the Irish economy to a standstill and in February 1669 the king dismissed Ormond from office thereby depriving him of protection from creditors. The excessive spending of her sons particularly vexed Lady Ormond since she felt that their profligacy threatened the family’s fiscal honour.73 In 1669 she confided to her agent ‘what to do with my son John [the earl of Gowran] I cannot tell, for I hear he lives as he did still and keeps the wildest company’.74 Gowran’s debts on his death in 1676 were £9,000 (his annual landed income was only £200) and those of his brother, the earl of Arran, were so high in 1684 that he believed he would be in financial trouble for the rest of his life. The scale of the earl of Ossory’s London debts and the cavalier attitude that her son and daughter-in-law took towards these liabilities horrified Lady Ormond. Late in 1668 she wrote ‘I find him [Ossory] indebted to many tradesmen here, who complain of him to be a bad paymaster; and I cannot but fear and suspect him so, because that neither he nor his lady does know what their debts are, or to whom they owe, though the greatest part is hers.’75 Paying these liabilities became a priority for Lady Ormond as she strove to maintain the good name and honour of the family. After all, ‘it lookt scandalous to be frugall’.76 In an effort to keep creditors satisfied, Ormond resorted to desperate expedients: in 1668 he pawned a pair of diamond pendants worth £700 in order to meet interest payments and two years later he sold Moor Park in Hertfordshire to the king for £13,200 in order to rid himself of a pressing debt of £12,000.77 This was still insufficient and shortly afterwards Lady Ormond lamented: ‘I wish there could be some way found to pay off the rest of what debts remain due here, and then I doubt not but we should live within the compass of what our estate will bear without running in debt.’78 A few years later her Irish agent raised £2,500, including £800 from the sale of plate, to help fund Ossory’s stay in Ireland. When Ormond learned in 1679 that Ossory was to visit the Spanish court on behalf of Charles II, he insisted that Ossory undertook the king’s business ‘in an equipage’ equal ‘to the reputation of our fortune and quality’, even if this incurred a debt. To do otherwise would bring ‘dishonour to yourself ’ and diminish the status of the family.79 Short-term expedients like selling the family silver, combined with cash windfalls from the English and Irish exchequer, allowed the Ormonds

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to overcome these financial crises. By 1688, the year of his death, Ormond’s annual interest payments were £6,094 4s 7d and his other expenditure (portions, maintenance, annuities and chief rents) was £10,958 18s 7d. His rent roll for 1688 was £24,242 9s 4d, which left him a disposable income of roughly £7,000.80 The duke’s private secretary later wrote that the ‘load of a heavy debt’ was Ormond’s ‘inward grief, and did guide him and overrule him, in very many of his stepps’.81 Ormond never, however, addressed the underlying cause of his family’s borrowings and passed on a debt of £157,215 to his grandson, which, combined with his Jacobitism, eventually led to the dismemberment of the Butler territorial empire.82 In short, the Ormonds, like so many other resident peers, were willing to risk financial ruin rather than live more moderately and sully their reputations by ‘the appearance of poverty and being cried out upon for debts to mean people’.83 The need to fund their aristocratic lifestyles and to maintain their honour thus preoccupied the duke and his wife for much of their lives.84 Expenditure This discussion of aristocratic debt leads naturally into a more focused analysis of expenditure. How did resident peers spend their money? Depending on family size, the amount spent on ‘family economics’ – birth, marriage, the education of children, provision for the heir and for younger sons and daughters, death and inheritance – could prove considerable. The costs associated with public office, lengthy sojourns at court in London, or involvement in the Dublin parliament, were especially high particularly when they involved maintaining two or three households. Less burdensome, at least for those willing to lead more modest existences, was the ordinary expenditure involved in running a household. Extraordinary expenditure – the purchase of a title of honour, capital investment in land or building projects and conspicuous consumption – depended on access to disposable income. This varied from family to family but increased as the seventeenth century progressed and as each lineage sought to outdo their noble neighbours. A detailed discussion of the earl of Cork’s expenditure illustrates these generalities. Throughout his life Cork carefully noted in his diary any significant outgoings. These figures have been analyzed for the years between 1637 and 1641 and classified under a number of basic headings: lands purchased (in England and Ireland), spending on the earl’s immediate household and his wider kin group (mostly his children), military expenditure and monies paid out in fines and subsidies (see table 29 and figure 7). His average annual expenditure of some £19,000 accords broadly with his estimated annual income of between £18,000 and £20,000 but Cork’s obsession with balancing

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Table 29.  The earl of Cork’s expenditure, 1637–41.85 Date

Land in Land in Personal Family England Ireland

Military

Gifts

Fines & tax

Total

1637

£5,040 £2,146

£852

£3,100

£15,050 £26,188

1638

£740 £2,010

£2,288

£2,915

£3,600 £11,553

1639

£350

£360

£2,290

£2,515

£5,000

£100

£5,683

£150

£1,115

1641

£16,350 £1,800

£614

£14,300 £4,785

£600

total

£22,480 £6,316

£6,106

£28,513 £9,935

£5,620 £1,579

£1,221

1640

annual average

£62

£5,703

£3,312

£10,615 £2,400

£9,410 £38,449

£1,815 £21,050 £96,215 £605

£7,017 £19,243

Figure 7.  The earl of Cork’s expenditure, 1637–41 (derived from table 29).

his books was not usual (see chapter 13). More typical were his patterns of spending, though few enjoyed his wealth. How then did Cork spend his money? The totals presented in table 29 and figure 7 suggest that the earl spent roughly a third (30 per cent) of his total income on buying land and this figure could well have been higher in the 1610s and 1620s. This is not surprising since Cork devoted his entire career to acquiring property and hardly a week passed without a land purchase or the issue of a mortgage. He constantly strove to improve the tenure by which he held land, but rarely sold it. The large amount spent on land in England during the later 1630s was, however, very high and reflected Cork’s need to acquire English patrimonies for himself and his sons. In June 1637 he paid £5,005 to the earl of Castlehaven for Stalbridge manor in Dorsetshire, which he held in fee simple, together with surrounding farmlands worth £2,085. He spent an additional 1,000 merks constructing new buildings there.86 In July 1641 the earl agreed to buy Captain John Arscott’s estate of Annarie in Devonshire for £5,000.87 Later the same month he paid £10,350 for the

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manor of Marston Bigod in Somersetshire for Lord Broghill (whose marriage portion had been £5,000).88 In September 1641 Cork acquired for his son, Francis, the rectory of Hallerton and Saltcombe Manor in Devon, belonging to Sir Thomas Stafford.89 Over the summer of 1641 alone he paid out £16,350 for English properties. Cork spent roughly a third (36 per cent) of his income on himself, his family and maintaining households in Dublin, at Lismore in Munster and at Stalbridge in Dorset. For example, personal expenditure in early 1641 included payments to his London tailor, Mr Perkins; for a new sedan and other furniture, silver items (including chamber pots), and a ‘diamond hatband’ which cost £200.90 Between August 1638 and July 1639 the earl and his extended family (Ladies Barrymore and Dungarvan, along with his younger sons, Francis and Robert) lived in their new home at Stalbridge where costs were higher than at Lismore. When he first arrived Cork allocated £628 8s for ‘howshowld stuff, building, and howshould provisions’, plus an additional £235 for furnishings and hangings. He later estimated the monthly running costs to be £200 and the total cost of his family’s 11-month sojourn at £2,200. This did not include the beef, bacon, salt, salmon and 20 oxen he had brought with him from Ireland, nor the £700 he owed to ‘divers merchants, vintners, brewers, bakers [and] graziers’, nor his brief trip to London in the autumn of 1638 which cost Cork £270 0s 10d for travel and housekeeping.91 Hospitality, like gift giving, was intimately linked to being part of an honour community, and Cork recorded in his diary his major social engagements (which he invariably paid for). On 14 January 1638 he stood godfather to Lord Inchiquin’s son and heir, William.92 During the later 1630s the earl welcomed house parties of close friends and family to his mansion at Stalbridge or to Lismore and visited the estates of his fellow peers. On occasion he mingled more widely, but these encounters often held political significance. For example, on 11 August 1641 he ‘feasted at the nags head in cheapside, all the Lords, Knights, and gent of the comyttees of bothe howses of the parliament in Irelande’ in order to celebrate the apparent downfall of his political enemies in Dublin.93 With seven sons and eight daughters the earl had a large brood to educate, marry off and support. His youngest sons, Robert and Francis, spent three years at school at Eton (1635–8), which cost £914 3s 9d ‘for diet, and tutaradge, and aparell’.94 Two other sons were on a grand tour and their stay in Switzerland and Italy from the autumn of 1637 through 1638 cost £1,900. Thereafter the earl paid out £250 every six months to keep his sons in Geneva.95 The annual allowance of Cork’s eldest son, Lord Dungarvan, was £1,500, which his father increased in 1640 to £2,000, plus a weekly payment of £30. The allowances (£500 each) for the younger sons, Lords Broghill and

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Kinalmeaky, were also generous and increased when they married.96 Additional lump-sum payments were made to write off debts that the three eldest boys had accumulated in London. Determined to marry his children well, the earl provided generous dowries and marriage portions. In 1640–1 he allocated a portion of £5,000 for Broghill and a dowry of £7,000 for his daughter Mary. Even after they married he continued to subsidize his sons-in-law, especially the earl of Barrymore, and to provide his kin with interest-free loans (discussed in chapter 13). Gifts, taxation and military expenditure consumed the remaining third of Cork’s income (34 per cent). Though the total amount was relatively small, the earl regularly gave gifts to his family, friends and servants. Every New Year’s day the family exchanged tokens of friendship. For example, in January 1637 he gave the countess of Barrymore ‘a fair standinge guilt cup with a cover’ and his younger daughter, Mary, a copy of Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia.97 Gifts also marked special occasions. On 15 September 1634 Cork welcomed to Ireland Lady Dungarvan, his much loved daughter-in-law, with a gift of an exquisite gilt-plate cupboard.98 In September 1640 he gave William Chettle, ‘my olde honnest servant’, a cloak ‘lyned through with black velvet’ that he had never worn, an annual allowance of £20 and a bond worth £195.99 Throughout the year the earl sent small but expensive tokens (often gifts that others had given to him) or a ‘fat buck’, a goshawk or an Irish wolfhound to political allies, or to merchants and lawyers whom he wished to cultivate.100 A deeply godly man, Cork also gave to charity and in February 1637 allocated £331 16s 8d for the school and almshouse at Bandonbridge.101 In the late 1630s some of Cork’s dubious land deals began to catch up with him, and on 11 June 1637 he noted in his diary that ‘I am bownde by recognizances to pay the kinge [£15,000] . . . for the mean profits of the colledge of Youghall’. In May 1638 he made the final instalment, noting ‘God knows upon what grownds, for I doe not, which the Lo. Deputy by his omnipotent power imposed on me’.102 As one of the richest men in the Stuart kingdoms, the earl paid a hefty tax bill. He owed six subsidy payments, each of £600, which he had paid in full by May 1638. The 1640 Irish parliament voted four further subsidies of £600 each (£2,400).103 The onset of war after 1639 cost Cork dearly. In addition to underwriting the contribution that his sons made to the Bishops’ Wars, he contributed £2,000 towards the disbanding of Wentworth’s ‘new army’.104 Finally, with the outbreak of rebellion in Ireland, Cork used what savings he had to finance the war effort in Munster. The war had a dramatic impact on the earl’s income (figure 8) and his non-military expenditure was negligible. In addition to maintaining his own company at Lismore (at a weekly cost of £20 plus provisions) and funding the defence of Youghal (£2,100), the army regularly siphoned off any spare cash he managed to accumulate (£2,400 between

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Figure 8.  The monthly balance of account and income on the Boyle estates, 1638–44.105

1641 and 1644), leaving him bankrupt.106 That said, Cork valiantly tried to repay his creditors right up until his death and in March 1642 smugly noted in his diary that: ‘I hope that as I have paid my monies justelie and truly, so god will bless and continew it to me and myne.’107 The pattern of the earl of Cork’s spending appears to have been reasonably typical of other aristocrats and middle-ranking lords, though their incomes were considerably less and their debts vastly greater, and therefore few could match his generosity to the king or the proportion of income spent on purchasing land. These lords appear to have spent their money in broadly similar proportions to Cork, though this varied according to the life cycle of an individual. Between a third and a half of a middle-ranking lord’s income would have been devoted to capital expenditure and ‘family economics’ (or to servicing the interest payments on these major expenditures), and a comparable amount would be committed to personal, household and legal expenses, leaving the residue to cover taxation and other extraordinary expenditure. The education of children was one such expense. For instance, in May 1665 Richard Lambert, earl of Cavan, borrowed £10,000 on bond from Sir James

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Ware for the schooling and education of his son and heir Charles.108 The costs involved in sending sons on a grand tour remained high. The total cost of the trip Lord Broghill and his brother, Lewis, made to Paris and Saumur between 9 June 1662 and 5 February 1663 was £10,217 09s 03d. This included their daily living expenses, together with expensive gifts, clothing, lessons (singing, dancing and guitar), schoolmasters’ fees and books – including The whole duty of man (3s), The Gentleman’s Calling (1s 6d), Dr Taylor, Holy Living and Dying (3s 6d), Dr Hammons, Practical Catechisme (£10 3s) and a Latin Bible (4s).109 During the early decades of the seventeenth century the purchase of titles of honour proved a major capital expense for Lords Antrim (£5,000), Blayney (£1,500), Caulfeild of Charlemont (£2,000), Dillon of Costello-Gallen (£2,500), Fingal (£2,700), Iveagh (£2,000), Moore (£1,000), Netterville of Dowth (£2,000), Powerscourt (£2,000), Valentia (£2,000) and Westmeath (£1,500). The earl of Cork expended over £4,500 for his own titles plus an additional £3,000 (£1,000 each) for Barrymore’s earldom, a viscountcy for Kinalmeaky and a baronage for Broghill.110 Predictably, there is little evidence for the spending habits of the lesser lords. It would indeed appear that many did spend excessively, with the result that their estates became encumbered with mortgages that they failed to redeem. Baron Maguire later admitted that his debts to local creditors were one reason why he plotted rebellion.111 His pre-war debts haunted his heirs. In 1663 the commissioners of the Court of Claims heard how in December 1634 James Netterville of Wicklow lent £2,000 on bond to Maguire. Maguire defaulted on his payment and the case made its way to Chancery in January 1639 and again in 1661 before proceeding to the Court of Claims two years later. Remarkably, the debt, contracted nearly 50 years previously, was finally settled in March 1682.112 Even though the evidence is scrappy or does not survive, it is clear that Maguire was not alone. There was a growing market for luxury commodities in Ireland. In the 1510s, 43 types of goods were exported from Bristol to Munster, but within a century this had risen to 369, which illustrates the increased demand for a diverse range of products, including many luxury items.113 The Gaelic intelligentsia commented on the pernicious effects of conspicuous expenditure and the excessive borrowing that it triggered, and how this undermined their position and the traditional culture that they embodied.114 One poet, for example, scorned the nobility’s obsession with English fashions at the expense of traditional items like the mantle: Every dowdy, then, will wear a cape of beaver, And don a gown of silk from poll of head to ankle. 115

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An anonymous verse, ‘Blazonry, my cure on thee’, reported an exchange with Viscount Mountgarret that ridiculed the Butlers for their determination to keep up with the latest fashions, wearing shirts with fancy collars, ‘broadbrimmed’ hats, ‘narrow shoes’, ‘cambric blouse’, lace and silk fabrics, and elaborate hair adornments.116 What a person wore made a powerful statement about who he or she was and by the early decades of the seventeenth century ‘the better sort’ were, according to one observer, ‘apparelled at all points like the English’.117 The obligation to dress like the English, to speak English and to live in English-style houses was part of the wider ‘civilizing’ agenda, but the ‘love of money’ that this triggered drove some lesser houses into bankruptcy. Capital Expenditure Building works were the single biggest capital investment a noble household was likely to make and a frenzy of building gripped the Irish titled nobility during the early seventeenth century.118 From one end of the country to the other medieval tower houses and castles were modernized: Dunluce and Edenduffcarrick in County Antrim, Maynooth and Kilkea in County Kildare, Barryscourt in County Cork and Bunratty in County Clare. Grand fortified mansion houses, which retained some defensive features but provided more commodious accommodation, sprang up across Ireland, often boasting walled gardens, orchards, bowling greens and even tennis courts.119 Small communities comprised of agricultural workers, traders and craftsmen often settled close to these castles and populated villages or towns, where the local lord helped to fund the building of a market square, courthouse, church and school. In Ulster planter peers constructed at least 19 castles during the early decades of the seventeenth century (see chapter 4). The earl of Antrim built castles at Ballycastle, Ballygalley, Glenarm and Kilwaughter; Viscount Chichester built a mansion, Joymount, at Carrickfergus, and castles at Belfast and Dungannon in County Tyrone; and Lord Conway built a grand house at Lisburn. In County Down Lord Cromwell constructed a castle at Lecale, Viscount Claneboye built one at Bangor and Viscount Montgomery one at Newtown. Lord Blayney built Castle Blayney and another in Monaghan. In County Tyrone the earl of Castlehaven oversaw the erection of Ballynahatty, near Omagh, Lord Hamilton built a castle at Strabane and Lord Castle Stewart one near Stewartstown. Lord Balfour of Glenawley built Castle Balfour in County Fermanagh and Lord Charlemont a mansion at Castlecaulfeild and an impressive house at Charlemont. Elsewhere the earl of Cork built Lismore castle in County Waterford and Castle Lyons, and grand mansions at Youghal and Bandon in County Cork; the earl of Londonderry built a tower house at Ballinakill, Queen’s County; Lords Mountnorris and Wingfield built Castle Annesley at Camolin and Wingfield House at

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Ballynabowney in County Wexford; and the earl of Meath built a mansion in Wicklow and castles at Bray and Kinleston. These ‘great houses’ transformed the physical landscape, resulting in a ‘privitization’ of it.120 They stood as powerful testament to the civility of their owners and the privileged position these noble lineages enjoyed. These mansions also resulted in considerable amounts of money being injected into the Irish economy as peers raised loans to pay for building materials (timber, stone, slate and marble) and for the services of builders and a host of craftsmen, many of whom came from Scotland or Europe and designed and decorated these properties according to the latest architectural fashions. How much did it cost to build these great houses? In England very substantial country houses cost roughly £2,000.121 Sir William Stewart built one of the best plantation castles at Augentaine in County Tyrone before 1622 at a cost of about £1,200 (his grandson was elevated to the peerage as Viscount Mountjoy). The earl of Cork estimated that he spent £2,500 building Castle Lyons and £1,550 renovating Maynooth, and Portumna allegedly cost the earl of Clanricarde £10,000. Determining how the peers financed their property developments is difficult. Many appear to have mortgaged land. For example, a deposition dating from 1619 in the English Chancery records relates how the second earl of Castlehaven mortgaged a considerable portion of his Irish patrimony in order to finance £3,000 worth of ‘building’.122 No doubt others did likewise but no trace of their transactions survives. Property destroyed or damaged during the 1640s was often rebuilt after the Restoration. Ormond poured a considerable part of his fortune into remodelling a vice-regal lodge at Chapelizod (£3,000) and restoring to splendour Kilkenny castle and Dunmore House. Viscount Mountjoy rebuilt a fine threestorey mansion at Newtownstewart, which had cost £400 to build in the 1610s and had been damaged during the 1640s.123 Insurgents had fired Lord Conway’s Lisburn house, which he rebuilt at the Restoration, and in the 1660s it boasted 23 hearths.124 He also invested considerable energies in building a fine mansion with 18 hearths at Portmore close to Lisburn, which English architects designed under the direction of his gifted wife, Anne, and probably according to the latest classical specifications. In August 1671 the building was ‘window high’ and the construction was costing £30 per week. Heavy autumn rains delayed progress.125 Conway imported slate from his Welsh estates and 40 tons of marble out of which Dutch craftsmen carved a marble chimney and other embellishments. A great lover of horses and racing, Conway built an elaborate two-storey stable, which measured 140 feet long, 35 deep and 40 high.126 Other outbuildings – a brew house and a bake house – were added later. Particular care was given to laying out the ‘polite’ garden and bowling green, and no expense was spared in buying the trees, ‘flowers, roots, and seeds’ that the gardeners requested. The house was approached along a ‘very pleasant

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and noble’ avenue through meadows. Many of the furnishings for the interior came from London.127 In 1677 Viscount Ranelagh described the Conway estate as ‘the best and most absolute English like plantation in this kingdom’.128 In the mid-1660s the second earl of Clanbrassil modernized Killyleagh castle and added a second tower.129 It would seem that the marquis of Antrim did likewise at Glenarm castle and in the 1660s there were 73 hearths in the town of Glenarm, many of which would have been in the castle.130 Antrim’s castle at Dunluce remained derelict but the 34 hearths were taxed in the neighbouring town, which the insurgents had burned in 1642, and the marquis paid tax on 19 hearths at ‘Dunluce hall’ (presumably his summer residence at Ballymagarry, a few miles from Dunluce).131 Further south other ‘great houses’ sprang up. Lord Chancellor Michael Boyle, father of Murrough, Viscount Blessington, constructed an impressive mansion at Blessington in Wicklow.132 An early eighteenth-century engraving of Blessington shows a two-storey brick house on an H-plan with a dormered roof and 22 chimneys. A visitor described it as ‘one of the finest seats in Ireland. . . . The house and furniture are very great and beautiful.’133 The architect could have been Thomas Lucas, who designed the front of Trinity College Dublin in 1672, and the mason in charge of the building was Thomas Browne. The mansion and nearby church, which was built in 1683, cost at least £2,300.134 The Cootes built Colooney castle and a house with 10 hearths in Sligo. The earl of Orrery invested in two major developments, one at Castlemartyr and the other at Charleville, which cost him at least £20,000. Formal gardens, many with intricate water features and grand statues, as well as expensive plantings and delicate fruit trees, adorned these great houses. Some had bowling greens and landscaped walkways. These dignified gardens served as a symbolic barrier between the ‘wild’ world – where, as one anonymous critic noted, the Irish farmer ‘never buildeth, repaire, or enclose the grownde’ – and the ‘civilized’ one their owners were creating.135 Well-stocked deer parks, replete with hunting lodges, adjoined many of the great houses. In Ireland the interiors of the great aristocratic houses mirrored the grandeur of their exteriors.136 Inventories have survived for the castles at Bunratty, Castlemartyr, Charleville, Dunluce, Geashill, Kilkenny and Maynooth, along with Ormond’s English properties. They provide a remarkable insight into how much money was lavished on securing expensive and fashionable furnishings and household items.137 For example, a 1684 inventory of Kilkenny castle revealed the opulence of the interior furnishings, much of which would have been purchased by the duke and his wife after 1660. Consider the contents of the drawing room with its ‘ten Japan armed chairs’ and squabs (ottomans) with matted bottoms, and cushions of green, gold and white damask; a Japanese chest; a great easy chair ‘covered with figured velvet, with a rich gold ground, fringed about with a silver and gold fringe’ and

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matching step; a crystal chandelier, with 10 branches and gilt sockets; a large looking-glass with a rich silver and ebony frame, adorned with the Butler crest; an Indian screen with six leaves; two ‘Portugal mats under the chairs’; and elaborate fire-arms for the grate. On the walls hung ‘a history piece with three figures’, a landscape ‘of fishing’, a ‘Titian and Aratine over the bedchamber door’, ‘three small heads of ladies in gilt frames, and two landscapes betwixt them’. Each of the public rooms and the bedrooms of the duke and duchess of Ormond were similarly furnished. The curtains were made of, and the furniture upholstered in, the most expensive fabrics (calico, damask, satin, serge, silk brocade, velvet). Turkish carpets and ‘Tangier’ mats littered the floors and covered the tables and sideboards. Unusual and expensive objects, such as a ‘weather glass with his Grace’s coat [of arms] engraven on it’ and items from the duke’s exquisite silver collection, were displayed throughout the house. Over 100 pictures, most of them in elaborate gilt frames, adorned the walls of Kilkenny castle. The majority were portraits of the royal couple, the duke, his duchess, their children, other family members and close friends, Butler forebears, together with landscapes, hunting scenes and pictures of classical or biblical figures. Many were full- or three-quarter-length oils (see plates 5 and 6), others were watercolours or needlework on silk. Ormond also owned an extraordinary collection of tapestries. He displayed in his bedroom ‘four pieces of Antwerp tapestry hangings of the story of Polyphemus, ten foot deep’ and in the drawing room ‘four pieces of fine tapestry hangings of the story of Diogenes, ten foot deep’. Others told the stories of figures from the ancient, classical and biblical worlds, of the Persian princes Cyrus and Ahasuerus, of Polyphron and Decius and of the drunken bacchanal.138 The duke’s library was also vast with 870 volumes (according to a 1715 catalogue). Nearly half of the books were in French or Italian and roughly a third were religious works, and the remainder were histories, romances, plays and books about science.139 Some have attributed the opulence of these years as a reaction to the relative squalor of life in the 1650s, and an attempt in Kilkenny to recreate the splendour and style of the French court. Certainly, exile had also left Ormond with a taste for French fashions, architectural styles and works of art.140 Inventories such as this, together with testamentary and literary evidence, help to recapture the material culture of the titled nobility. References to domestic interiors by bardic poets, which became increasingly common as the century progressed, also provide a glimpse into the homes of their patrons.141 For example, Fear Flatha Ó Gnímh celebrated in verse some renovations carried out by Sir Henry O’Neill to Shane’s castle at Edenduffcarrick (his daughter Rose later married the marquis of Antrim). The poet described it as a ‘limewashed dwelling, a vision that shimmers above the lake waters like a

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cloud or a candelabra’ and mentioned the oak beams of the great hall and flagstone floors. He drew particular attention to the feather beds, the fine hangings and tapestries that adorned the walls, and the ornately carved doorways.142 In addition to grand country seats, the peers also owned houses in Dublin or estates in England (see chapter 12). These commitments and the associated costs of multiple locations quickly eroded the greatest of fortunes. Personal and Domestic Expenditure The scale and level of investment that the peers made in their properties and estates are vividly captured in the 1641 depositions, which served as a crude form of insurance claim. Other depositions recapture to whom a peer owed monies. For example, according to Jane Cox, the widow of John, a Dublin coach-maker, Lords Dunsany, Fingal and Gormanston all owed her money, presumably for goods and services that her husband had provided for them.143 Similarly, extant wills bear witness to the treasured possessions of men and women, who might otherwise be absent from the historical record, and provide a particular insight into spending on luxury items. For example, Francis Aungier, baron of Longford, was master of the rolls and owned a property on Wood Quay in Dublin along with a modest estate in Longford. He drew up his will on 28 November 1628 (he died in 1632). He divided his library amongst his sons. His heir, Gerald, who in 1615 had been admitted to Gray’s Inn, got his history books and books of discourse and was later described by John Evelyn as ‘that learned gentleman’;144 Ambrose, who later became chancellor of St Patrick’s cathedral, received his divinity books; and Francis, who was admitted to Gray’s Inn in 1628, his law books. The baron reserved most of his precious goods for his third wife, Margaret: his new coach and horses brought from England; the family silver – a tankard, condiment set, spoons, basin, ewer and cup which Lord Grandison had given them on their marriage; and expensive household items – damask and taffeta curtains and covers, Turkish carpets, a variety of linens, together with more mundane household furniture and goods.145 The first earl of Cork’s will listed hundreds of expensive objects: ‘my new Scarlet Bed with all the appurtenances’, ‘my Travelling Coach and Furniture and Close Silver Chafen Dish’, ‘my double guilt Salt and Cover which Stands upon four pillars with a Christial Globe in the Middle thereof ’, ‘my Sedan lined with Red wrought Velvet’, and ‘my best Sword and Belt and a pair of Silver Spurrs’.146 Valuable objects such as these, which rarely survive, adorned Cork’s many properties and testified to his wealth and civility. This was an age in which throughout Europe in noble society both sexes spent large sums on clothing and other forms of personal adornment. Visits to Dublin allowed even the humbler peers and their wives to buy the latest

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suits, gowns, petticoats, collars, coats, hats, and in fabrics (silks, damask, lace) appropriate to their rank and station. Those who could afford one also retained a tailor who dispatched specific requests to their country seats. The really rich retained a tailor in London who made clothing for them in the latest fashions. The earl of Cork’s will referred to velvet gowns, lined with plush velvet or ‘Martin’s Fur’, trimmed in gold and silk, with gold and silver buttons, and suits made from the finest satin ‘Laced with Gold Lace’, which all came from London.147 This greater level of consumption was reflected in personal jewellery and other luxury items. Nicholas, Viscount Gormanston, died in 1643 and left a watch to his sister, ‘his box of instruments’ to his uncle and his sapphire ring to his daughter.148 The earl of Cork bequeathed his precious jewellery to his closest kin and friends: ‘my best Jewell called Walter Raleigh’s Stone’ to Archbishop Ussher, who on his own death was to return it to Lord Dungarvan; ‘my Diamond Ring which my mother at her death gave me, and I have wore it 56 years’ to Lady Dungarvan, who was to pass it on to her son; and ‘my Diamond Hatband’ to his great friend, Sir Thomas Stafford.149 Extant portraits of resident peers provide insights into their clothing, their hairstyle, and whether they wore a beard. A delicate miniature of Cork, with a dainty beard, painted by Isaac Oliver in the 1610s, shows little of his attire aide from an exquisite and very prominent lace collar (plate 4). A bearded James Hamilton, Viscount Claneboye, was painted in 1628 wearing a dark suit, an elaborate and embroidered belt, with a large lace ruff, lace cuffs, and a book at his right elbow. Less conventional is the portrait, dating from 1632, of the dark-haired and bearded George Fitzgerald, sixteenth earl of Kildare, who is painted with his earl’s robes, scarlet with an ermine collar, wrapped around him – almost like a traditional native mantle – over a loose linen shirt, edged with a lace (plate 1). The Fitzgerald coat of arms is behind his right elbow. An imposing full-length portrait of the duke of Ormond, after Sir Peter Lely, which dates from the 1660s, shows him wearing the robes of the Order of the Garter and with the wand of lord steward of the household in his hand. A chain of office, a fine lace collar, a splendid plumed hat and delicate white shoes set off the exquisite silk and satin robes. His long sandycoloured hair falls over his shoulders and he sports a groomed moustache (plate 5). More austere was the 1676 portrait of a clean-shaven but longhaired Arthur Annesley, earl of Anglesey, seated in his robes of office, with a particularly elaborate lace colour at his neck (plate 2). Fewer portraits survive of the wives of resident peers, but those that do generally depict these women in all of their splendour. Sir Anthony Van Dyck’s fine full-length portrait of Anne Carey, the eldest daughter of the duke of Monmouth, was painted shortly after her betrothal in 1635 to James Hamilton, second Viscount Claneboye and later earl of Clanbrassil. It shows

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her in a pale blue satin gown bejewelled with pearls and with a chiffon scarf in her hand. A pearl choker offsets her pearl drop earrings and pearls also adorn her carefully coiffed hair (plate 8). A fine portrait of Elizabeth, later duchess of Ormond, and her young son, the earl of Ossory (b.1634), dates from c.1637 and has been attributed to David des Granges. It represents her in a pale silk gown decorated with lace. Her jewellery – a gold belt, a pearl brooch, a pearl necklace and pearl earrings – complement her splendid attire and dark ringlets frame her handsome face (plate 6). The wills of peeresses also provide a fascinating glimpse of the jewels that women owned. Anne Aungier, Lady Longford, the daughter and heiress of Arthur, first earl of Chichester, who had first married John Butler, earl of Gowran, and later his great friend the earl of Longford, died in November 1697. In her will she bequeathed ‘her large ruby ring, engraved with the arms of the family’ to her nephew and father’s heir, to his wife ‘her jewel, called the pearl bunch of grapes’, and other precious items – a picture of her father set in diamonds, a pearl necklace, a diamond ring ‘with her mother’s hair’ – to family and friends.150 The 1698 will of Elizabeth Fitzgerald, Cork’s granddaughter and daughter of the profligate sixteenth earl of Kildare, who married as her second husband, Chief Justice William Davies, revealed her disposable wealth: her diamond rings, ‘a turkey stone ring’, her gold watch, her gold locket, her ‘sable typet’, her ‘black velvet hood and scarfe’ and her ‘silver and silke scarf ’.151 Husbands often revelled in adorning their wives with expensive trinkets. The earl of Ranelagh specifically listed in his will all of the precious items – a diamond necklace, a pair of diamond pendants, a diamond ring, a richly gilded set of toiletries and numerous silver pieces – he had bought for his second wife when they married in 1695, and requested that she dispose of these on her death as she saw fit.152 On Lady Conway’s death in 1679 her jewels were inventoried, her ‘pearls, that are round and white, bear a good value, and are always in esteem. Other jewels alter both in fashion and value and are of late much lower.’153 For many women their jewellery was the only form of disposable wealth that they held in their own right and thus represented a significant material investment. Only the very rich could sustain this level of expenditure. The marriage of a large number of children within a short period of time, unexpected deaths, and the survival of one too many widows, created pressures on a family that could provoke financial instability or even terminal decline. The financial fortunes of the Moores of Drogheda over three generations provide a vivid illustration of this. In 1682 Henry Hamilton-Moore, third earl, who had succeeded his brother to the title in 1679, petitioned the king. The earl claimed that his estates, largely in County Louth, yielded an annual rental of £4,159–1s. From this he owed the king £599 6s per annum; had to pay jointures for his mother Alice (£1,000) and his brother’s widow, Isabella (£800);

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and provide an annual allowance of £300 for his younger brother. This left him £1,459 15s ‘to the honour’. It would probably have been sufficient to support the third earl and his wife, Mary, a daughter of the upwardly mobile Sir John Cole of Fermanagh, had it not been for the debts that Henry had also inherited. His grandfather, Charles, second viscount, who had died in 1643, had contracted war liabilities of at least £18,000 and his late brother, also Charles, had added new debts of £115,000. The third earl also had to find £5,000 for his sisters’ portions at a time when his estates were debt ridden and became liable for the ‘many great lawsuits’ in which his brother had been involved, usually with unpaid creditors.154 Yet the need to provide two jointures plus marriage portions for daughters was not unusual. This was an age when marriages were carefully calculated political alliances aimed at securing social aggrandizement and economic gain. The marriage of the eldest son often represented a financial commitment for the whole family, since it involved an increase in a son’s annual allowance and the establishment of a separate household (or in the case of the earl of Cork’s sons, the purchase of English estates). Fathers and sons often took the drawing up of a marriage contract as an opportunity to settle the estates on the heir (see chapter 6). Families also had to provide for younger sons. Sometimes this involved paying for a professional education, usually as a lawyer, or purchasing a military commission. Since most sons married, it often proved necessary to provide them with lands and allowances even if these expenditures strained family finances and created domestic tensions. The size of dowries for women rose over the course of the century from between £500 and £1,000 during the early decades to between £2,500 and £10,000 from the 1630s. By the mid-seventeenth century the average dowry was about £3,000. Less detailed data have survived for the jointures but these rarely generated an annual income of more than £500, a figure that rose with the passage of time and according to the rank of the bride and the wealth of the groom’s family. The financial arrangements surrounding a marriage were often complicated as the two parties haggled over the amount of the jointure, the lands to be settled on the bride and what her dowry might be. The father of the bride (or his agent) was particularly keen to determine the value of the groom’s estate, its rental and the mortgages and debts held against it. Legal Expenditure Routine legal expenses – the drawing up of marriage settlements, trusts, wills, or mediations that settled boundary and other disputes – proved costly, but litigation, especially if it was prolonged, consumed fortunes, leaving some families financially crippled or triggering periods of financial instability for others.155 For example, Viscount Loftus of Ely’s failure to honour a settlement

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made upon the marriage of his eldest son resulted in litigation that dragged on from 1627 until 1680 and even came before the English House of Lords.156 The family never really recovered and went into terminal decline as a result. The bulk of lawsuits in early modern Ireland concerned land and tenurial issues.157 Whether as contested mortgages, landlord–tenant disputes, remedies for defective transfer, or for performance of leases (failure to pay rents, to improve or build property, or deforestation), these highlight the centrality of land to the political, economic and social fabric of early modern Ireland.158 In addition to pursuing cases in the Irish central courts, peers – such as Lords Baltinglass, Castlehaven, Chichester, Cork, Lambert, Ranelagh and Thomond – appear predominantly as plaintiffs in the English courts.159 The Kildare letter-book provides a wonderful insight into the legal wrangling in Dublin and London of George Fitzgerald, sixteenth earl of Kildare, during the 1630s. His infamous dispute with his kinswoman, Lady Offaly, was particularly well documented, together with his case in English Chancery against his maternal uncles who failed to honour the provisions in the will of Kildare’s mother.160 A few peers were also involved in criminal cases which, presumably, cost them dear.161 Peers regularly retained lawyers. From his base in the Middle Temple, the County Louth-born barrister Richard Hadsor looked after the interests of Sir Theobald Dillon, Lords Antrim, Clanricarde, Cork, Dunsany, Kildare and Thomond.162 After 1660 Sir Heneage Finch appears to have assumed Hadsor’s mantle and worked for Catholic and Protestant peers.163 Back in Ireland the earls of Clanricarde, Cork and Ormond employed teams of lawyers to pursue their suits in the Irish courts. For instance, the Catholic earl of Clanricarde surrounded himself with prominent lawyers, including James Donellan, Patrick Darcy, Richard Martin, Garret Moore, Geoffrey Brown and Roebuck Lynch, who acted for him in Dublin and London. After 1660, Nicholas Plunkett, the leading Catholic legal mind in Restoration Ireland, served Ormond, the lord lieutenant, together with his Catholic kinsmen and friends and other aristocrats like Antrim and Orrery. These lawyers also played a critical role in renegotiating legal titles to land and attempted to keep the payment of Crown rents to a minimum, while at the same time increasing rentals by upgrading leases as property was improved.164 Amounts spent on legal expenses and litigation – legal and court fees, together with endless bribes to lesser officials – varied from peer to peer.165 Lady Moore’s account book reveals that between 1602 and 1604 she and her husband pursued cases in the Courts of Chancery, Exchequer and King’s Bench, and in the Court of Wards. In all £1,259 11s 5d was ‘layed out . . . [in] the suete in law’, including ‘fees to councellors and attorneys’ and related expenditure.166 Seeing a single case through the Court of Chancery (Mrs Aston v Rawdon and Petty) cost George Rawdon, Lord Conway’s Ulster

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factor, £500 in legal fees.167 The earl of Antrim was one of Sir Gerard Lowther’s 74 clients and he paid the lawyer 50 shillings in fees between 1623 and 1624.168 Patrick Darcy, a Catholic from Galway, represented the Catholic earls of Clanricarde and Antrim as well as the Protestant earls of Cork, Kildare and Ormond. By 1637 the second earl of Antrim owed Darcy over £1,600, presumably for services rendered.169 The fourth earl of Clanricarde, weary of costly litigation with his kinsmen and fellow peers, instructed his agent in Ireland to settle as many of his lawsuits as possible.170 Litigation almost bankrupted some of Ireland’s leading families, including the Butlers of Ormond and the Fitzgeralds of Kildare. The legal expenses of Walter, eleventh earl of Ormond, for a 12-month period (October 1630 to October 1631) amounted to well over £5,000.171 Squabbles over estates in County Limerick bedevilled the Bourkes, barons of Cahir and of Brittas, throughout the 1630s and all attempts at arbitration failed.172 The Montgomerys of the Ards and the Hamiltons of Claneboy were at loggerheads for decades over disputed lands and access to forests, and Montgomery also feuded with Lords Conway and Hamilton of Abercorn.173 The Montgomery family historian recorded how financial worries during the 1650s forced Viscount Montgomery to sue his brother-in-law, Viscount Moore, for his wife’s portion. This delighted the ‘usurpers’ (i.e. the Cromwellians), who encouraged ‘the king’s friends [to] worry one another at law . . . for they encouraged privately animositys among the loyalists, and publicly let loose upon them all their creditors like fierce mastives, whom the wars had for some years chained up’.174 In the event, Lords Mount Alexander and Moore reached a compromise, but this example highlights the cost of litigation to familial relationships. Legal costs associated with the Restoration land settlement were exceptionally high and represented a major burden on all but the most fortunate families (see chapter 11). Lord Iveagh wrote in 1683 of ‘the extreme indigency I and my family are reduced to, not having bread nor credit to procure one meal’s meat nor any thing but the charity of others’.175 As a result of the expropriations and mortgages of the early seventeenth century, the wars and revolutions of the 1640s and 1650s, and the Restoration land settlement, many peers depended for their survival on Crown handouts.176 These were invariably the families that faded into obscurity as the years passed. Conclusion Whatever the cause there was a perception among many contemporaries that the nobility was becoming impoverished. Writing in the early 1680s, Richard Lawrence blamed the ‘extravagancy of the meaner sort’ for provoking ‘the Nobility and Gentry to that height of Excess herein, to the weakening of their

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Estates, that the same Patrimony their Ancestors lived plentifully on, kept noble Houses, did many good Works, and yet increased their Estates, without taking their Tennants, they cannot live on without running greatly into Debt, some of them till Tradesmen will trust them no more; and all to keep themselves distinguished from their Inferiors.’177 Conspicuous consumption and reckless spending were for Lawrence the greatest evils. He suggested that those ‘who ruine their Estates by prodigality and ill courses, should be degraded from their Dignities; for noble Titles void of noble Estates, and noble Qualities, renders Nobility contemptible, and not only the reproach, but the pest of a Countrey.’178 So did conspicuous consumption and excessive borrowing represent the gravest threat to the Irish titled nobility during the seventeenth century? Keith Brown’s work on Scotland led to the conclusion that ‘while a period of widespread economic difficulties might have affected European nobilities in the later sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, relatively few individual noble houses suffered long-term damage by the time fortunes began to recover c.1680’.179 The evidence for the resident peers suggests that the answer is more complex and in part reflects the more heterogeneous nature of the peerage in Ireland. Thanks to a variety of factors – especially poor harvests, changes in the nature of the Irish economy, the need to improve estates and sheer extravagance – many Irish nobles had borrowed significant amounts by the late 1630s. A decade of intense and bitter warfare, which stripped these noblemen of their assets and estates, reduced the majority to penury.180 Many did recover, although they lived in fear of being arrested by their creditors. Others did not recover. The seventeenth century was one of ‘absolute’ crisis for certain sectors of the Catholic elite. Many low-ranking Gaelic and, to a lesser extent, Old English peers suffered an all-encompassing economic calamity that began during the early decades of the century, as they struggled to come to grips with a commercial economy, and ended with the completion of the land settlement. Natural disasters combined with the need to adapt to a more money- and market-oriented economy, introduced with the plantation, proved particularly lethal for some lesser magnates, especially native Irishmen like Lords Iveagh and Maguire of Enniskillen, all of whom fell deeply into debt prior to 1641. The vicissitudes associated with the wars and expropriations of the mid-seventeenth century created very real financial hardship for many peers and hastened their demise (see chapters 10 and 11). Interestingly, after the Restoration those lords who had survived and prospered attempted to look after the interests of peers who no longer had the means ‘to support his dignity’.181 Ormond, for example, took pity on ‘a very sad peer called Lord Dunboyne, of my name and family’. The impoverished circumstances of Piers Butler, fifth baron Dunboyne, distressed Ormond,

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who wrote ‘I confess it troubles me to see men of worth incapable as well by their religion as education of those advantages and employments that would better become them than many that have them.’182 These lesser Catholic lords, denied their lands and an opportunity to earn income through service, were at a particular disadvantage. Though higher-ranking Catholic nobles, together with the bulk of the Protestant aristocracy, also suffered – especially during the 1640s and 1650s – they nevertheless survived the social, economic and political turmoil caused by the civil war with their power, lands and borrowing capacity largely intact. Yet bankruptcy intermittently threatened Lords Antrim, Clanricarde and Ormond over the course of the century. The second earl of Cork – whose father was the only one of the four not deeply indebted prior to the outbreak of the Irish rebellion – initially prospered, but with the passage of time his estates became increasingly encumbered.183 Similarly, Cork’s brother, Viscount Shannon, and his nephew Lord Barrymore ‘hovered near genteel poverty’; while the need to maintain and provide for an extravagant family, together with the cost of building and furnishing a grandiose house, left the earl of Orrery and his heirs deeply in debt. In other words the costs of political survival, combined with excessive conspicuous consumption, proved enormous. During the later decades of the seventeenth century the inability to finance loans and to service avaricious creditors brought a significant number of these peers to their knees, especially those who had been insolvent prior to the war. For these lords debt was like a chronic disease that did not discriminate in favour of either race or religion, and which took a painfully long time to maim or, in a few instances, to devour.

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CHAPTER 15

Lineage and Formation Though cattle raids were a thing of the past and the bards no longer held

the position of influence that they once had, Ireland, even during the later decades of the seventeenth century, retained many elements of medieval lordship.1 Good lordship remained a highly effective means of exercising power. A lord may have been expected to carry the king’s writ to the corners of his estates, to collect his rents and act as an improving landlord, but he was also expected to respect the obligations associated with good lordship: to reside within his community, to provide hospitality in his castle or ‘great house’, and to offer employment, patronage, justice and protection to his followers and tenants. Ties of blood, marriage, fosterage and clientage continued to allow for the growth of powerful and geographically widespread lordships/lineages. These then underpinned the exercise of political and military power, together with the trust relationships that facilitated economic exchange and high-level social interactions. Established aristocratic houses had built up these inter­ dependent relationships and interlocking bonds of obligation over generations and assimilated the titled newcomers, who initially lacked these networks. The arrivistes, however, quickly constructed their own versions of lordship by negotiating astute marriages, dispensing political and tenurial patronage, and creating economic dependencies, especially through loans and mortgages. Using the Butler lordship/lineage as an example, this chapter analyzes the kin and client networks that sustained Ireland’s premier aristocratic house. The Ormond household and lineage may have been larger than most but they were probably reasonably typical of high-ranking noble houses and are exceptionally well documented thanks to the scholarship of David Edwards and Eleanor O’Keeffe.2 The continuities with the past, as embodied in the lordship/lineage, were very real. But this was also a period of transition and the family unit, which comprised parents and children who were linked by blood or affinity, along with other inhabitants of the household, became increasingly important

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thanks in part to the primacy of primogeniture. A priority was the begetting and safe delivery of children, especially male heirs, who represented the future of any dynasty, and then equipping them with the life skills necessary to provide military and political leadership. Yet the history of these noble children, like that of the early modern family, remains to be written.3 This is partly due to the nature of the evidence and the fact that sources are scrappy and anecdotal. Bearing this caveat in mind, what do they tell us about the birth and rearing of noble children? What was the nature of the parent–child relationship? Space precludes a full discussion of domestic relationships within noble families, especially between siblings or those across the generations (grandchildren often formed an important element in a noble household). Instead this chapter focuses on the key relationship, which was the one between a father and his eldest son. Occasionally, an ambitious lineage established a cadet branch for a younger son but many experienced downward social mobility, though provision of an allowance or a military or clerical career could soften this.4 The final goal of this chapter is to examine how noble sons were educated and how this contributed to the Crown’s efforts to civilize and anglicize Ireland. Education in this period was not so much about the acquisition of knowledge as about gaining social and physical skills, along with the opportunity to forge excellent contacts with other men of rank and to secure the patronage of political power brokers. How many nobles attended school and university and where? Increasingly, Irish aristocrats sent their sons on grand tours of the Continent, which exposed them to European culture and values and ensured they got practical experience of continental warfare. How did education and travel modify the religious beliefs and mentalities of these young men and help to forge a common noble mindset? And how did periods of military service in continental armies prepare sons for service to their lineage and sovereign? Kinship and Clientage Networks Bonds of kinship, clientage and patronage pervaded early modern Irish society much as they did contemporary Europe. In neighbouring Scotland kinship ‘persisted as a powerful societal bond, even if it was reinforced and stretched’.5 Based on ties of blood and marriage, kinship was involuntary; clientage was voluntary and linked to the exercise of patronage.6 Both invoked sensitive bonds of obligation and involved reciprocity in that a kinsman or client offered loyalty in return for a lord’s assistance or patronage. Fosterage and to a lesser extent godparenting extended these bonds and the obligations and loyalties that ties of blood conferred.7 As in Scotland, ‘The number of kinsmen a nobleman could summon . . . was a crucial indicator of political

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potency.’8 Most newcomers initially lacked these extended kin and client bases though some, such as the Annesleys, Boyles, Chichesters and Loftuses, quickly created them in order to enhance their ability to exercise power (see chapter 6). Thus throughout the century many resident peers – old and new, Catholic and Protestant – were committed to nurturing, protecting and promoting their kin and other dependants, along with their immediate family members, and used friendship, fosterage, godparenting and marriage to create and cement patron–client relationships or to forge new connections. As a result very powerful and often interdependent networks of influence operated around established titled families, especially those with cadet branches such as the Bourkes, Butlers and O’Briens. Consider the extensive kin and clientage links of the Butlers of Ormond (figure 9). First, Ormond was overlord to five cadet branches of the Butler family – Cahir, Dunboyne, Galmoy, Ikerrin and Mountgarret – who matched with leading local families, together with English Catholic women, and between them were capable of rallying thousands of followers. Second, Ormond’s siblings and half-brothers married into some of Ireland’s greatest houses. His twin sister, Ellen, married Viscount Muskerry, later earl of Clancarthy; his second sister, Elizabeth, wed James Purcell, titular baron of Loughmoe; and his third sister, Mary, married Sir George Hamilton, the fourth son of the earl of Abercorn. His youngest brother, Richard of Kilcash, married Frances, a daughter of the second earl of Castlehaven, and was grandfather to the third earl of Westmeath. Third, after the Restoration the main house of Ormond spawned the junior lines of Arran, Gowran and Ossory, and allied itself with a number of great English aristocratic families (figure 10). This consolidated marriages that Ormond’s predecessors had contracted with English noble families and the Scottish and English links that Lady Ormond, née Preston, brought to the family. Fourth, as the owner of vast Irish estates Ormond served as the overlord for thousands of tenants and townsmen, and even though he alienated many, especially in the 1630s and 1640s, after the Restoration he was their primary source of protection and patronage (discussed in chapter 11). Finally, Ormond was also guardian or godfather to the offspring of titled families across Ireland whose interests he watched over and whose loyalty he commanded (discussed in chapter 5). These relationships were constantly being reviewed and, to some degree, Ormond’s interactions with his kin and clients also depended on his continued ability to dispense largesse and patronage. At their peak these relationships created ‘an impenetrable block of kinship’.9 With varying degrees of effectiveness, Ormond guarded the landed and familial interests of his wider kin group despite the Catholicism of the majority. Understandably, his connections with his immediate family were strongest. Despite experiencing a number of upheavals during his childhood years, which separated him from his Catholic mother, Ormond remained in

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* Donald Jackson, Intermarriage in Ireland 1550–1650 (Montreal, 1970).

Figure 9.  House of Ormond, wider lineage.*

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* Eleanor O’Keefe, ‘The Family and Marriage Strategies of James Butler, 1st duke of Ormond’ (PhD thesis, Cambridge, 2000).

Figure 10.  House of Ormond, nuclear family.*

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close contact with her and her second family, by George Mathew of Thurles. Before she died in 1673 the duke promised to treasure their correspondence, even if she had been pressing him to return to Catholicism: ‘The letters I shall ever carefully keep by me, as dear remembrances of a virtuous mother, who has left an unblemished memory and I hope many other blessings to our family.’10 He also remained close to his siblings, especially his twin sister, Lady Clancarthy. The Ormonds were attentive parents to a nuclear family of three sons and two daughters, who had grown up or been born during the difficult days of the 1640s and 1650s: Thomas, earl of Ossory (b.1634), Richard, earl of Arran (b.1639), John, earl of Gowran (b.1643); Elizabeth, countess of Chesterfield (b.1640) and Mary, Lady Cavendish (b.1646). The Ormonds had at least 24 grandchildren, only 11 of whom survived into adulthood and spent much time with their grandparents. The duke guarded their interests fiercely and matched them wisely.11 In addition to his kinsmen and members of his household, Ormond offered his patronage to hundreds of academics, actors, administrators, architects, clergymen, courtiers, poets, servants, soldiers and writers. Domestic patronage often took the form of positions in large households which formed the centre of a noble lifestyle.12 During the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries the Ormonds employed a small army of domestic servants: ushers and porters to guard access to their castles, victuallers and cooks to provide and prepare food, maids and laundresses to clean, blacksmiths, saddlers and stable boys to care for horses, and woodsmen to chop wood.13 By the later seventeenth century the duke of Ormond’s household comprised his nuclear family, one or two secretaries, a steward, a comptroller, two chaplains, a gentleman of the horse, another of the chamber, and 12 other ‘gentlemen’ together with their butlers and grooms. During his tenure as chief governor he also kept close to hand a large entourage of bureaucrats, military officers and clergymen.14 A seemingly endless number of servants – butlers, wine butlers, ushers, porters, kitchen boys, ‘scavengers’, firemakers, housekeepers, housemaids, cooks, bakers, butchers, grooms and coachmen – ensured that the duke’s household ran smoothly.15 Gardeners, groundsmen and gamekeepers attended to the surrounding demesne, while harpists, bands of musicians and storytellers provided entertainment for the duke, his family, his guests and his lineage, as they did in aristocratic homes across Ireland.16 A core of these servants would have accompanied the duke as he moved between his residences in Dublin and London or to his country estates. Of course, the costs of running the Ormond household and providing hospitality proved very considerable yet they were deemed essential for keeping up appearances (see chapter 14).17 Little is known of other titled households, but that of Richard, first earl of Westmeath, was probably fairly typical of middle-ranking lords. Of Old

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English provenance, the Nugents of Delvin and Westmeath were amongst the top titled landowners in the Pale with estates of 40,346 plantation acres spread over seven counties, but primarily in County Westmeath. The family had strong kinship links with other noble dynasties, including the Fitzgeralds of Kildare, Fitzpatricks of Upper Ossory, MacDonnells of Antrim, O’Briens of Inchiquin, O’Dempseys of Clanmalier, Plunketts of Fingal, Prestons of Gormanston and St Lawrences of Howth. In 1641 the Westmeath household included the elderly earl, his wife Jane, possibly some adult children (the couple had five married sons and two spinster daughters), his grandson and heir, Richard, later second earl, a cook, an undercook, a butler, coachman, tailor, ‘postillion’, wine man, bailiff and groom. Given the sincerity of his religious convictions, Westmeath probably kept a Catholic chaplain as well.18 During the early decades of the seventeenth century Gaelic lords maintained large households of servants, brehons (or lawyers), hereditary physicians, harpists, bards, minstrels, ballad singers, storytellers (seanchaidhthe) and even swordsmen. In the pre-war years Viscount Muskerry and the earls of Antrim kept an extensive Gaelic retinue that included bards, musicians, poets and priests.19 In return for rent-free farms and other privileges, they entertained and glorified local lords and their followers.20 The Protestant fourth earl of Thomond was an improving and anglicizing lord yet retained many of the vestiges of a traditional Irish lord and, like his ancestors, remained a patron to the Gaelic literary classes.21 In his will, Donough reminded his heir to nurture his native Irish followers, as well as the newcomers: ‘Be true, respective and honourably affected towards the gentlemen and inhabitants of Thomond, whom I have ever found as honest and faithful followers to me as any noblemen had and so I assure . . . they will grow to my children if they be wisely and honourably [treated] . . . which I enjoin my said sons to do; as also the[y] cherish and favour all the English amongst them.’22 Similarly, in 1639 Henry, fifth earl of Thomond, asked that his servants be given their ‘diet and lodgings’ for a year after his death and that there be ‘maintenance and reward of my servants, followers and dependants, that have so long followed and served my father and myself ’.23 Both Catholic and Protestant lords exercised a local military function and many leases included a clause obliging a tenant to contribute to ‘all risings and general hostings and other public services’. The first earl of Antrim tried to streamline his military establishment in accordance with English practice and in 1625, as the Spaniards threatened to invade Ireland once again, he asked that his men be suitably attired with his colours (crimson and yellow taffeta) and properly equipped with the latest weapons, since he was loath to let them ‘go to the field like kernes’.24 A muster roll dating from c.1630 gave an overview of the arms held in Counties Antrim and Down. The earl of

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Antrim’s tenants held 892 weapons, 374 of which were swords; Viscount Montgomery’s possessed 1,012 weapons, 339 of which were swords; Viscount Claneboye’s held 928 weapons, 611 of which were swords and pikes; Lord Cromwell of Lecale’s possessed 504 weapons, 239 of which were swords.25 These men formed the basis of the armies that their lords called to arms during the 1640s (see chapter 9). Despite their defeat in the civil war, many recusant peers remained part of the ‘fighting culture’. An inventory of arms licences issued to Catholics dating from 1673 shows that Lords Barnewall of Kingsland, Bermingham of Athenry, Carlingford, Clanricarde, Dillon, Fingal, Netterville, Slane, Trimleston, Upper Ossory and Westmeath each held a case of pistols for their private use, together with additional cases for their servants. Westmeath not only secured seven cases for himself use but signed for an additional 14 cases for family members.26 The importance in medieval Ireland of guesting (or of demanding hospitality from followers, in a practice known as ‘coshering’) and feasting as a public display of a lord’s power over his followers cannot be overstated. Though ‘coshering’ and providing victuals for these lavish feasts placed enormous burdens on followers, especially during times of dearth, these traditions enhanced a lord’s standing and status within his lordship in much the same way that maintaining a large household did. The government effectively suppressed the practice of guesting, but feasting and the provision of hospitality remained a central feature of Irish households and was intimately linked to a lord’s honour and reputation, as it was in early modern England and Scotland.27 Key rights of passage – birth, marriage and death – provided the occasion for lavish feasts. A text of the masque performed at the wedding of Lord Ridgeway’s daughter in 1610 at Rathfarnham castle has survived.28 An account of a masque performed in Lord Barrymore’s castle in December 1632 is also extant.29 On the one hand, these were reminiscent of the feasting culture of bygone years, but on the other they served as a potent reminder of the continued power and influence of a dynasty and the number of followers a lord might command. In a eulogy composed in memory of his patron, Edmund Butler, third baron of Dunboyne, who died in 1640, Pádraigín Haicéad celebrated his generosity and hospitality: mansion full with foods and peoples, of the liveliest drinking-parties, of many varied wines and feastings, never, never, mean with spices.30

Another Gaelic poet, Dónall Ó Ceallacháin, who died in 1709, also wrote of the lavish hospitality associated with the ‘big house’:

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crowds for the great house merrily heading, crowds collapsing with fevered pulse, drunken crowds, no harm to their neighbours, and ignorant crowds conversing loudly . . . harp-tunes playing melodiously, histories read by the learned and wise, with flawless accounts of every Order and family name that arose in Europe.31

A failure to extend hospitality brought great shame on a lord. One anonymous poet, who described himself as ‘a poor friar and a priest for God’s helpless creatures’, lambasted the marquis of Clanricarde for refusing him hospitality when he visited him on his English estates in Kent.32 In addition to lavish feasts that brought together followers, clients and kinsmen, the nobility constantly socialized.33 They dined with each other and invited guests for lengthy stays on their country estates, where by day they enjoyed outdoor pursuits – hunting, shooting, tennis, bowling or walking – and in the evenings played cards, danced, and listened to harpists, musicians and storytellers. Hunting, with its complex rituals and close associations with the king and his court, was a particularly important pastime, and even at the height of civil war in the 1640s lords found time for stag and wolf hunting.34 Hunting helped to define the nobility and to create bonds of reciprocity across the peerage, as lords sent each other gifts of horses, deer, dogs (especially Irish wolfhounds) and hawks, and exchanged gamekeepers and woodsmen.35 Pictures of boar and stag hunting adorned the walls of their castles.36 Lords guarded jealously any rights they had to hunting, shooting or fishing. The favoured few (Lords Antrim, Chichester, Clanricarde, Cork, Kildare, Loftus, Meath, Mountgarret and Ormond) secured licences from the king to develop deer parks and build hunting lodges on their estates.37 The other great leisure pursuits were card playing and horse racing. The best horses in Ireland competed for ‘Lord Donegal’s plate’, ‘Lord Conway’s plate’ and ‘the Earl of Mount Alexander’s plate’.38 In 1684 the earls of Ardglass and Mount Alexander petitioned the king for a warrant to establish a racecourse and breeding stables in County Down and to give his blessing to the endowing of a plate.39 By the mid-eighteenth century horse races were being run in at least 72 locations across Ireland.40 Exclusive activities like horse racing and hunting helped to create a common sense of identity for the nobility, and government officials often worried that plots were hatched ‘under colour of hunting’ or at the card tables.41 These social and sporting occasions also allowed young nobles to network with their peers, while pursuits like hunting helped to imbue them with a chivalric and martial

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culture, encourage good horsemanship and marksmanship, and cultivate the skills that a soldier was expected to possess. Children Though the wider kin group remained important, early modern Irish titled families became increasingly centred on the nuclear family – and children were at the heart of this.42 The principal purpose of a noble marriage was to produce a male heir (and ideally a ‘spare’) who would reach majority prior to his father’s death, and pre-marital negotiations invariably included discussions of the ability of a potential bride to conceive and give birth.43 As the examination of marriage illustrates (see chapter 6), fathers then used children to extend or to consolidate family fortunes and alliances, yet little is known about attitudes towards children or how they related to their parents – aside from Nicholas Canny’s pioneering study of the Boyle family.44 No paintings of seventeenth-century titled Irish families appear to be extant, though a number of funeral monuments depict the family unit as ordered and hierarchical (see plates 10 and 11, and discussed in chapter 16).45 A fine portrait of Elizabeth, later duchess of Ormond, and her three year-old son, Thomas, later earl of Ossory, has been attributed to David des Granges (see plate 6). The boy, dressed in an embroidered green gown with a linen and lace collar and cuffs, gingerly holds his mother’s hand and in his other hand rests a plumed hat. The only portrait of a noble child by himself that appears to have survived is a painting of Murrough O’Brien, later earl of Inchiquin, as a 10-year-old boy. The portrait was presumably painted shortly after his father died and shows a rather timid child with fine features and shoulder-lengthdark hair. He is dressed in adult clothing, wearing a pale and delicately embroidered jacket with a lace collar. His gloved hand rests on a stick and a sword hangs by his side, as a reminder of his role in society. Where a noble child was born was of no real significance, though hostile commentators claimed that noblewomen hurried from Ireland to England to have their babies. The anonymous author of the Aphorismical Discovery of Treasonable Faction ridiculed ‘many ladies and gentlwomen of qualitie’ who, he claimed, rushed to have their babies in England and have their sons ‘reputed Englishmen by reason of theire said birth, though Irishmen by descente and education’.46 In fact only a few nobles, like the duke of Ormond, were actually born in England though others alleged that they had been. For example, the marquis of Clanricarde later claimed that ‘I was born in Clanricarde-house, Great Queen Street, Lincoln’s-inn-fields, London.’47 A letter from Sir John Davies proves otherwise. Writing in December 1604, Davies noted that he had spent the past two months in Connaught with the fourth earl, the marquis’s father, at Galway and then at Athlone, ‘where his

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lady, being then big with child, and now delivered of a son, then lay’.48 In being born in Ireland, the marquis was typical of the majority of resident peers, including Protestant ones, who made much of their Irish births when it suited their political interests in England or Ireland to do so.49 Far more important than the place of birth was the fact that a noblewoman delivered healthy male children and in sufficient number to increase the chance that one son would live to succeed his father. In the absence of effective contraception the age of a bride at marriage was likely to determine the numbers of babies born. Since titled women married earlier, were well nourished and used wet nurses, the period when lactation affected ovulation was shorter and they tended to produce more children. In Scotland ‘among first marriages, the most important category, only 13 per cent produced no children, the figure rising to 27 per cent for second marriages, and 38 per cent for third marriages, producing an overall figure of 18 per cent of all marriages being childless, a figure close to that found in England’.50 Historians have calculated that after five years of marriage a titled couple, where the bride had married under the age of 25, could expect to have two children and that a male child would be produced on average within four years of marriage. In early modern Scotland ‘356 peers produced 2,011 children, an average of 5.6 children each over the course of a lifetime, and of this number 1,635, or an average of 4.6 outlived their fathers’.51 English peerage families also produced on average five recorded children each.52 It has been suggested that over the course of the seventeenth century there was an overall decline in fertility: the mean family size in the pre-1649 years exceeded five children, which fell to four by the final quarter of the century. This reduced the probability of producing a surviving male child.53 Though impressionistic, the evidence from Ireland appears to accord with these statistics for England and Scotland. Close analysis of extant data for 16 ‘Scottish peers’ who married suggests that they fathered, usually with their first wives, a total of 78 children, 48 of whom were boys and 30 girls. Although the sample is small, these figures indicate that the average family size for the ‘Scottish peers’ was five, which is quite low given the apparent young age of brides at marriage (the evidence here is scant and impressionistic, but brides appear to have been in their late teens when they married) but accords with Scottish and English averages. Families of between four and six children appear to have been common across the resident peerage but some families were considerably larger. It was not unusual for a lord to father at least 10 children, often with 2 wives. Viscount Mountnorris sired 21 children (13 sons and 9 daughters) by his two spouses. Katherine Fenton, the earl of Cork’s second wife, had 15 children over 23 years (8 between 1606 and 1616). Mary Fitzgerald was 14 when she married 48-year-old Patrick De Courcy, fifteenth Baron Courcy of Kinsale, and bore him 23 children – none

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of whom were twins. He died in 1663 and she lived until 1678. The physical and psychological impact on Mary’s health of bearing so many children, only seven of whom appear to have survived into adulthood, is unknown.54 Childbearing could be extremely hazardous and pregnancy was a period of great anxiety in any family.55 Miscarriages were common. The second earl of Antrim’s wife, the duchess of Buckingham, in her early thirties when she married for the second time, conceived immediately but miscarried a few months later and bore Antrim no children (she had had five with the duke of Buckingham).56 Anne Hyde, the first wife of the second duke of Ormond, died after a miscarriage, a few days before her seventeenth birthday.57 Writing in 1669, Viscount Massareene reported that his wife was ‘with child, and hath not stirred from home; she is now very big, and much past ye time of her former frequent miscarriages’.58 Having carried a child to term, the dangers associated with the delivery were very real. Viscount Conway worried that his wife’s poor general health and ‘the shape of her body’ would make her delivery particularly difficult. In the event Lady Conway gave birth on 7 February 1659 to a son, Heneage. In June his father reported that the baby was well and that they planned to wean him since Lady Conway believed that his wet nurse would infect him with ‘many diseases’. The following month Conway replaced Heneage’s nurse, complaining that she had injured him three times.59 Sadly, Heneage died in October 1660 of smallpox, and thereafter the couple remained childless. The earl of Cork, who lost his first wife and son in childbirth, along with his daughter Sarah who had had a premature daughter, understandably fretted over the births of his children and his 40 grandchildren. In August 1639 he updated his son-in-law, Lord Ranelagh, on the progress of the pregnancy of Cork’s daughter Katherine. Cork insisted she could not travel from Dorset to Ireland since a journey ‘might hazard the loss of the blessing I know you desire soe much’. The couple had married in 1630 and the family anxiously awaited the birth of a male heir. Cork went on to relate the circumstances of Katherine’s delivery. He reported that on 17 August ‘my [dear] daughters paynes began to grow vpon her’ and shortly after she gave birth to ‘a boy-wench’ with ‘all of the Ladyes with her at home’. Fearing that the premature infant would die, they immediately christened him ‘Frank’ but ‘god be praysed, they both liue and increase in health and strength’. The birth had left Katherine feeling ‘weake and sickly . . . brought to death’s doore with this immature [premature] delivery and child-birth’. A doctor confined her to bed for six months.60 Frank did not survive and it was August 1641 before Katherine gave birth in her brother’s house in London to Richard, heir to the house of Ranelagh. Having done their duty, the couple then separated (discussed in chapter 6). Frank’s birth almost cost his mother’s life. The death rate of mothers in childbirth was between 2 and 5 per cent in early modern Europe, and in

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Scotland ‘More noble women died in childbirth than noblemen died in bloodfeuds, and even for those who did not die the experience of childbirth could cause all sorts of complications.’61 Lawrence Stone has suggested that the mortality rate amongst married English women was very high, with 45 per cent dying before reaching the age of 50 and a quarter of these deaths being the result of childbearing.62 Though the death rate is difficult to calculate with certainty, noblewomen in Ireland were presumably as vulnerable as their English counterparts. Cork’s first wife, one of his daughters, the first wife of Viscount Mountnorris, Viscount Conway’s second wife and many others all died in childbirth. The first wife of the earl of Mount Alexander died a fortnight after giving birth to her fourth child, who had predeceased her. Others, for whom no record survives, died under similar circumstances. Though equally poorly documented, rates of infant mortality were probably as high in Ireland as elsewhere. In early modern England 20 per cent of children died in the first year of life and a further 18 per cent between the ages of one and five.63 Mortality rates for males under the age of 15 were about one-third. In Ireland children who died as infants rarely left a paper trail.64 Those who survived birth and the critical first year of life were still vulnerable to disease, illnesses and accidents, as the above example of Heneage Conway illustrates. Lady Ormond gave birth to eight sons, only four of whom survived beyond the age of 10. Two died as young infants, one perished, aged six months, as a result of a coaching accident, and another died at the age of nine. The death of the earl of Arran’s three sons in infancy or early childhood caused great sadness. An exchange between Arran and his father, the second duke of Ormond, captured their distress over the illness of his eldest son, Thomas, who was with his grandparents in Ireland. On 29 May 1681 the duke reported that Thomas had ‘grown so much worse that I despair of his recovery’.65 Two days later the child died. When Arran, then in London, learned of his son’s death he wrote to his father: I shall never mention him more, that I cannot tell which reflection afflicts me most, that of the loss of an only son without the probable expectation of ever having another, or the great care and concern both my mother and you have shown and owned in your letters to have for him and me in this just correction of God Almighty.66

Arran despaired of having other children. A few days later he wrote to his father that ‘I am prepared for the worst, though it will be no small affliction especially when I consider that it is more than probable that my wife’s last sickness will hinder her bringing any more children or at least healthy ones.’67 Though it is anecdotal, the evidence suggests that parents and grandparents invested considerable emotional energy in their children and developed

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loving and positive relationships with them. In 1664 smallpox claimed the only son (b.1643) of Mary, Lady Warwick, a daughter of the earl of Cork. Of his death she wrote, ‘I loved him at a rate, that if my heart do not deceive me, I could, with all the willingness in the world, have died either for him or with him.’68 During his dark days living in Dublin in the 1650s Hugh Montgomery, first earl of Mount Alexander, took great comfort in his ‘dear children’ who gave him the will to live, especially after the death in 1655 of his first wife and his own bouts of illness and depression. ‘I had no desire to live,’ he wrote in 1657, ‘butt [for] the good of my poore children.’69 In her letters Anne, Lady Dungannon, Katherine Philip’s confidante, expressed concern for ‘my poore helpless infants’ and vowed to do what she could for her young children who were ‘more innocent than I’. She hoped that ‘God will raise them friends and preserve them from prejudices of all kindes’. Anne had at least seven children (four died young) and she closely supervised their early education. The earl of Ossory had 12 children, five of whom survived into adulthood, and their grandfather the duke of Ormond took particular care of them, especially the eldest, James, heir to the Butler lineage.70 James was cosseted and indulged as a child and Ormond fussed over the boy’s health, upbringing and education, especially after the boy lost his father in 1680. Parents appear to have taken a keen interest in the welfare of their children, but separation from an early age was common especially among titled families who handed over their babies to wet nurses or foster parents. In the pre-war years fostering remained reasonably widespread amongst all communities and it was usual for a child to be raised in the home of a close political ally or of a prospective match, which was viewed as a means of supplementing links between social and political equals. Boys between the ages of 7 and 17 and girls between the ages of 7 and 14 lived with foster families, but for some the relationship began with wet nursing. Foster families enjoyed powerful and lasting bonds of obligation and created a dual family structure which in late medieval Gaelic Ireland had destabilized nuclear units by emphasizing foster relationships over blood ones.71 By the early seventeenth century, as noted earlier, the key relationship was between a biological father and his eldest son.72 Where the evidence does survive, as in the cases of the Butlers of Ormond or Boyles of Cork, parents appear to have had good relationships with their children and to have done everything possible to promote family unity and honour. Even if there were spats, especially with eldest sons over allowances or other financial matters or tensions over the choice of a marriage partner, these rarely came into public purview and children dutifully obeyed the wishes of their parents.73 The earl of Cork may have fostered out most of his children but he remained the only source of authority in the home.74 For example, Robert Boyle, the earl of Cork’s youngest son and the great scientist, was reared by a foster mother in the country and sent to Eton at the age of

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eight. Robert later wrote that his father believed that ‘great men’s children breeding up at home tempts them to nicety, to pride and idleness, and contributes much more to give them a good opinion of themselves than to make them deserve it’.75 Robert never knew his mother, who died when he was three, and his elder sisters effectively mothered him, especially Lady Ranelagh. Robert went on to become his father’s favourite and did not appear to resent these early separations or question the earl’s parental authority.76 Increasingly, formal education, especially attendance at boarding school, university or at one of the Inns of Court, replaced fosterage, especially for Protestant teenage boys. Whether at home or at school, noble boys needed to learn the skills required to serve the Crown and their lineage: to become skilled horsemen and warriors, to write and read with fluency in a number of languages, to run estates as improving landlords, to dance and socialize, to hunt and shoot, to be men of God, to exercise power and influence, and to behave honourably. The ‘upstart’ first earl of Cork encapsulated this in his will when he asked that his Barrymore grandson receive ‘a Noble, Virtuous and Religious, Education . . . who by good Honourable Breeding may (by God’s Grace) either by the favour of his Prince, or by his Service to his King and Country, or a good Marriage, redeem and bring home that ancient and hon[oura]ble House’.77 In short, if young lords, like Barrymore, were to serve their God, king and country, never mind their lineage, they had to show themselves to be godly men of breeding and honour. Moreover, they had to learn the skills used by men of war and men of learning, and to feel comfortable deploying both.78 Schooling and Education Contemporaries were acutely aware of the ‘civilizing’ influence of education or, as Richard Stanihurst put it, the need ‘to breed in the rudest of our people resolute English hearts’ and make them ‘good members of this commonwealth’.79 The sixteenth-century humanist writer and colonist, Sir William Herbert, argued that ‘The greatest pains should be taken to ensure that children are raised and educated in a godly and virtuous fashion. Their tender age is very like a newly made jar, and a jar will long preserve the aroma with which it had once been imbued when new.’80 Education was confessionally charged and contested. From the midsixteenth century the Crown recognized the significance of state-controlled schooling as a means of promoting anglicization and Protestantism.81 In 1618 and again in 1620 Patrick Fitzmaurice, later baron of Kerry and Lixnaw, who had been raised as a Protestant by his mother and her brother, the earl of Thomond, complained that his Catholic father had refused ‘to allow him fit maintenance for his education’.82 Lord Kerry was typical of other Catholic fathers who resisted Protestant attempts to educate their children. In an

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‘appeal’ to the king of Spain dating from the early 1620s Catholics indicated they wished to build two universities and to establish private schools where they could educate ‘all types of student’ free from the influence of ‘heretical schoolmasters’.83 A remonstrance of 1641 complained that Catholics had been ‘debarred from education and learning, in that no schoolmaster of our religion is admitted to teach, nor any admitted to be bred beyond the seas; and the one only university of Ireland doth exclude all Catholicks, thereby to make us utterly ignorant of literature and civil breeding’.84 Writing in 1672 the archbishop of Armagh reflected on the dangers of Catholics sending their sons to Protestant schools and how this represented a ‘great risk to their faith, as you can well imagine: delicate young plants are very susceptible to a harmful bend unless a remedy is taken from the start’.85 Despite its importance, little is known about the early educational experience of these ‘delicate young plants’ aside from the fact that it combined formal schooling in the ‘liberal arts’, initially in the household, with practical pursuits such as playing sports, hunting and regular attendance at worship.86 Randal MacDonnell, later marquis of Antrim, was ‘bred the highland way’ wearing ‘neither hat, cap, nor shoe, nor stocking’ until he was seven or eight years old.87 Randal, who was literate and reasonably learned, must have received some formal tutoring of which no record survives. A chronicler later dubbed him ‘the matchless Musophilus’, which suggested that he loved poetry, and represented the earl as a ‘great patron of artes and armes’.88 This was true of others. How, for example, David, Viscount Roche of Fermoy, became learned in Irish, Latin and French is unknown but presumably he was first taught at home and possibly attended school. He also appears to have spent some time at ‘Oxenford’.89 Though the details are sketchy, Gerald, later second Baron Aungier, was ‘carefully educated at home and abroad’ (in 1615 he was admitted to Gray’s Inn), and became a skilled mathematician and linguist in oriental and other languages.90 The tutor was often the family priest or chaplain, but specialists also provided lessons in modern languages, Latin and Greek.91 The poet John Milton taught the earl of Ranelagh’s son in London, along with the children of the wider Boyle clan, such as the earl of Barrymore.92 James Ussher, archbishop of Armagh, oversaw the education of Wentworth Dillon, later fourth earl of Roscommon, who went on to become quite a distinguished literary figure.93 Though the details are hazy, girls appear to have been schooled at home alongside their brothers. Rose O’Neill, who later married the marquis of Antrim, was educated ‘under the tuition of a careful, kind and religious mother’ and became ‘a diligent and constant reader of the Holy scripture, obliging herself to great portions of it every day’.94 In addition to learning to read and write, some were taught French and Latin and were encouraged to read histories as well as religious books.95 Girls also received tuition in

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practical pursuits like needlework, the art of polite conversation and, presumably, some instruction on how to run a household.96 In preparation for their lives as wives and mothers it was common for girls from the great aristocratic Irish families to spend time living in England with a family of comparable or greater rank. Writing in 1630 the earl of Cork insisted that the earl of Kildare’s sister be ‘civilly and religiously bred’ in London. In Cork’s ‘opinion Ireland holds no comparison with England for the education of a young lady, here being neither means to breed her well nor marry her well’.97 Some girls received an education abroad. For example, in 1624 the earl of Westmeath placed his two daughters in a convent in the Low Countries.98 In the late 1680s Baron Trimleston provided in his will funds for his two eldest girls to ‘tarry and abide in the convent of St. Maloe in France where they now are’, each receiving £1,450 at marriage; while the two younger girls were to be sent on Trimleston’s death to the same convent, ‘where they are for their breeding and education to remain until they severally attain the respective ages of 17 years’ (they were to receive £1,000 as their marriage portions).99 Daughters of the peers were effectively destined for the altar, but a significant number of Catholic girls, including the daughters of Lords Clanricarde, Dillon of Costello-Gallen, Fingal, Gormanston, Ormond and Westmeath, opted for a religious career (for details see chapter 5). A hostile government report dating from the 1610s claimed that there was a ‘popish schoolmaster’ in every parish, often teaching 100 ‘scholars’. They represented a ‘great hindrance to the minister of the gospel’, who sometimes struggled to get any students.100 In the 1630s noble recusant children were schooled by the Franciscans at their houses in Drogheda, Dublin and Multyfarnham.101 Despite periodic persecution Catholic schools flourished in Dublin, Galway, Kilkenny, Limerick and Waterford, and there were smaller ones in Clonmel, New Ross and Wexford. For example, Jenico, later seventh Viscount Gormanston, attended the Jesuit school in Kilkenny during the 1640s and the text of a play performed there is extant.102 Though the details are lost, other noble families, such as the Barnewalls of Trimleston and the Prestons of Slane, sent their children to schools in France.103 Protestant schools enjoyed the full backing of the state. The earl of Barrymore briefly attended the free school in Cork before moving to London.104 In 1614 the Dublin administration ordered that Lord Bermingham of Athenry’s 14-yearold grandchild ‘be brought up at the Free School in Dublin’ (it is not clear that the lord actually complied with this).105 Theobald, later fourth Viscount Mayo, attended the Dublin free school during the early 1650s before moving to England. Sir John Clotworthy, later Viscount Massareene, and Connor, Lord Maguire, were schooled together.106 A minority of noble boys received their schooling in England. In 1601 Lord Slane sent his son to London ‘for his better breeding and training up in

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such laudable qualities as that place affords’, but lack of money (or so he claimed) forced him to bring his heir home after two years.107 The future earl of Ormond spent a brief spell at the Catholic school in Finchley; the heir to the house of Howth attended Colchester grammar school; Francis, later Baron Aungier, was a pupil at Westminster School and the earl of Cork was at King’s School in Canterbury. The most popular destination for young Irish lords was Eton which, according to Robert Boyle, was ‘then very much thronged with young nobility’.108 The Eton College register, which is sadly incomplete, nevertheless records the presence of Henry, the eldest son of the fourth earl of Thomond (1600–1); Lord Barrymore (1617–20); Con O’Neill, a younger son of the disgraced earl of Tyrone; the three sons of Viscount Baltinglass (1630–2); Francis and Robert Boyle (1635–9); and the earl of Anglesey’s sons and grandsons, Charles (1642), Arthur (1693–7) and James (1689–90). Towards the end of the century the sons of the eighth earl of Clanricarde, along with the earl of Orrery’s grandson, also attended Eton.109 Given the fundamental importance of education in shaping young minds, it was ‘expedient that care be taken of the education of the eldest sons of noblemen’.110 During the early 1610s the Dublin administration conducted an ‘audit’ of all the Catholic peers, and indicated the age of their heir and where the boy was being educated. Lord Kerry’s eldest son, who had been reared as a Protestant by the earl of Thomond, was ‘in the college of Dublin, and now ready to come to England’. A few were already being educated in England: Lord Mountgarret’s eldest son, for example, was at school in St Albans and Lord Upper Ossory’s heir was ‘a suitor at court’. The heirs to Lords Dunboyne and Dunsany were wards of the king.111 Many lords procrastinated and did everything possible to delay sending their sons away. The excuses varied: Lords Delvin and Gormanston pleaded that the ‘weakness’ of their estates would prevent them providing ‘maintenance’ appropriate for the ‘quality’ of their sons, who were in any case of ‘tender’ years, sickly and unfit to travel. Viscount Dunluce, later earl of Antrim, claimed that his son was too young to travel but promised to send him away the following year.112 Since the majority of these youths were ‘of tender years’, the state required them to ‘be brought up in the College [i.e. Trinity College Dublin], until convenient time for their coming to England’.113 A desire both to make Ireland English and to equip young nobles with the skills needed for a life in government, court and society ensured that Trinity College became the ‘place where the children of all sorts of people of this kingdom are seasoned and fitted for the service of the church and commonwealth’.114 Elizabeth I had founded Trinity in 1592 ‘to serve for a colledge for lernyinge whereby knowledge and civilitie might be increased by thinstruction [sic] of our people there, wherof many have usually heretofore used to travaille into ffrance [sic], Italy and Spaine to gett lernyinge in such fforraine universities where they may

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have been infected with poperie and other ill qualities, and so become evill subietts’.115 During the seventeenth century the sons of successive generations of the Bourkes of Castle Connell and Cromwells of Ardglass attended Trinity, along with the heirs to the houses of Blayney, Claneboye, Docwra, Kerry, Lanesborough, Orrery and Powerscourt. Some were there as wards.116 In 1618 Laurence, later Baron Esmond, had been granted the wardship of his nephew Edmund, fourth Baron Bourke of Castle Connell, on the condition that he educated him at Trinity.117 How many of these young nobles progressed to university outside Ireland? It appears that the heirs of at least 65 resident lords, or 21 per cent of 311 peers who lived in Ireland over the course of the seventeenth century, received some sort of university education, often along with their younger brothers. The evidence is, however, impressionistic and is further complicated by the fact that not all noble youths who attended university or the Inns of Court matriculated or graduated. Others studied at both university and the Inns and some, especially the sons of recusant lords, only the Inns. Finally, a significant number of Catholics received an education clandestinely abroad in one of the continental colleges. In short, this figure of 21 per cent is conservative and underestimates the total number of young lords (never mind their siblings) who had some sort of university experience. Of the 65 whose education was documented, 28 (43 per cent) went to Oxford, especially Christ Church and Magdalen colleges; 11 (17 per cent) spent time at Trinity College Dublin; and 10 (16 per cent) at one of the Inns of Court. Of the remaining 16 students, 4 attended university at Cambridge, 2 at Glasgow and the remainder at continental colleges (Douai, Louvain and Paris for Catholics and Caen, Saumur and Utrecht for Protestants).118 Whatever institution these young nobles attended, the costs associated with education were considerable. In the 1630s board and lodging in Paris for a scholar at one of the seminaries was estimated at £40 per annum.119 The costs involved in sending a son to the Inns of Court were great, making them even more exclusive than the universities. Forty pounds per annum was considered the bare minimum needed and this did not cover additional lessons, fashionable wardrobes and entertainment. Thus Jenico Preston, fifth Viscount Gormanston, left in his will (dated 1629) £40 per annum for a younger son Robert should he wish to attend the Inns.120 In May 1665 Richard Lambert, earl of Cavan, borrowed £5,000 (i.e. £10,000 on bond) from Sir James Ware for the schooling and education of his son and heir Charles.121 In 1676 Lady Mary Brabazon lent on a statute staple bond of £4,000 to her son, Chambre, later fifth earl of Meath, possibly to pay for his sojourn at the Inner Temple.122 The university curriculum would have been broadly similar and involved training in the humanities. A Bachelor of Arts course at Oxford, for example,

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put ‘the languages and literature of the classics at its heart’. The goal was to create an erudite ‘general scholar’ who was also a man of honour and sound in his religious beliefs.123 Given the prominence of language, students were submerged in grammar, rhetoric and logic through the medium of Greek and Latin prose and poetry. Ethics, philosophy, history and mathematics, including geometry and astronomy, were also important elements within the undergraduate curriculum. Private study was encouraged with a view to inculcating lifetime learning. Students also had an opportunity to stage plays, to make music and to undertake sporting activities (tennis was particularly popular). Those who could afford it hunted. The majority of young nobles attended university not to learn (though a few did) but to network and to mix with others of similar rank. For as the fourth earl of Clanricarde put it, a young noble should spend at least two years in England, ‘one in the university where I have found by observation is the best education for an orderly and civil course of life ever after and then one more about London where he may learn qualities fit for a gentleman, and conversation and observation of times’.124 Oxford was the ideal destination for young Catholic lords, who might be ‘civilized’ far from the interference of potentially subversive family members, and in an atmosphere infused with Calvinist Protestantism (though from the 1620s Archbishop Laud ensured that Arminian influences began to prevail). Writing in 1680, an Irish bishop urged the king to send the heir to the house of Clanricarde to Oxford, that ‘he may be instructed in religious and loyal principles and so be in safety in England and by that means out of reach of Popish designs and dangers, which may be devised here against him’.125 In the pre-war years Hugh Magennis, later Lord Iveagh, was educated at Oxford for three years and then at the Middle Temple, which it was hoped would be effective in curing his recusancy.126 Connor, Lord Maguire of Enniskillen, was allegedly educated at Magdalen College but did not matriculate.127 His time there failed to secure his political obedience or conformity and he became one of the leaders of the 1641 rebellion. Other students proved more biddable. During the 1670s Ormond took on the guardianship of a Catholic kinsman, Almericus, eighteenth Lord Courcy of Kinsale, whose mother Ellen was a younger sister of the first earl of Clancarthy, and dispatched him to Oxford to be raised as a Protesant. Ormond’s private secretary noted with satisfaction that after five years at Oxford ‘his appearance is very gentle and agreeable; his manner in conversation, in dancing, and playing at cards very easy, and also without suspicion of vice’. Most important of all Almericus had become a firm Protestant, ‘’tis the religion he will die for’.128 Leading aristocrats also preferred to send their sons to Oxford. Three generations of the O’Briens of Thomond attended Oxford.129 In 1629 the earl of Cork dispatched his ward, the 18-year-old earl of Kildare, to Christ Church to ‘spend your thought and time in such studies and learnings, of

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philosophy and the mathematics’ in the hope he would become ‘a great ornament in this kingdom, and an able servant for his Majesty and the Commonwealth’.130 Arthur Annesley, later earl of Anglesey, was a contemporary of Kildare and spent four years studying at Magdalen under Dr Frewen, Archbishop Laud’s close ally and later archbishop of York. According to a contemporary, Anglesey was regarded as ‘an ornament of that place, and an eminent proficient in all academical learning’.131 His son followed in his father’s footsteps and later became a fellow of Magdalen.132 The second and third earls of Cork spent time at Christ Church, where John Locke tutored the third earl in geography, astronomy and logic.133 The Butler connections with Oxford were particularly strong and the duke of Ormond served as chancellor between 1669 and 1688. Lord Ikerrin was educated there during the 1650s.134 Christ Church was the obvious destination for Ormond’s grandson, James, later second duke. The duke instructed James’s Oxford tutor to ensure that the youth ‘may be confirmed and perfectly instructed in the religion professed, practised and best taught in that University’, and through this the young man would acquire ‘the principles of honour, virtue and loyalty’.135 James proved to be no scholar and his tutor wrote of his efforts to teach him ‘the Latin tongue’, in which he improved ‘so much as his love of it permitted’, and arithmetic, in which the multiplication table was a hindrance.136 Despite James’s academic inadequacies and his reputation as a dullard, his years at Oxford prepared him well for his life as a public servant and he went on to succeed his grandfather as chancellor of the university. For others the Inns of Court in London, rather than Oxford, served as an exclusive finishing school where young men ‘may learn qualities fit for a gentleman’.137 For those who attended the Inns in their capacity as the ‘third university of the realm’, this did not necessarily mean, as Wilfred Prest has convincingly argued, that the entrant received a legal education or had any genuine familiarity with the theory and practice of the common law.138 The popularity of the Inns lay in the fact that they were Schools of civility and chivalry, as well as law. For the country gallant is here principled to his after improvement . . . he after becomes a luminary in the counterey firmament, an oracle of the justice bench, a worthy representative to parliament.139

From a base at one of the Inns, young Irish lords could explore London, a dynamic metropolis that offered a wide range of exciting intellectual and cultural pursuits; forge excellent contacts at court and in society; and secure the patronage of political power brokers. In the process they might acquire some legal knowledge, especially of the minutiae of property and inheritance

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law, enabling them to deal with suits involving troublesome tenants and avaricious neighbours and to become more effective improving landlords.140 It also afforded them an ideal opportunity to forge contacts with the Irish and English legal communities. The lawyer, historian and Stuart statesman, Edward Hyde, later earl of Clarendon, maintained that by ‘spending some time [with] the nobility and best gentry of the kingdom’ students inevitably came ‘to know the general state of the kingdom’.141 Gray’s Inn, ‘by far the most prestigious and most frequented of the four Inns’, attracted most aristocratic entrants.142 It was also the most open to the court and seems to have been the one that was most tolerant of recusants (hence the remarkably high numbers of them). After 1625 the following were admitted to Gray’s Inn: the sons of Viscounts Netterville Dowth, Fitzwilliam, Ikerrin and Mountgarret, and the baron of Upper Ossory, together with Viscount Thurles, later the first duke of Ormond, and the sons of Baron Aungier of Longford, Viscount Ranelagh and the earl of Cork. There was also a series of honorific admissions that consolidated further these close links: the earl of Clanricarde (1610), Lord Lambert (1620), the duke of Ormond (1660), the earl of Cork and Burlington (1674) and the earl of Longford (1674).143 The titled connections with the three other Inns were more limited. John Power, fifth baron Le Power, was admitted to the Inner Temple in 1614 and had his diet and lodging at Lambeth Palace, where the archbishop of Canterbury hoped to convert him (John later went mad).144 In 1633 Arthur Annesley was admitted to Lincoln’s Inn, ‘where with unwearied steps [his] diligence it seems overcame the craggy ascent of the study of the common law of England’.145 He used this knowledge with great effect and became one of the most influential figures in Restoration Ireland and England. Throughout his life, the earl retained very close links with the legal profession, regularly dining and attending sermons at Lincoln’s Inn.146 The ‘honorific’ admission in 1628 of his father, Mountnorris, no doubt facilitated his son’s career at Lincoln’s Inn. Viscount Loftus was also made an honorary member (1628) as was the earl of Clanricarde (1640), at the request of Charles Jones, one of the readers and benchers.147 In spite of his Catholicism and close connections through the ‘Galway lawyers’ to the Middle Temple, the benchers of Lincoln’s Inn would have been keen to enrol as an honorary member such a highprofile peer, who was well connected at court. What is striking is how few peers sent their sons to the Inns after 1660. There is no clear explanation for this, but it might be attributed to the ‘professionalization’ of the Inns and to the increased attraction of alternative institutions, especially the continental military academies. For a few younger sons the Inns of Court did provide a gateway to a career in the common law (as barristers, attorneys, solicitors, accountants, brokers,

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entrepreneurs and land agents). Sir Nicholas Plunkett, son of Lord Kileen and brother of the first earl of Fingal, was admitted to Gray’s Inn in 1622 and to King’s Inns in 1628. He practised in the central courts from the late 1620s and went on to become one of the leading lawyers in seventeenth-century Ireland and consistently guarded the interests of his kinsmen, together with other Catholic lords.148 For generations the Nettervilles of Dowth had attended the Inns. Nicholas, first viscount, sent at least two (of his eight) sons to London: in 1629 Patrick entered the Middle Temple and in 1638 Robert entered Gray’s Inn.149 Francis Aungier, a younger son of Francis, first Baron Aungier of Longford and master of the rolls, followed in his father’s footsteps by entering Gray’s Inn in 1628. It is not clear whether Francis ever practised but he did inherit his father’s legal library, which suggests a continued interest in the law.150 Toby Mathews of Thurles, Ormond’s half-brother and later one of his trusted agents, entered Gray’s Inn in 1640 but presumably the outbreak of war cut short his training. The investment a family made in education, especially in that of a younger son, helped to secure his future and was of wider benefit to the lineage. For example, Viscount Montgomery’s younger son, James, attended university and travelled in France, Italy and Holland before spending time at the Inns of Court in London, and from there he ‘sollicited his Father’s business at the Royal Court, at the Council Table, at the Parliament and Prerogative in England, and before the Government and Four Courts in Ireland’.151 In short, James worked to further the interests of his house. A significant minority of titled students (10 or 15 per cent) attended one of the continental colleges, often along with their siblings. After 1640 Archbishop Ussher sent the future earl of Roscommon to study under Samuel Bochart at Caen in Normandy, where there was a long-established Protestant university.152 He then travelled extensively throughout France.153 Robert Boyle was a student at Leiden along with many members of the Hamilton family. His elder brothers – Richard, later second earl of Cork, and Roger, Lord Broghill – attended the Huguenot academy at Saumur and spent time with Calvinist divines in Geneva.154 Broghill, later earl of Orrery, reminisced about these experiences and in particular his exposure to Irenicist theology at Saumur which, presumably, facilitated his later associations with John Dury, one of the greatest proponents of a unified Protestant Church, and his mentor, Samuel Hartlib.155 Between June 1662 and February 1663 Orrery sent his sons on a similar grand tour to Paris and Saumur.156 Lionel, later third earl of Orrery, attended Utrecht. The king expressed reservations about this and felt that the nature of religion there made Holland ‘a place unusuall and unfitt for the educacon [sic] of noble men’.157 The Crown had long expressed concerns about the Catholic colleges on the Continent. By 1800 there were 41 Irish seminaries and convents across

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Europe: 12 in France, 11 in Spanish Flanders, 7 in Spain, 5 in Italy, 4 in Portugal and 2 in the Holy Roman Empire. The administration in Dublin did everything possible to deny Irish youths a continental education, believing (according to the Protestant archbishop of Dublin) that during these extended trips, ‘hearts are poisoned by idolatry’.158 In 1632 Thomas Fleming, Lord Slane, was reprimanded for providing financial support for his younger brother, William, during his studies at Louvain. The censure had little impact and in the 1670s Slane’s descendants all attended Catholic French schools against the wishes of their Protestant grandmother and guardian, Alice, countess dowager of Drogheda.159 An absence of evidence makes identifying those who attended the Catholic colleges problematic. Oliver Plunkett, sixth Baron Louth, was educated ‘Jesuitically abroad’, probably in Paris where his brother, John, was a student.160 Nicholas Barnewall, Viscount Kingsland, attended Douai, as did Thomas Preston, Viscount Tara, and his grandson Thomas. In 1644 the 15-year-old Valentine Browne, later earl of Kenmare, was sent to France to improve his education and returned three years later.161 William Sarsfield, later second Viscount Kilmallock, received an education in the liberal arts in Flanders (with the approbation of his Protestant father).162 Francis Taaffe, later third earl of Carlingford and a distinguished diplomat, studied at the Jesuit college of Olmütz (or Olomouc) in Moravia (modern-day Czech Republic) and became a page of honour to the emperors Ferdinard III and Leopold I.163 The ways in which clerics, trained at the continental colleges, sustained the Irish system of secondary education and reinvigorated Irish Catholicism are well documented and discussed in chapter 5.164 Undoubtedly these prolonged stays at the Catholic seminaries influenced the attitudes and mindsets of the Irish Catholic peerage, and at the very least these experiences helped to create an identity for Catholic Ireland that effectively excluded Protestant England.165 Grand Tours and the Exercise of Arms Enrolling at one of the continental Catholic or Protestant colleges often formed part of a ‘grand tour’, as did attendance at one of the elite and expensive military academies that sprang up first in Paris. These academies offered an international clientele an opportunity to learn the art of war, beginning with the Roman experiences, together with intensive instruction in riding, dancing, fencing and military mathematics.166 The earl of Ossory had attended Monsieur de Camp’s academy in Paris (1649–50) and later hoped that his heir might take lessons at Monsieur Faubert’s academy.167 In the 1680s the Orrerys proposed taking Lionel, later third earl, from Utrecht university and enrolling him in an academy where he could ‘indulge in exercises like fencing and dancing’. The ones in Paris were oversubscribed.

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Geneva was dismissed on the grounds that the ‘riding school is miserable’ in favour of academies in Turin, Brussels and The Hague.168 The purpose of foreign travel was primarily educational: to acquire specialized academic and life skills; learn languages (especially French and Italian); appreciate European architecture, fashions, history and culture; observe warfare and understand military techniques and fortifications; and connect with men of comparable rank. These shared experiences of travel and education undoubtedly shaped the mentalities of Europe’s aristocrats and higher nobilities, together with their individual identities and tastes, and created pan-European networks of nobles that were occasionally reinforced by marriage and, more typically, bonds of friendship.169 During the 1620s and 1630s Viscount Montgomery of the Ards dispatched his sons all over Europe. Sir James attended university at St Andrews and then travelled throughout France, Germany, Italy and Holland before being sent to the Inns of Court (discussed above).170 His younger brother, George, attended school at Newtown and then travelled to Holland, ‘ye school for warr’, where he joined up with Scottish officers and learned to fight, drink, smoke, and to talk like a Dutchman. On his return home in 1633 he married a Scottish woman from Ayrshire and led an undistinguished life as a country gentleman on family estates that yielded an annual income of £300.171 His elder son, Hugh Montgomery, later earl of Mount Alexander, received a ‘liberal education’ at home and then travelled ‘for his further improvement into foreign countries’. He returned to Ireland ‘accomplished in the French tongue’, dancing, fencing, lute playing, riding and, more importantly, well versed in the intricacies of artillery fortification and modern warfare.172 ‘The civility he received in his travels in France’, noted the family chronicler, ‘had bred in him an inclination towards French servants’, and he brought home a French valet ‘to confirm his skill in that tongue’.173 Little wonder then that an urbane papal envoy, Dionysius Massari, who met him during his incarceration after being taken prisoner at the battle of Benburb (5 June 1646), described him as ‘most gentlemanly, courteous and mild’.174 The extensive (and expensive) continental travels of the earl of Cork’s sons have been fully documented – they visited France, Switzerland and Italy during the 1630s. In 1635 Cork entrusted two sons, Lord Broghill and Viscount Kinalmeaky, to a former Huguenot soldier who instructed them in mathematics, horsemanship, dancing, fencing and showed them modern, new artillery fortifications as part of their grand tour of France, Switzerland and Italy.175 In The Art of War (1677) Broghill acknowledged his debt to the Huguenot general, Henry, duke of Rohan.176 Letters from Mr Marcombes, the tutor and chaperone of Robert and Francis Boyle, to the earl of Cork vividly recapture their experiences. Marcombes, who conversed with his charges only in French, oversaw their diet, physical welfare and scholarly

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activities. In a letter to their father he outlined their daily routine while in Geneva: ‘I teach them ye Rhetorike in Latin, and I expound unto them Justin from Latin into French, and presently after dinner [i.e. lunch] I doe reade unto them two chapters of ye old Testament with a brief exposition of those points that I think that they doe not understand.’ In the afternoon, using the writings of Florus and Titus Livius, ‘I teach them ye history of ye Romans in French’, and in the evening he read to them ‘ye Cateshisme of Caluin [sic]’ and two chapters from the New Testament.177 From Geneva the boys moved on to Italy where they acquired Italian and visited ‘those braue Uniuersities, States, Cities, Churches and other remarkeable things, which travailers (that make good vse of their tymes) may be enriched & satisfyed withall’.178 From Italy, Marcombes suggested that they spend ‘halfe a yeare att ye Court of france’. In Paris they were to undertake a rigorous regime of physical exercise – riding, dancing and fencing – in ‘ye best Schoole of Europe for that purpose’. This would complete their education and allow them ‘to returne home a perfect Caualier’.179 Given the continuing significance accorded ‘the exercise of arms’ in noble culture, Irish lords looked to the continental theatre of war as the most effective arena in which to secure military education and training. The ‘grand tour’ offered young grandees the chance to gain practical military experiences in the various continental conflicts, but especially the Eighty Years War (1568–1648) and the Thirty Years War (1618–48).180 The Boyle brothers immersed themselves in the study of the art of war (discussed above). Lord Inchiquin, a convert to Protestantism, travelled abroad to gain military experience with the Spanish forces in Italy. During the early decades of the seventeenth century, the sons of Lord Louth and the earls of Roscommon and Antrim spent time living in France.181 Other young nobles took up arms on a semi-permanent basis and became professional soldiers in the service of the Swedes, Dutch, Spanish and Austrian Habsburgs, French, Russians and Poles. Lords Caulfeild, Chichester, Esmond, Powerscourt and Wilmot of Athlone were all veterans of the Dutch wars (‘the Nurcery of Souldierie’) prior to serving in Ireland during the Nine Years War.182 During the 1620s and 1630s their sons followed their example.183 In 1626 Sir Henry Blayney ran away to experience the wars in the Low Countries, returning to Ireland a few years later to succeed his father as Baron Blayney.184 Edward, later Viscount Conway, together with many other Irishmen including Catholics like Lord Delvin, volunteered for the duke of Buckingham’s disastrous 1627 expedition to the Isle de Rhé.185 Spanish and French service attracted other young nobles. In 1605 Christopher St Lawrence, Baron Howth’s heir, ‘put away his wife’ and sought permission to serve in Spain ‘albeit he is a protestant’.186 Two years later the Irish lord deputy recalled him ‘from that ill company where now he [St Lawrence] is

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(in the service of the archduke) – being indeed a giddy-headed person’.187 In the 1620s Viscount Dillon of Costello-Gallen sought military experience abroad, as did Lord Castle Connell who felt obliged ‘to go to the wars since he is too poor to be a baron’.188 During the 1640s Lord Muskerry’s eldest son, Charles (or Cormac), travelled to France where he strove to master literature, courtly behaviour, the French language and horsemanship, as well as dancing, sword-fighting and the handling of other weapons. He toured all over France before assuming command of his own unit and distinguishing himself in French service. At the Restoration he served the Stuarts and in 1665 Charles lost his life in royal service on board the Royal Charles in a sea fight against the Dutch.189 Travel also brought risks. Turkish pirates captured Luke Plunkett, later the third earl of Fingal, as he travelled to be educated on the Continent during the late 1640s.190 In 1655 Dutch privateers took the third Viscount Conway prisoner and he languished in an Ostend gaol until he was ransomed the following year.191 In 1659 Algerian pirates seized Lord Inchiquin and his son, William, who lost an eye as a result of the encounter, only releasing them after Lady Inchiquin secured their ransom.192 A grand tour and exposure to the exercise of arms prepared these young nobles for a career in royal service. In fact, as Caroline Hibbard has noted, ‘Foreign travel had come to be regarded as almost a prerequisite of entry into the upper ranks of royal service for the nobility.’193 In the spring of 1627 Viscount Dunluce returned from France and was presented at the English court of King Charles I and his French queen, Henrietta Maria.194 He remained there for the next 10 years and Charles, anxious to keep the powerful earl of Antrim in line, insisted that all Dunluce’s visits to Ireland be brief. Other young lords, usually in their late teens or early twenties, did likewise and spent extended periods of time living in London often before they married. Thus Lord Aungier’s son, ‘who has been carefully educated at home and abroad’, was presented at court in 1629 (this was probably Francis who had been admitted to Gray’s Inn the previous year).195 During the late 1630s the Boyle brothers, fresh from their French finishing school, basked in their newly acquired social and martial skills. They volunteered to serve for the king during the Bishops Wars and became embroiled in various royalist plots (see chapter 8). In the later 1630s Viscount Claneboye’s heir undertook ‘a generall Survey of Italie and France’ and saw ‘severall States and Courts’ before hurrying home in 1639 to present himself to the king and to marry Anne Carey, the daughter of the English earl of Monmouth.196 The court provided these young men with an opportunity to parade their loyalty, participate in masques, attend plays, dance at royal balls, hunt with the king, imbibe the ‘honour culture’, and test the marriage market. Above all, it gave them direct access to the person of the king, his family and trusted courtiers,

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and allowed them to experience at first hand royal life and court culture, which so many went on to emulate, and to interact with their peers from across the Stuart kingdoms (see chapter 7). The court also exposed young lords to many vices, especially gambling, excessive drinking and womanizing. Gambling was one of the future earl of Antrim’s weaknesses and forced him to borrow heavily (see chapter 14). According to one account, he lost ‘at the Wells at Tunbridge almost £2,000 at ninepins, most of it to Sir John Sutlin [Suckling?]’.197 The earl of Cork was horrified by the scale of the expenditure of his sons during their time at court and he helped Lords Dungarvan and Broghill pay off their London debts, along with those of Lord Kinalmeaky whose debts – incurred in ‘wenching, gaming, & Lasciviousnes’ – ran to ‘many thousands of pounds’.198 Cork lambasted his three eldest sons and his son-in-law, the earl of Kildare, for frittering away their inheritance at court and at the gaming tables. He claimed that Kildare, in particular, led ‘the most licentious, prodigal and profuse way of life that ever [a] noble man did’.199 In 1632 a well-intentioned kinsman warned Kildare of the dangers of living in London and of becoming indebted to men who ‘seek nothing but their own gain’. He cautioned Kildare against borrowing, since this would involve mortgaging lands and ‘the preservation of your estate unto your house is of greater consequence to you than the love of all your friends you have in the world’.200 After the Restoration the duke of Ormond did everything possible to prevent his grandson and heir from spending time at court where he felt that the youth would be led astray and subjected to corrupt influences. Even a brief sojourn there in 1681 had a negative impact on Ormond’s other charge, Lord Courcy of Kinsale – ‘a handsome youth, well-born and of good fashion’ but of ‘unsteady’ character – who had developed an inappropriate ‘kindred’ with a Mrs Wall.201 Of course, learning to negotiate these sorts of ‘dangers’ was part of a lord’s coming of age and equipped him with important life skills. These, together with the ‘cultural capital’, the social skills and the networks that were forged at court all underpinned noble status and helped to determine his effectiveness as the leader of his dynasty.202 Having been ‘formed’ these nobles then returned to their Irish estates, often along with their new bride, where they rejoined their immediate family and wider lineage and began a life in service of their dynasty and king as men of honour and virtue. Conclusion This was a period of transition, but continuities with the past were real and the wider lineage or lordship remained the context in which an individual lord and his nuclear family lived, operated and drew considerable power and influence. Many elements of the ‘fighting and feasting culture’ that

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underpinned medieval lordship, especially the need to maintain large households and provide protection and hospitality, along with practices like fosterage, continued to be important well into the seventeenth century, albeit in an increasingly different political, social and economic context. Forces of continuity should not, however, obscure the very real changes and especially the emphasis placed on securing the needs of the nuclear family and particularly the male heir. Children became important elements in a collective strategy for dynastic survival and growth. In particular, astute marriages brought influential allies along with access to patronage and land (discussed in chapter 6). Most noble parents made the education of their sons a priority and regarded it as the essential prerequisite to becoming head of a house and a royal servant. Though often constrained by the availability of finances, the choice of where to educate a son was a very conscious one, as was the decision to send him on a grand tour, in search of military experience, or to spend time at court. The early education, especially of Catholic heirs, was contested. The Crown did everything possible to educate them in the Protestant faith (also see chapter 5) while their fathers and close kin, supported by the clergy, resisted this. A number of Catholic lords opted to educate their children in a continental college, which reinforced the family’s devotion to Catholicism. A significant minority of Catholic lords, especially the higher-ranking ones, sent a son to the Inns of Court. Protestant peers preferred to educate a son at Trinity or Oxford or the Inns of Court, which demonstrated a family’s commitment to ‘civility’ and to ‘Englishness’, something that the state and Crown warmly welcomed and actively encouraged. Time spent in the presence of the royal family in London consolidated these attitudes and built key relationships, within and across the court. These experiences allowed young lords to acquire life skills and forge friendship and patronage networks that would sustain them in later life. Continental travel, the exercise of arms and exposure to court culture did likewise and prepared nobles for leadership roles as politicians, military commanders, entrepreneurs and dynastic heads. Above all education and foreign travel immersed young lords in noble culture and the ideas that underpinned it, especially those of honour and virtue, and the fundamental importance of royal service. These helped both to forge a common sense of nobleness across the resident peerage that emphasized the exclusivity of their rank and to create links with their counterparts throughout the Stuart dominions and western Europe.

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CHAPTER 16

Death and Memory Death was the final rite of passage in the life cycle of a peer.

1

As in other early modern societies, the nobility in Ireland engaged in a complex dialogue over the meaning of death, how to die, what to do with dead bodies, the most appropriate way to remember the dead, and how in death the collective honour of a lineage might be enhanced and celebrated. This chapter examines death and two closely related issues – funerals and memorialization – from the perspective of the resident peers. How did a lord die and how did his lineage prepare for his death and deal with the associated grief ? A funeral allowed a dynasty to negotiate the death of an influential and powerful individual in an orderly, formal and communal fashion. On a practical level it provided for the disposal of the body in sacred space and also prepared society for the passing of the old lord and the accession of a new one (in the spirit of ‘the king is dead, long live the king’). Where a peer chose to be buried – in England or Ireland, in London or Dublin, in a private chapel on an estate or in the local church – made important statements about his identity, his ancestry and his ambitions for his lineage, something explored at length in this chapter. Of course, the living used a variety of ways – funerary monuments, print and family histories – to commemorate the ‘breeding’ of a deceased lord – his political and marriage alliances, his service and loyalty to the Crown. Above all, noble families used death and especially funerals to mark the achievements – past, present and future – of the wider lineage. In particular the new lords, whose funerals tended to be particularly ostentatious and ornate, used death as a way of creating a dynasty that was represented as being honourable and ‘ancient’. This was an age when reputation and honour were of paramount importance and peers, conscious of how posterity would judge their actions and those of their lineage, did everything possible to secure reputations and ‘to lie well in the chronicle’.2 Death in seventeenth-century Ireland is reasonably well documented thanks to the scholarship of Clodagh Tait and the survival of a diverse body

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of sources.3 In fact, more is known about some peers and especially their wives in death than in life. The Ulster king of arms regulated the ritual and pomp associated with the death of a lord, which was particularly important in a society that was undergoing profound change. Their funeral entries outlined funeral processions, the names of heirs and other family members (living and dead) associated with the deceased, and occasionally the cause of death and the place of burial. These, together with elegies, family histories, funeral sermons and funerary monuments, made important statements about how a lord had lived, his social standing, and how he wanted to be represented to posterity. The survival of wills, even for the elite, is haphazard. Yet those that are extant reveal the material provision that a lord made for his widow, heir, children, servants and friends, for charitable bequests, for the payment of outstanding debts and for the disposal of his assets. A significant number of noble wills (88) have survived, thanks in part to the fact that a fair number of Irish peers died in England and probate was granted by the court of Canterbury (see table 31 below). Other wills survive amongst collections of family papers, along with 20 extracts of wills granted probate in Dublin, the originals of which were destroyed in 1922. Of the 88 noble wills that have been identified, 57 (or 65 per cent) are for Protestant resident peers and 31 (or 35 per cent) for Catholic lords. In a few cases – the Boyles of Cork, the O’Briens of Thomond and the Plunketts of Louth – the testaments of successive lords survive, providing fascinating generational insights. In addition, the wills of 17 titled women, many of whom were wealthy widows, have been located along with those of the sons of peers, including heirs who predeceased their father.4 Preparing for Death The majority of wills were drawn up while a testator endured a final illness, sometimes in the presence of a priest or a minister, and demonstrate preparedness for death. In March 1675 Arthur Chichester, first earl of Donegal, began his will by declaring that he was ‘in perfect memorie and judgement and understanding though fraile and weake through bodily sickness and distemper’.5 Lady Anne Conway had suffered from debilitating illnesses all her life and welcomed death. On 30 June 1673 she acknowledged in her will that she expected the ‘hand of God’ would end her ‘afflictions by a blessed death’.6 As it turned out, she lingered on until 23 February 1679. Travel was a risky undertaking and, hardly surprisingly, many made their wills before beginning a long journey. The 1678 will of Richard, earl of Arran, was endorsed ‘intending to embark for England’.7 William Stewart, Viscount Mountjoy, allowed provision for his young family in his will of January 1689, which he made shortly before he left Ireland on a diplomatic mission to Paris.

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Those equipping themselves for war also prepared for death. In April 1689 Jenico Preston, Viscount Gormanston, ‘being now ordered in the expedition ag[ains]t the rebels in the north’, made his will, which was fortunate since he died in Limerick in March 1691.8 Cary Dillon, fifth earl of Roscommon, was a military commander and made his will in November 1689 shortly before he died.9 As well as giving instructions about how a peer wished to be buried, wills provided for the living. Detailed analysis of 68 noble wills (the 20 abstracts have been excluded) reveals a number of important trends. First, a peer invariably provided for his wife, minor children and very often his adult children as the law required him to (see chapters 6 and 15). A peer also arranged for the payment of his debts and made religious or charitable bequests, and others to his friends and servants. Half (34 out of 68) of the wills analyzed contained bequests of money, property, land, jewellery, clothing, precious objects, household furniture and livestock to family members, grandchildren, mothers, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, nephews, nieces, in-laws and godchildren, and 26 wills recorded bequests to friends, doctors, clergymen and lawyers. In addition to making special bequests for treasured items it was usual for a lord to remember his servants. Some provided servants with their wages for twelve, six or three months, along with their board, usually for three months, and made specific bequests to favoured servants. For example, in 1683 Lord Conway left £200 to ‘Constantine Megennis’, £100 to William Temple, and a colt of his choosing to John Colvill.10 Thomas Fitzwilliam, fourth Viscount Merrion, left in his 1704 will significant cash bequests (of £200 and £100) and clothing to his gentlemen servants and £5 to each household servant, plus their wages.11 Less dignified was the scramble for wages by Lady Clanbrassil’s servants on her death in December 1677, ‘one taking a piece of plate, another hangings or linen and so on, while her corpse remains unburied’.12 Twenty wills also made provision for the poor and included charitable bequests. In his 1642 will the earl of Cork provided for the masters and free schools at Youghal and Lismore, together with the almshouses there, a commitment that his son reiterated in his will of 1697.13 In her will of 1688 Lady Orrery provided maintenance for six women at the almshouse at Castlemartyr.14 In 1689 the earl of Roscommon asked his executors to distribute £20 to the poor of Chester, where his wife’s family lived, and £80 to the people of Dublin who were in the most ‘necessitous condition’.15 Wills also provided for the clergy and for other pious causes (see chapter 5). Executors were invariably trusted friends or family members, especially a wife or a son, grandson, nephew or brother. Executors took their role seriously and did everything possible to honour the final wishes of the dead. At least two ‘credible’ people were needed to witness a will. For example, seven

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men witnessed the will of Arthur Magennis, Viscount Iveagh, on 17 April 1629. Four of them were fellow Magennises and of the remaining three, one appears to have been the Catholic lawyer Peter Clinton of Dowdestown, who was admitted to Lincoln’s Inn on 20 January 1614 and King’s Inns in 1628 and sat as MP for Louth in the 1634 parliament.16 This was a very conscious act on Iveagh’s part but one that would have ensured the legal validity of the will and the speedy granting of probate.17 The 1704 will of Thomas Fitzwilliam, fourth Viscount Merrion, stated that the three witnesses were his manservants. One of the witnesses to the 1665 will of Viscount Massareene was Faithful Teate, a clergyman with known Puritan sympathies.18 Donough MacCarthy, earl of Clancarthy, died at Moor Park in England on 4 August 1665. His will, drawn up on 29 July, had four witnesses: George Lane, Ormond’s personal secretary, together with Milo Power, Owen MacCarthy and Dennis O’Keefe, presumably servants who had accompanied Clancarthy to England or who worked for Ormond.19 It is often difficult to identify who witnesses were but presumably these men and women were trusted associates – kin, friends, servants, tenants, lawyers, chaplains and priests. A close analysis of their names would inevitably reveal much about the domestic and professional networks which enmeshed a peer as he prepared for death and which had, presumably, sustained him in life. Cause of Death Ireland may have been a warring society but only a few lords died a violent death. During the 1640s roughly a dozen lords lost their lives in combat or as a result of serious injuries incurred on the battlefield. The battle of Liscarroll (3 September 1642) proved to be a personal disaster for the earl of Cork: his son, Viscount Kinalmeaky, died in a pre-battle ambush and his sonin-law, the earl of Barrymore, suffered wounds that led to his death.20 Hugh, second Viscount Montgomery, died shortly after a military encounter in November 1642. On 8 June 1643 a cannonball killed Lord Moore. Lord Esmond died at the siege of Duncannon in April 1645 and Lord Blayney was killed on the battlefield of Benburb in June 1646. The earl of Fingal perished in prison after being captured at the battle of Rathmines in August 1649.21 The Wars of the Three Kings (1688–91) also claimed the lives of peers. Nicholas Taaffe, second earl of Carlingford, fell at the battle of the Boyne (1 July 1690), and Viscounts Bourke of Galway, Dillon of Costello-Gallen, Sarsfield of Kilmallock and Roche of Fermoy, at Aughrim (12 July 1691), alongside hundreds of Catholic gentry.22 A stray cannonball took the life of Adam Loftus, first Viscount Lisburn, in September 1691. Claude Hamilton, fifth baron of Strabane, survived the battle of the Boyne only to perish late in July 1690 en route to France, and William Stewart, Viscount Mountjoy, lost

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his life in 1692 on the battlefield in William III’s service. Matthias Barnewall, tenth Baron Trimleston, died in 1691 as part of a French offensive in Flanders, and in 1701 Dominic, fourth Viscount Sarsfield, died in French service in Italy. Most of the men who lost their lives in battle were in their prime. A detailed examination of the age of a lord at death (table 30) shows how few, relatively speaking, died in their twenties and thirties. Looking at the spread of ages, just 3 per cent of peers died before attaining their legal majority at 21. Another 12 per cent died in their thirties (the cohort most likely to die a violent death). Thereafter the death rate increased. Twenty-one per cent of peers died between the ages of 36 and 50, and an additional 30 per cent before the age of 65. Nevertheless, nearly a third of the resident peerage lived beyond the age of 65, a high life expectancy by early modern standards which lends some credibility to Gerard Boate’s observation that ‘very many’ people in Ireland were aged over 80.23 These figures for the resident peerage are similar to those for the higher nobility in early seventeenth-century Scotland.24 In England over 40 per cent of peers lived beyond the age of 60 (in 1695 Gregory King suggested that only 5 per cent of the general population did), but only 20 per cent lived beyond the age of 70.25 Since the birth dates remain unknown for over one-third of Irish resident peers, it is difficult to calculate with accuracy how long the average lord lived, but based on the birth and death dates that are extant for 177 (out of 311, or 57 per cent) peers it would appear to be 56, which is higher than in early seventeenth-century Scotland where the average lord lived for 52.4 years.26 Over time the life expectancy amongst peers in Ireland went up. Francis James has suggested that half of the peers who were active between 1692 and 1727 lived to be 60 or more, a figure that increased to two-thirds for the years between 1761 and 1782. The ratio of those dying after age 70 also rose, from 33 per cent to 40 per cent.27 Table 30.  Spread of ages at death of resident peers.28 Age group (years)

No. of peers of known death age

Percentage of total

0–20

5

3%

21–35

22

12%

36–50

38

21%

51–65

52

30%

66–80

45

25%

Over 81

15

9%

177

100%

Total

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Nearly two-thirds of resident peers reached their fiftieth birthdays and lived into middle and old age, which made peers particularly long lived. The cause of death amongst peers was varied. Two peers – Mervyn Touchet, second earl of Castlehaven, and Connor Maguire, second baron of Enniskillen – were beheaded. In April 1631 Castlehaven was tried in London for being party to the rape of his own wife and for sodomizing his servants (‘crimes too horrid for a Christian man to mention’) and convicted.29 Three weeks later he was beheaded. In 1645 an English jury found Lord Maguire of Enniskillen guilty of treason against both the king and the state, and he was hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn in a public execution on 20 February.30 Immediately prior to Maguire’s execution the local sheriff pressed him to repent, admit guilt and take responsibility for his role in the shedding of the ‘blood of many thousands of people’. He refused, claiming the ‘Irish had a just cause for their warrres’ and repeatedly saying the Hail Mary.31 Maguire’s simple refusal to admit guilt and seek repentance was unusual. Most condemned men did ask for forgiveness and on the scaffold outlined all of their wrongdoings in a ‘set-piece speech’. For example, the earl of Castlehaven, even though he refused to admit his guilt, confessed to the many sins he had committed during his ‘vicious’ life, renounced the ‘errors and superstitions taught by the church of Rome’, conformed to the Church of England and acknowledged the right of the king to try him.32 Execution represented the raw exercise of power on the part of the state. Maguire’s defiance challenged the legitimacy of that authority and highlighted its failure to elicit political obedience and religious conformity, whereas Castlehaven’s submission served to legitimize both and his speech from the scaffold circulated widely in print.33 For his part, the sheriff denied Maguire the services of a priest, stripped him of his beads, crucifix and personal possessions, but he could not prevent him from giving a short speech in which he asked for salvation and reminded the assembled crowd that ‘I die a roman catholick’. A contemporary observer noted the lord’s dignity and bravery in the face of death and despite the fact that he was disembowelled while still alive, the Church held that Lord Maguire of Enniskillen had a ‘good death’.34 Shortly before he was executed Maguire bequeathed £50 to the community at Lisgoole (and to the convents at Cavan, Monaghan and Armagh) so that prayers could be said for his soul. He entrusted his body to the friars at Lisgoole who had attended him in his imprisonment.35 Others helped to bring death on themselves. Fourth Baron Cahir died in 1677 ‘of a surfeit of claret’ and left behind him a young wife who was five months pregnant. ‘He was never to be reclaimed from that vice of drinking,’ Ormond was informed shortly after his demise.36 A ‘spotted fever’, caused by alcoholism, resulted in the death of the third Viscount Dungannon at Alicante in Spain; he was 37. The general, Thomas Preston, later Viscount

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Tara, was also an alcoholic and ignored his doctor’s advice to abstain from ‘all kinds of wine’.37 In 1644 Robert, fourth Baron Caulfeild, took an overdose of opium that killed him, and in 1676 Theobald Bourke, fourth Viscount Mayo, died from an overdose of laudanum. Accidental deaths were common. James Dillon, third earl of Roscommon, perished when he fell down a stone staircase after a drinking spree in November 1649.38 James Hamilton, third baron of Strabane, drowned while bathing in 1655 and William Hamilton, second baron of Glenawley, also died in an accident. Deaths at sea claimed the lives of Viscount Thurles, who was shipwrecked off Skerries in 1619, and the second earl of Meath, who drowned when his transport vessel sank in an ‘unhappy accident’ off Chester in March 1675. Miraculously, his heir and the earl of Ardglass managed to survive.39 Hugh Montgomery, first earl of Mount Alexander, died ‘suddenly’ on 15 September 1663, aged 38. As a result of a childhood accident Mount Alexander had a ‘large open space in his chest’, which was covered by a metal plate. Charles I’s physician, William Harvey, examined him as a young man and touched the ‘apex of the heart’. His manservant washed the wound daily but with time his heart became, as an autopsy later revealed, ‘wissened and shrivelled’. Shortly before Mount Alexander died he contracted dysentery, which ‘was very dangerous, his body being grown unwieldy and bulksome’. He recovered but became ‘plethorick’ and died soon after.40 More sudden was a death caused by an ‘apoplexy’, which was the word used to describe an aneurysm (or stroke) and heart attack. In February 1612 the fourteenth earl of Kildare ‘fell speechless’ after riding and died immediately.41 Richard, fourth Lord Blayney, who in 1670 was probably in his fifties, died suddenly on a trip to London, presumably of a heart attack.42 In 1660 a ‘dead palsey’, which took ‘away his speech’, struck down the elderly Baron Mountnorris (he was 76) and he died a few months later.43 Presumably a sudden stroke left the 68-year-old earl of Donegal ‘speechless and past all hope of recovery’.44 The duke of Tyrconnell suffered a stroke (or ‘fit of apoplexy’) on 11 August 1691 and though he regained consciousness he died three days later. Murmurings that he had been poisoned were unfounded.45 When a peer died unexpectedly, rumours of foul play or poisoning abounded. For example, the third earl of Roscommon’s death in 1642 in Dublin was ‘not without suspicion of poison’.46 Henry Hamilton, second earl of Clanbrassil, was allegedly poisoned by his wife in 1675 after she had prevailed upon him to bequeath to her his estates. He was 28 years old and incapable ‘of exercising his conjugal rights’.47 Consumption and smallpox were some of the greatest killers in the early modern period. Consumption, or tuberculosis of the lungs, claimed the lives of the earl of Gowran (aged 33), eighth Baron Louth (aged 39) and the second earl of Mountrath (aged 42). Tuberculosis may have caused the demise of the third earl of Orrery, who complained of chronic coughing in the weeks

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immediately prior to his passing in March 1682.48 Smallpox took its toll. In October 1623 Cork’s daughters managed to recover from the disease but it claimed the life of his young son-in-law, Sir Thomas Moore. The spring of 1636 saw an epidemic of ‘great pox and small pox’ grip Dublin, claiming 300 lives. Lord and Lady Moore were reported to be in a dreadful state but recovered.49 Viscount Blessington also survived an attack of the illness in 1679.50 Others were less fortunate. The earl of Mountrath died from smallpox in 1661, as did Lord Courcy (1667) and Viscount Ikerrin (1688).51 A high fever (‘ague’) was a symptom of smallpox, along with other lethal diseases (scarlet fever, typhoid fever, rheumatic fever and malaria). In December 1624 the earl of Inchiquin died ‘of an Irish ague’ despite the best efforts of his physicians to save him.52 Over the winter of 1681/2 Lady Anne Longford’s high fever kept her husband by her bedside for over a month. She may have been suffering from malaria since ‘Jesuit’s powder’ (quinine) appeared to relieve her symptoms and she lived until 1697.53 A high fever, cough and a shortness of breath, deemed ‘incurable’, characterized Lady Ormond’s last days in 1684.54 A ‘malignant fever’ struck down her son, Lord Ossory, who at 46 was in the prime of his life. On 18 July 1680 he became unwell and by the 26th he was in the second day of a delirium that lasted until his death on the 30th despite the efforts of six doctors to save him.55 Before his body was embalmed and placed in a lead coffin, his doctors conducted a post-mortem and found his brain ‘very full of blood and water, insomuch that the white part of it was discoloured’, his lungs were ‘very black upon the settling of the blood’ but his ‘entrails were sound’.56 As the peers grew older the severity of their afflictions – gout, kidney stones, gallstones – became worse. Gout plagued the earls of Anglesey and Orrery, leaving them crippled and bedridden on many occasions despite receiving the best medical attention available (which usually involved being bled).57 According to a contemporary, Orrery’s final illness was ‘not the gout, but a sudden violent decay in nature. Nothing they give him continues in his stomach, and he is hugely lethargic.’58 Within a fortnight, he was dead, aged 58. At his funeral in 1679 his chaplain reminded those listening how death had freed him from ‘the pains of the gout, under which he laboured near thirty years or more’.59 Kidney stones afflicted Lord Massareene and could well be linked to his death in September 1665. Though he had nearly died as a result of a fever in 1642 and in 1658, the duke of Ormond enjoyed excellent health for most of his life. As he reached old age a ‘tedious disease of the spleen’, annual bouts of gout, deafness and reduced mobility did cramp his style.60 Over the winter of 1687/8 Ormond’s health deteriorated and he suffered sharp pains in his neck and head, a swelling in his throat, and fevers (for which he took quinine). He finally died on 22 July 1688, almost exactly four years after his beloved wife, who had died on 21 July.

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A small number of peers (15, or 9 per cent) lived into their eighties (see table 30), including some of Ireland’s leading aristocratic lineages, and their longevity undoubtedly brought stability to their houses. The Butler lords were particularly long lived. In December 1604 Thomas, tenth earl of Ormond, ‘had a fit of apoplexy, and was senseless and reputed dead’, but he recovered, living on until 1614, albeit bedridden and blind, until he was 82.61 His successor, Walter, eleventh earl, was 83 when he died, though he may even have been 93 since his date of birth could have been 1559, rather than 1569.62 The twelfth earl and first duke died aged 78, and his heir and grandson, the second duke, was 80 when he died in 1745. Longevity blessed other houses. Richard Butler, third Viscount Mountgarret, was 73 when he died in 1651/2, and his heir, Edmund, fourth viscount, was 84 when he passed away in 1679 ‘oppressed with age and infirmities’.63 At his death the third earl of Antrim was 85, outliving his brother predecessor, the marquis, by over a decade. The Boyles of Cork also had strong life genes. The second earl of Cork was 85 when he died of old age in 1698; his father had been 77. The cause of death for the longer-lived peers is rarely recorded and one must assume that they died of old age. Contemporaries placed a premium on dying a ‘good death’, one that was dignified, peaceful, pious and controlled.64 By the mid-1650s Viscount Conway, now in his early sixties, was in poor health and travelled to France to ‘recover his flesh’.65 He had problems with gallstones and had grown deaf, which depressed him since ‘I have not delighted in anything so much as reading and discoursing, and if I lose my hearing, I lose the one half of the joy of my life.’66 After suffering from ‘a palsy in his tongue’, he died ‘with that calmness and quietness as one would fall asleep, having his memory and senses perfect to the last’.67 The passing in 1695 of Rose, Lady Antrim, also illustrates what contemporaries believed to be a ‘good death’. According to her chaplain, a short illness ‘prepared her for death’. When the moment came, she ‘desired to dye without noise or confusion’ and asked to be left alone. She knelt down in prayer for ‘a considerable time’, then returned to her chair and quietly died.68 The first earl of Clancarthy died at Ormond’s residence at Moor Park in August 1665. Ormond later reassured his wife that ‘he wanted nothing . . . for disposing of himself to die as a Christian of the persuasion he was [i.e. Catholic]’. The duke had ensured that a priest was present, since he believed that ‘it is the part of a good Christian to help another die like one in his own way, nor yet believing that the merciful God hath so limited his Salvation as passionate and interested men have done’.69 Ormond wanted his widow to believe that her husband had died well and piously. Robert Southwell’s account of the duke of Ormond’s final months highlight how Ireland’s greatest power broker prepared for death at his home,

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Kingston Hall, in Dorset. The previous year he had made it clear to his halfbrother and agent in Ireland ‘that I had rather live and die in Carolina than in Ireland’.70 On 8 April 1688 he made a short will and spent the early summer with Lord and Lady Ossory and their son, Lord Thurles, heir to the house of Ormond. He found 21 July, the anniversary of his wife’s death, to be ‘a melancholy day’. The next morning he requested the sacrament and summoned members of his family. Aware that death was near but not in any real pain, he piously and devotedly shared the sacrament with Lord and Lady Ossory. He died shortly afterwards, thankful that he had not outlived ‘his intellectuals’. According to Southwell, ‘He made no struggling, nor sent forth any groans, but expired like a lamp.’71 Contrast the duke’s textbook ‘good death’ with the sudden, tormented and disorderly passing of his son, the earl of Ossory, in July 1680. A malignant fever ensured that Ossory was delirious for most of his final days. During a brief moment of lucidity Dr Lloyd administered the last sacrament. Realizing death was at hand, Ossory became agitated and ‘spoke of making a will’. The earl of Arlington who was at his bedside discouraged him, saying ‘you have nothing of that nature to do but to recommend your wife and children to your father, and to him likewise the payment of your debts and gratification of your servants’.72 Ossory’s last days were also tormented by his anxieties about an expedition to Tangiers with which the king had charged him but had assigned insufficient resources to fund. The royal request, Ossory felt, had brought him dishonour and in his delirium the earl ‘raved much of Tangier, posting his men, attacking, retrenching and defending, then sighing heavily as in despair, more bewailing the loss of his people’s lives than his own’.73 In an age characterized by the ubiquity of warfare, the prevalence of killer diseases and inadequate medical provision, death often came with little warning and Ossory’s experiences were probably more typical than those of his father even if contemporaries feared and did their utmost to prevent such a passing.74 In Ossory’s case there was a huge – and uncharacteristic – public display of grief as the sad news spread by word of mouth, letters and news-sheets.75 Numerous letters of condolence were dispatched to the duke and duchess who were in Kilkenny, including missives from the royal family (the queen ‘hath wept often’), William, prince of Orange, leading English clerics and statesmen, and the many friends and clients of the dynasty.76 John Fell, bishop of Oxford, who wrote to Lady Ormond the day after Ossory died, tried to offer her comfort. Her worthy son was ‘now at ease, free from the languishments of sickness and [the] scorchings of his fever, is above the malice and designs of naughty men, and secure from the temptations of the world, the devil and the flesh’.77 The duke’s close friend, Michael Boyle, archbishop of Armagh, hoped that the ‘steadiness’ of Ormond’s mind would help him to

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bear ‘the loss of that most noble person’.78 Heartbroken at losing their heir, the duke and duchess nonetheless acted with restraint and invoked God’s assistance to patiently bear such troubles. The following month the duke confided to Arlington that ‘God has shown him the vanity and sinfulness of his reliance upon the son he has lost.’79 Ormond’s ability to come to terms with the death of his son was typical of his contemporaries who shared his sense of piety. Funerals After a peer died his body was wrapped in sheets and usually buried within three days. In other instances there might be an interval of weeks or even months between the death of a peer and his burial, which invariably meant that the body was disembowelled and embalmed. Toby, Baron Caufeild’s funeral took place three weeks after his death; the marquis of Antrim’s body lay in state for six weeks before being interred; and Viscount Chichester’s burial took place six months after his death in 1625 (to allow the body to be transported from London to Ulster).80 Sometimes a will stipulated funeral arrangements and it was not unusual, especially as the century progressed, to request that the burial be ‘without pomp or superfluous charge’ or ‘without any pomp and with as little ceremony as possible’.81 The earl of Cork was clear that he did not want to be disembowelled and embalmed, and asked that his funeral be ‘without unnecessary Pompe or Ceremonys’ but ‘suitable to my Estate and Degree’.82 In the event, the continuing civil war ensured that Cork’s funeral in September 1643 was a muted affair and contrasted starkly with those of his wife and sons (discussed below). Of course, funerals were more about the living than the dead. In her superb study of death in early modern Ireland, Clodagh Tait shows how funerals provide a unique insight into the ‘inner workings’ of a culture and served as a means of strengthening communal and kin bonds. Waking the dead, though frowned on by the Church and rarely mentioned in the extant records, was widespread. On the one hand it was a rite of separation that allowed for the public expression of grief and, on the other, it provided a cohesive function for those who remained behind.83 Funerals served a similar function and also made powerful statements about the power, influence and wealth of a lineage. The Ulster king of arms and his deputy, the Athlone pursuivant, representing royal authority, regulated the ritual and mediated the transfer of authority between the dead person and his heir. They also determined the level of pomp to which a peer was entitled according to his rank and helped to orchestrate funerals that were solemn, dignified occasions and which aimed to impress those who attended or lined the streets to watch the procession.84

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Consider by way of example the well-documented funeral of Lady Mary, countess of Arran, Ormond’s daughter-in-law, who died in July 1668 and had an elaborately choreographed funeral the following month.85 Mary Stuart was a granddaughter of the infamous first duke of Buckingham and the daughter and heir of a great courtier of royal blood, James Stuart, duke of Richmond and Lennox. In 1664 Mary married one of Ormond’s younger sons, Richard, earl of Arran. She died four years later, aged only 17 and ‘in the flower of her youth’, from ‘a most violent fever’ that was rife in Dublin.86 After being embalmed, Mary’s body had been removed from her residence at Chapelizod to Lord Chancellor Eustace’s grand new house on Dame Street where ‘it lay in Blacks’, encircled by brightly coloured escutcheons and heraldic banners quartered with the arms of the Butlers of Ormond and the Stuarts of Lennox. Wailing women, who appear to have acted as keeners, remained in constant attendance as ‘Ladies of Quality’ came to pay their respects and ‘multitudes of people . . . daily resorted thither’ (see plate 9).87 After lying in state for a month, Mary’s body was removed from Dublin to Kilkenny for burial. The cortege comprised two mounted servants followed by 60 servants in black ‘ranck in order according to their quality’ and ‘then the gentry and nobility related, in deep mourning’. After them came the ‘great banner’, the steward, the chaplains and an officer carrying a cushion on which rested a coronet. The body rested ‘in a hearse of black velvet, richly adorned with shields, and adorn’d with scutchions, the hearse surrounded with the banners, carried by six persons, the meanest whereof was a knight’. Eight coaches attended the hearse. Lady Ossory, the chief mourner, was in the first coach along with the other senior Butler women and the widow of the marquis of Clanricarde. The wives of the earls, viscounts and barons followed in the remaining seven coaches in the order in which their husbands processed in parliament. Other non-titled female mourners and the men occupied the remaining 80 coaches, again organized according to the rank of the occupants. When the cortege reached the outskirts of Dublin it dispersed. The hearse proceeded towards Kilkenny, 76 miles away, and ‘the gentlemen of the country in large bodies, meeting it upon the road, most of them being in mourning’. One contemporary estimated that between 5,000 and 6,000 people accompanied the coffin on its final journey.88 Two days later the cortege reassembled at Gowran, five miles from Kilkenny. Lady Ossory, as the chief mourner, followed the hearse with 10 other coaches of ladies and about 50 other coaches and 500 men on horseback. They included ‘one archbishop, one marquess, twelve earles and viscounts, four bishops, six barons, besides noblemen’s younger sons, baronets, knights, esquires, and gentlemen . . . all in mourning’. When they arrived at St Canice’s cathedral, the traditional resting place of the Butlers, all ‘alighted without confusion’. The church was hung with banners and scutchions and

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at the east end ‘was erected a sumptuous hearse of velvit, richly adorned with shields, scutchions, and other glorious devices which pass my heraldry to express’.89 The marquis of Antrim, the highest-ranked peer present whose first wife had been Mary’s grandmother, supported Lady Ossory, along with Lord John Butler, who in the absence of his father and brothers in London, was the most senior male Butler in attendance. The bishop of Ossory and the dean of Christchurch performed the service and interred Lady Arran’s body ‘in a fair vault wherein the ancestors of the noble house of Ormond did rest’. A divine service and anthems followed. From the church most of the ‘persons of quality’ went to Kilkenny castle, Ormond’s seat that had recently been renovated and was a place of great splendour. They were entertained in ‘a spacious hall hung with large rich tapestry’, in which there were four tables covered with 35 silver dishes (filled three times during the course of the feast), ‘the last course whereof was an exquisite banquet’. Those present maintained that ‘in all their travels they never saw greater plenty, variety and order, all this being managed without any noise or confusion’.90 These accounts of Lady Arran’s funeral are fascinating for what they reveal of the protocol, dignity, solemnity, order, magnificence and visual splendour of the event, and offer a wonderful glimpse of seventeenth-century noble culture, as expressed in death. In this funeral women were the principal actors but their men remained the primary agents, using the funeral to demonstrate their authority. The fact that so many titled mourners, women and men alike, turned out to pay their respects and the proceedings were so dignified and regulated, with each mourner in her or his prescribed place, made this an extraordinary public display of nobleness, akin to the ceremonial processions associated with the chief governor himself and with major state events like the opening of parliament. Above all, Lady Arran’s funeral was a public celebration of the Ormond dynasty. It highlighted Butler influence in Ireland, the nobility, grandeur and munificence of the family, together with its Englishness, especially its alliances with the great aristocratic houses of Buckingham and Lennox. Interestingly, Lady Arran’s was the only public Butler funeral of the later seventeenth century. All of the others, including those of Ossory, the duke and duchess of Ormond, were more muted and private affairs that took place in the evening. Ormond also had a specific political motive for this public display. Mary had died at a particularly sensitive moment for the duke. He had been appointed chief governor in February 1662 and had lorded it over Irish affairs for most of the 1660s. But the summer of 1668 saw him at an unusually low political ebb, as his enemies in England (who included Lady Mary’s uncle, the second duke of Buckingham) encouraged members of the English House of Commons to impeach him. Ormond had been forced to travel to England in

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March 1668 to defend himself from his detractors and remained there, along with his eldest sons, until he was eventually dismissed from office in February 1669. Little wonder that Ormond felt that Lady Arran’s death was ‘the greatest misfortune that could befall me and my family’.91 The public funeral was thus an attempt on the family’s part to retrieve an otherwise unfortunate situation. It was no coincidence that An account of the solemn funeral and interrment of the right honourable the Countess of Arran, as it was lately sent in a letter or narrative from Dublin. Bearing date, Aug. 21. 1668 was published in London and appeared shortly after her burial. In short, Lady Arran’s funeral was as much about English politics as it was about Irish affairs and the celebration of Ireland’s premier dynasty. The position that Ormond held as Ireland’s leading aristocrat and chief governor explains the level of pomp associated with Lady Arran’s funeral, which was exceptional in its grandeur and scale. Nonetheless other titled families, especially the new ones, organized equally magnificent affairs in which no expense was spared. Particularly for new peers, funerals were acts of conspicuous consumption. Heraldic painters prepared brightly coloured banners, shields and escutcheons for the church, and black attire was provided for the mourners, who might also receive mourning jewellery, especially rings. Their black garb helped to distinguish the participants from the onlookers and was a ‘mark of dependency as well as respect’.92 A wake or funerary feast allowed the new lord to make a public display of his generosity and hospitality, which added to the expense. Lord Lambert’s funeral in 1620 cost £330.93 Lady Valentia’s funeral in September 1641 cost in excess of £300 and Lady Cork’s cost over 1,000 markes (about £777).94 The display associated with the funeral, the entertainment of the guests and the amount spent on memorialization all signalled the perceived importance of the deceased, which was particularly important in a country that experienced considerable upward social mobility. Other peers asked that expenditure on their funerals should not be excessive. In 1629 Viscount Gormanston directed that no blacks or ‘any other solemnity’ be used at his funeral, that his wife was to dispense the ‘meat and drink’ at his funeral feast and that only £20 was to be given to the priests.95 In the case of Mathew Plunkett, seventh Baron Louth, he insisted in his will of 1707 that not more than £50 be spent on his funeral.96 The final resting place of a peer was not always recorded, especially for Catholics, but invariably a peer opted to be buried in sacred space. Some indicated in a will where they wished to lie and a few like the earl of Cork identified a range of burial places. If he died in Dublin he wanted to be buried ‘in the Vault of my new Tomb erected over my last Dear Deceased Wife in the Chancell of St. Patrick’s Church’. If in Munster, he preferred to rest alongside his brother and mother-in-law ‘in my Vault in my Chappell

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Table 31.  Place of burial of resident peers.97 Location

No. of peers

Percentage of total

Dublin

27

16%

Rest of Ireland

78

47%

London

18

11%

Rest of England

25

15%

Continent

18

11%

166

100%

Total

and Tomb in Youghall Church’. If in England he was to be buried ‘in the Chancell of the Parish Church of Preston near Feversham in Kent under the Tomb that I erected there for my Deceased Father and Mother who both lye there’.98 In the event, he was interred in Youghal. The actual place of burial is known for 166 (out of 311, or 53 per cent) resident lords (table 31). When these data are analyzed, a number of interesting patterns emerge. First, nearly two-thirds of resident peers (106, or 63 per cent) were buried in Ireland and one-third (61, or 37 per cent) outside of Ireland, in England (43, or 26 per cent) or abroad (18, or 11 per cent). The fact that so many died away from Ireland reflects the mobility of these men. Those who found their final resting places abroad were in political exile (after the Flight of the Earls or during the 1640s and 1650s or after 1690), in military or royal service, or were travelling on the Continent. Eight lords were buried in France (six in Paris, one in Nancy and one in Lyons), three in Italy (including the earls of Tyrone and Tyrconnell in San Pietro Montorio, Rome), two in Spain (one in Alicante and another in Barcelona), three in Flanders, one in Germany and one in Jamaica. Of the 43 resident lords buried in England, 18 were laid to rest in churches across the capital, in St Pauls in Covent Garden, St Annes in Blackfriars, St Giles-in-the-Field, in the private chapel in Somerset House and, above all, in Westminster Abbey. Ten of Ireland’s greatest aristocrats lie in the Abbey, alongside the kings and queens of England. The duke of Ormond asked to be buried there beside his wife and sons, Arran and Ossory.99 After his death on 22 July 1688 Ormond’s frail body was rolled in cloths, put in a thin lead coffin and then in a thick wooden one, which was filled with pitch and wrapped in velvet. On 1 August a hearse with six mourning coaches conveyed the corpse to London where his grandson, the second duke, and many friends joined the cortege. On 4 August in the evening the duke was buried with ‘all decency’, and the dean read the service.100 The duke’s decision to be buried in the abbey was a very conscious one. Interestingly, he had considered St Canice’s in Kilkenny as the final resting place for Ossory when he had died

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in 1680. Shortly after the earl’s demise, the earl of Arlington notified Ormond that his body had been interred in a vault in the abbey but had been prepared so that it could be ‘carried to Sussex or Kilkenny as your Excellency shall think fit to direct’.101 When Ormond’s sister, Lady Clancarthy, heard that he was considering burying his heir in Ireland, she discouraged him. ‘I do much apprehend the doing so may uphold and aggravate the grief of his friends’, she wrote, adding ‘unless he could be so privately interred with his ancestors that few should know it till it were past, for that of being in their monument must needs be the only motive of that design.’102 Ossory’s body remained in Henry VII’s chapel where it had been temporarily placed. Even though the second duke of Ormond died in exile in Avignon on 16 November 1745, his body was taken back to England for burial on 22 May 1746 in Westminster Abbey, alongside his father, uncle and grandparents. In a similar vein, Richard Jones, first earl of Ranelagh, asked that his ‘sinful’ corpse not be opened, that he be interred in Westminster Abbey ‘as near as may be’ to his son and first wife, and ‘a great monument’ be erected over their bodies. Ranelagh’s will made mention of the family tomb in Dublin but he had no wish to join his ancestors there.103 Other resident peers who, like Ormond and Ranelagh, had effectively become resident in England preferred to be buried close to their country seats. Three generations of the Bourkes of Clanricarde were all inferred in the parish church at Tunbridge in Kent, near their Summerhill estate.104 The second earl of Cork wanted to be buried in a ‘decent but not splendid manner’ in his vault in the church at Londesbourgh in Yorkshire, alongside his son who had predeceased him. The third earl later joined them.105 The sixth earl of Thomond and his wife were laid to rest under their pew in the parish church of Great Billing, close to their Northamptonshire estates.106 The earl of Anglesey and his son-in-law, the earl of Tyrone, were buried at Farnborough in Hampshire.107 For men like Anglesey, Clanricarde, Cork, Ormond and Thomond, their preference for an English burial was a conscious decision. For others it clearly was not. Lord Chichester died in London on 19 February 1625, but since he wished to be buried in the church of St Nicholas in Carrickfergus his corpse was transported back to Ireland where it was interred on 24 October. The symbolism of an Englishman like Chichester preferring to lie in Ireland, the country where he had served most of his life, rather than in England, the country of his birth, would not have been lost on contemporaries. Roger Jones, first Viscount Ranelagh, died on a trip to Oxford in 1643 and was buried in St Peter’s church near Queen’s College but was memorialized in the family tomb in St Patrick’s in Dublin (see plate 10).108 The third earl of Antrim died in 1699 at Holywell, between Chester and Holyhead, as he travelled back to Ireland. A shortage of cash undoubtedly prevented his body being removed to the family vault at Bonamargy in County Antrim.

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Two-thirds of the resident peerage whose burial place is known were buried in Ireland, usually in a church or monastery. As the figures in table 31 show, a significant minority (27) chose one of the Dublin parish churches – St Bride’s, St Catherine’s, St John’s, St Michan’s and St Peter’s – as a final resting place. The cathedrals of Christ Church, where the earls of Kildare had a vault in their chantry chapel, and St Patrick’s were particularly popular, with at least six lords being buried in the former and 12 in the latter. Baron Caulfeild was buried in Christ Church on 17 August 1627 with great ceremony. A band of soldiers led the funeral procession and high-ranking serving soldiers bore the standard and banners, highlighting Caulfeild’s distinguished military career.109 Generations of new nobles – the Aungiers of Longford, the Joneses of Ranelagh and the Lamberts of Cavan – preferred to be buried in St Patrick’s. In his will Francis Aungier, baron of Longford, who had served as master of the rolls and a privy councillor, asked to be interred in a little chapel near his house in Dublin and without pomp. Instead his sons seized the opportunity to celebrate the rise of the house of Longford and buried him in St Patrick’s in some splendour. The participants in his funeral procession provide an interesting snapshot of how Longford’s clientage networks permeated the pre-war Irish legal profession. They included the chief officers of the court of chancery, together with his noble kinsmen, the earl of Kildare and Lords Digby and Kerry, while leading barristers and other civic dignitaries formed part of the cortege.110 As in the case of Lord Caulfeild, this funeral was a public demonstration of how the family had served the Crown. Similarly, Lady Cork’s funeral in St Patrick’s cathedral on 11 March 1630 testified to the social prominence that her family had attained and the nature and extent of her husband’s political and legal contacts, especially within the Protestant community. Cork held his wife to be ‘the crown of all my blessings; for she was a most religious loving and obedient wife, and the happy mother of all my hopeful children’, and he ensured that her funeral reflected this.111 Moreover, as the first senior member of the Boyle dynasty to die, her funeral was particularly magnificent. The cortege processed the short distance from the earl’s residence near Dublin castle to the cathedral and, as was customary, the deceased’s eldest daughter, the countess of Barrymore, performed the duty of chief mourner, along with her sisters.112 Lady Cork’s funeral contrasted starkly with the modest private burial of her son, Viscount Kinalmeaky, at Lismore on 3 September 1643.113 More public was the funeral three weeks later of the earl of Barrymore. On learning of his death, Cork sent his daughter £20 to bring Barrymore’s body to Youghal ‘to be interred in my chapple, and provide £30 more for mowrning stuff for his funeralles; his Lop being interred with the rights of a soldier the sonday next in my chapple at Yoghall, the Lo. of Inchequyn with veary many other being

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present’.114 The symbolism of these funerals would not have been lost on the mourners. By taking ownership of Barrymore’s corpse, Cork asserted his authority over the young earl, something that had not always proved possible when he lived, and celebrated the links with the noble house of Barry by burying him in the Boyle chapel at Youghal. It was a very public expression of Boyle power, even in the midst of rebellion, being exercised over a respected Old English Catholic dynasty even though Barrymore himself was a Protestant.115 Nearly half (47 per cent) of the peers whose burial place is known chose to rest in a personal chapel or in their local parish church, cathedral or former monastery, where Catholic and Protestant peers shared burial spaces (see table 31).116 The Butlers of Ormond and of Mountgarret were buried in St Canice’s cathedral in Kilkenny. The fourteenth (d.1612), fifteenth (d.1620) and sixteenth (d.1657) earls of Kildare were buried in the cathedral in Kildare, while the seventeenth, who died in Dublin of a fever in 1664, was quickly interred in the family vault in Christ Church. The O’Briens of Thomond had traditionally been buried in the ruined Franciscan friary at Ennis, but with the death of the Protestant fourth earl in 1624 they relocated to Limerick cathedral where they built an elaborate monument to proclaim their ‘civility’. The Prestons of Gormanston were laid to rest in their private chapel at Strathmullen; the St Lawrences in their tomb at Howth church; and the De Courcys of Kinsale in the family ‘tomb of Tinoleague’. Generations of MacDonnells of Antrim were buried in the vault in the Franciscan friary at Bonamargy, near Ballycastle.117 The speed with which the new peers created an ‘ancestral’ burial site is striking. In his will Lord Chichester asked to be buried alongside his wife and requested that ‘my little sonne . . . who lies buried in Christ Church Dublin be removed thither and that my brother Sir John Chichester who lies likewise in the said church of Knockfergus be likewise removed and laid in the former vault if I doe it not in my life tyme’.118 An exquisite alabaster and marble monument was built which represents the baron and his wife kneeling and facing each other in prayer. Between them lies their only child, Arthur, who died in infancy, and below them is an effigy of Sir John Chichester, who died in 1597.119 The process of reinterring the bodies of Arthur and John united the family in death, and Chichester’s successors were also placed in ‘the burial place of my ancestors’ at Carrickfergus.120 The first Viscount Claneboy was laid to rest in his ‘new-built chapell at the church of Bangor’, as were his son and grandson.121 When he died in 1671 William Caulfeild, Viscount Charlemont, asked to be buried in Armagh cathedral along with ‘the bones of his old deceased father’ that were to be dug up and put ‘in a new coffin’.122 The house of Mayo established a family burial place at Ballintuber abbey; the Blayneys in Monaghan church; and the Moores in the chancel of St Peters in Drogheda, where there was ‘a fair monument for my Lord Moore, his lady,

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Sir Edward Moore and Sir Thomas Moore, his sons, and their wives and children’.123 Typical of the ostentatious displays of the new peers was the grand funeral in 1636 of Hugh, first Viscount Montgomery, and of his son, the first earl of Mount Alexander, in 1663, which served ‘to demonstrate their new place in a mobile social order and to shake off all vestiges of their origins’.124 Attended by hundreds of mourners who processed in order of social rank, these very public and dignified displays highlighted the status the family enjoyed in East Ulster and beyond. No expense was spared as the corpses were laid to rest in the family vault at Newtown and in the case of Mount Alexander ‘the ordnance on the castle and custom-house [in Dublin] gave three peels’.125 The family chronicler, Sir William Montgomery, captured the hierarchical nature of the funeral and the ‘great deference which the vulgar had for their late most loved landlord’, which ‘restrained their curiosity and rude behaviour’ and led them to listen ‘to the prayers (w[hi]ch was a novelty to them) and to the learned pious sermon (such being also rare among them)’.126 Dr George Rust, later bishop of Dromore, gave the funeral sermon, which the earl’s ‘sorrowful’ countess later had printed. Memorialization and Posterity Many peers left money in their wills for the erection of funerary monuments, which made powerful statements about the individual and his place in the social hierarchy and the future vibrancy of his lineage. These funerary monuments took various forms. At one extreme they were plain floor slabs or tomb boxes, often with inscriptions, coats of arms and other symbols. The headstone of Matthias Barnewall, eighth Baron Trimleston, who was buried in Kilconnell abbey, County Galway, in 1667, reads simply ‘here lies Matthew Lord Trimleston, one of the transplanted’.127 A large tomb in a ruined church near Rush was the final resting place of the Catholic George, fourth Lord Strabane, when he died in 1668. His coat of arms adorned the tomb, along with an inscription testifying that he was ‘wise, humble, noble, pious, devout, most charitable, most virtuous and religious’.128 At the other extreme, funerary monuments were elaborate architectural structures with figures sculpted in various positions (recumbent, reclining or kneeling), and were often accompanied by lengthy prose or verse inscriptions which said in words what the monument represented in images, something particularly important in an age when so few people were literate. In his will of 1639 Henry, fifth earl of Thomond, left a detailed description of the statue that he wished to be erected in Limerick cathedral, presumably near to the alabaster tomb that he had built for his father. This was modelled on one in Westminster Abbey (of two earls and two barons in their robes supporting the upper stone) and was

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to be adorned ‘with my coat [of ] armour and all other rights due and appertaining to an earl’.129 In Limerick cathedral Thomond, a committed Protestant, shared sacred space with his Catholic kinsman, the earl of Inchiquin, who asked his heir to provide a ‘handsome and decent monument’.130 The primary function of these monuments was commemorative. They provided for posterity a powerful visual record of an individual and his lineage. Those that represented a husband and wife and members of their family commemorated a successful marriage and a lord’s fecundity. Heraldic shields and devices adorned many monuments and helped onlookers to identify a family and, through the quartering of the arms, to determine the membership of the wider lineage. Heraldic images also helped to convey an ancientness of title and decent, which was particularly useful for new peers who were eager to establish their social credibility. The nature of the monument and its positioning within the church attested to the status and wealth of the dead peer and, more importantly, to the social connections and political influences of the lineage and to its nobleness and honour. In many instances a funerary monument united a family that in life had a much dispersed existence or, as in the case of the Chichester monument in Carrickfergus or the Boyle monuments in Youghal and Dublin (see plate 11), brought together generations who would never have known one another. Monuments also celebrated public service, military achievement and private virtue.131 For example, Lord Chichester’s tomb in Carrickfergus displayed a lengthy epitaph celebrating his ancestry and his military and administrative service: For he did virtue and religion nourishe, And made this province, rude, with peace to flourish, The lewdest rebel he by power did tame, And by true justice gained an honoured name.132

Interestingly, a pamphlet dating from 1643 echoed these words as it extolled Chichester’s Oxford education and his military and administrative skills: Vertue did meet with honour; and religion With wisdome, it with bounty: all in one valour . . . Could a viceroy doe more honour to his prince.133

The elaborate monument that commemorates Thomas Jones, archbishop of Dublin, and his son, Viscount Ranelagh, did something similar. It shows the archbishop with churchman’s cap and gown (see plate 10). The recumbent figure of Viscount Ranelagh is below clad in armour, highlighting the importance of military service. He is surrounded by four female figures, presumably

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his three daughters and wife, while his son, who is in civilian dress, kneels in prayer.134 Clodagh Tait’s meticulous analysis of the funeral monuments associated with the first earl of Cork vividly recaptures how the upstart earl used five funerary monuments – one in St Patrick’s in Dublin, two at Youghal and two in England, at Deptford and Preston in Kent – ‘to bolster, and often create, an official view of the past, the present, and the future’.135 Cork combined the visual and the verbal in these monuments to portray his new and composite dynasty as an ‘ancient’ and honourable lineage, and to appropriate the reputations of the dead for the benefit of the living. These tombs also stood as a testament to the worthiness of Cork’s birth, his wealth and the exercise of his influence and power. In short, they celebrated the achievements of the Boyle dynasty, its founder and his family. They also told the life story of a family and provided a snapshot of its changing relationships. In the Youghal tomb Richard Boyle is portrayed as a descendant of the ‘ancient Boyle Family’, as a son, brother, brother-in-law, husband, father, father-inlaw and grandfather. As Tait noted, the inclusion of his dead children (an infant son from his first marriage and two sons and a daughter from his second) in the composition ‘indicates a view of the family that incorporates the totality of its members, living and dead’.136 Tait makes some fascinating comparisons with Lady Cork’s tomb in Dublin (see plate 11), which provides ‘an abridged pictorial genealogy of the countess of Cork, with each figure described according to their relationship with her’. Her grandfather and parents are represented at the top of the monument. The middle section depicts the countess and her sons, and in the bottom tier her daughters kneel in prayer.137 The coats of arms of the families into whom the Boyles married frame the elaborate tomb and add further colour and splendour. This, like the other Boyle tombs, was a subtle work of propaganda that stressed the virtues of the family and its alliances, its continuities with the past and its potential for the future. The earl of Cork used his wife’s death as an opportunity to celebrate his dynasty in print, as well as plaster. He commissioned verse in Latin, Hebrew, Greek and English to celebrate ‘a noble loyall wife’ and the foundress of the Boyle lineage. Musarum lachrym extols the virtues of her sons, two of whom were viscounts and another a baron. Her daughters had married ‘brave lords’. Her sons-in-law included the earl of Barrymore, ‘that auncient honour’d peere’; the ‘noble Digbie’; ‘the hopefull heire of Lord Goring’; the ‘renown’d Kildare prime earl of this our Isle/Whose auncient race, and still continued stile/Of honour, vertue, valour’; and Viscount Ranelagh’s ‘noble heire’.138 The published verse composed for Lady Cork was typical of the elegies that appeared during the century. A new peer who received a glowing elegy from his personal chaplain, Edward Haukes, was the earl of Mountrath,

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who died of smallpox in December 1661. In a one-page broadside Mountrath was represented as a military hero or ‘Great Alexander’, who vanquished ‘Kernes, Tories, Miscreants’ and wolves. Haukes portrayed Mountrath as a man of honour who had devoted his life ‘To serve his king, his country, and his God’, helped to ‘steer the ship of state’ and protect the English interest. At his passing the nation shed ‘a flood of British tears’.139 The earl of Ossory’s death in 1680 elicited at least 10 separate elegies. In addition to the anonymous ones, Charles Cotton, John Crouch, Thomas Flatman, Sir William Petty, Elkanah Settle, Nahum Tate and John Wilson all wrote tributes.140 A number of the tributes circulated as anonymous one-page broadsheets and urged their English and Irish readers not simply to admire Ossory but to model their lives on his.141 Others were by distinguished poets. John Dryden’s famous satire Absalom and Achitophel included a tender tribute to Ossory. In it Dryden linked the names of Ormond and Ossory in perpetuity, and celebrated the antiquity and nobility of the Ormond line and its sustained fidelity to the Stuart cause (‘Barzillai crown’d with Honour and with Years’).142 The poem, which focused on the honour and service of the father as much as on the son, reduced Ormond’s private secretary to tears and, interestingly, lines from it appear to be echoed in later (anonymous) elegies to the duchess and first duke.143 Their deaths in 1684 and 1688 gave writers like Flatman and Tate an opportunity to recall the popular memory of Ossory and to reflect on the greatness of one of ‘our nations most noble families’.144 These works might be compared to the formulaic praise poetry that the Gaelic poets composed on the death of their titled patrons. Tadhg Mac Bruaideadha lamented the death of the Protestant fourth earl of Thomond in 1624, claiming that ‘his death is a cause of sorrow to Irishmen. . . . Because of his death the noble ones of the Gaeill and Gaill . . . have raised up a lament throughout every land’.145 Dáibhí Ó Bruadair in ‘Erin lives not after Donogh’ lamented the passing of Cormac, Lord Muskerry, in June 1665 and his father, Donough, earl of Clancarthy, in August.146 Particularly heartfelt was Pádraigín Haicéad’s eulogy composed in memory of his patron, Edmund Butler, third baron of Dunboyne, who died in 1640. Related by birth and marriage to the leading dynasties of Ormond, Thomond, Desmond, as well as Upper Ossory, Baltinglass and the other Butler cadet branches, the poet maintained that Dunboyne’s title did not reflect his true rank (‘Though he styled himself as baron,/this fine man was better than earls are’). Dunboyne had ‘earls in his service’. He exercised great military prowess (‘aggressive in authority over fighters’, ‘warring’, ‘fierce’ and ‘whelp of the vigorous Butler bloodline’). Haicéad lauded his personal qualities of virtue and humility, his protection of the clergy and his hospitality in ‘His bright, delightful fortress-mansion’. Dunboyne’s ancient lineage (‘Norman blood from royal households’), his distinguished kinship links and his fecundity (five sons, four daughters

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and four grandchildren outlived him), and his generosity (‘never mean with spices’), all attracted the poet’s fulsome praise.147 Haicéad’s maternal uncle, Michael Kearney, also enjoyed Lord Dunboyne’s patronage and in 1635 translated Geoffrey Keating’s ‘Foras feasa ar Éirinn’ into English. Kearney marked his death by submitting the baron’s lengthy funeral entry to the Ulster office of arms.148 According to Bernadette Cunningham, the commemoration of Dunboyne’s passing – in verse and in a funeral entry – illustrates how those who adhered to honour principles tried ‘to straddle two social and cultural worlds in an era of rapid social and political change’.149 These poems were a harsh reminder of the loss of a clan leader. Funeral sermons did likewise and provided the Church with an opportunity to exemplify virtue.150 In 1663 Dr Rust preached the earl of Mount Alexander’s funeral sermon and spoke of his virtue, nobleness, wisdom, good nature, loyalty, military ability, and his ‘zeal and cordial affection for the Church of England’.151 In short, Mount Alexander exemplified all of the qualities of a true noble: a loyal subject to his prince: a dutiful son to the church, a worthy patriot to his country; a tender and affectionate husband to his excellent ladies, real and faithful to his friend; merciful and compassionate towards his tenants, free and charitable to the poor, courteous and obliging to all, in a word, just and righteous, noble and honourable in all his actions.152

Those present urged Rust and his widow to ‘transmit a copy of what was spoken . . . [and] to expose that to the eye, which was intended but for the ear’.153 A version of the sermon was duly printed in Dublin. The earl of Orrery’s funeral sermon, delivered by his personal chaplain Thomas Morrice and published at the request of his widow, addressed similar issues. Morrice drew attention to Orrery’s ‘noble birth and parentage, his honourable alliance, his high tables, and places of honour and trust’.154 Like Mount Alexander, Orrery was a pious and devout Christian, loving husband, tender father, noble master, faithful friend, kind neighbour, loyal subject, wise statesman and ‘one of the pillars and patriots of our country’.155 He abhorred ‘drunkenness, whoredom, prohane [sic] swearing and cursing, oppression, schism, atheism’ and promoted charitable and good works ‘that might oblige all of those societies to live religiously and vertuously’.156 In short, Orrery’s life was that of an exemplary noble and virtuous Christian, and Morrice urged others to follow his lead. The publication of funeral sermons such as these or of elegies allowed them to reach wide audiences across the Stuart dominions and thereby to shape reputations. But as Morrice noted in his oration for Orrery, the earl’s achievements were worthy of ‘a volume, rather than a sermon’ and he went on to

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publish A Collection of the State Letters of . . . Roger Boyle, First Earl of Orrery.157 In fact, from the 1670s Orrery, perhaps fearful that aspects of his own at times unsavoury past would be exposed, collected materials for his life story with the specific intention of preserving his actions and reputation ‘to posterity’. Others did likewise. After Orrery’s burial the earl of Anglesey, who was writing his own history, immediately contacted his widow and asked to consult the earl’s ‘papers and memorialls particularly the whole proceedings wherein he boare a great and honourable part’.158 Prior to his death in 1658 the marquis of Clanricarde had compiled letter-books, presumably with a view to writing his own version of events.159 In 1677 Sir Robert Southwell, Ormond’s secretary, urged the duke to commission his own history of the 1640s.160 As Southwell put it: And I conceive your long life and many years of employment, and variety of fortunes, will deserve a little care, even from yourself, to see that justice be done; since every man is a debtor to his family, and ’tis not enough to leave great heaps of materials behind, if they must be left to the mercy of those who shall not employ them aright; therefore I am so far in the other extreme that I would even press and importune your Grace to have somebody capable of the work employed in nothing else (while you are in the Government there, and have all papers about you), to write the memories of your whole life, and if not to the world, yet to bequeath them to your family.161

Southwell and a scholar called Mr Hill, who later became a professor at the university of Leiden, enjoyed full access to Ormond’s ‘great heaps of materials’, secured copies of other contemporary histories and began work on compiling a suitable narrative.162 The monumental task, however, was never completed and only in the eighteenth century did Ormond find his historian in the person of Thomas Carte.163 The importance of lying ‘well in the chronicle’ became painfully apparent to Ormond after Nicholas French attacked his honour in the aftermath of the land settlement (see chapter 11). During the early 1680s the publication of works about the civil wars also cast aspersions on Ormond’s actions during these years.164 In brief, the earl of Castlehaven published in 1680 his memoirs, in response to the appearance of Edmund Borlase’s History of the execrable Irish Rebellion (Dublin, 1680).165 Castlehaven, who claimed that Borlase had depicted him as a ‘rebel’, used his memoirs to justify his own position as a Catholic confederate during the 1640s.166 In February 1681 Castlehaven’s Memoirs elicited a response from Anglesey, which aimed principally to refute Castlehaven’s version of events but also to deflect attention from Anglesey’s implication in Popish plotting.167 To that end, either deliberately

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or inadvertently, Anglesey impeached Ormond’s integrity and conduct in his dealings both with the Catholic confederates and the English parliamentarians. Ormond’s surrender in June 1647 of Dublin castle to a parliamentary delegation that included Anglesey came under particular scrutiny.168 The duke claimed that Anglesey’s tract, which had circulated widely especially in the coffee houses, ‘deduces consequences, raises inferences, and scatters glances injurious to the memory of the dead, and the honours of some living; among those . . . yet living, I find myself worst treated’.169 This direct slight on the duke, who was driven by a sense of duty, honour and loyalty to the Crown, and the perceived attack on Charles I, left Ormond no alternative but to undermine Anglesey’s position at court, where he had become increasingly isolated in the wake of the Popish Plot and Exclusion Crisis, and to secure his dismissal from office.170 Ormond had won the short-term political battle but his reputation had clearly suffered from this onslaught. As the duke himself admitted, ‘I must say a pen is a dangerous weapon in your Lo’ps [i.e. Anglesey’s] hand, if you neither know nor care who you wound with it.’171 At the height of the pamphlet war Arlington noted that the duke had received ‘so severe a blow from [Anglesey’s] untrue assertions’ that he should employ ‘another hand to answer’ the charges, ‘lest his assertions pass for truths in the opinion of the world’.172 One of those hands who came to his rescue was that of John Dryden, the poet laureate who featured the duke in Absalom and Achitophel, which appeared in November 1681, and in the dedication of his Life of Plutarch (1683). In Absalom and Achitophel Dryden reflected on the duke’s sacrifice and exile, suffering, constancy, charity and loyalty: In this short File, Barzillai first appears; Barzillai crown’d with Honour and with Years: Long since, the rising Rebells he withstood In Regions Waste, beyond the Jordans Flood: Unfortunately Brave to buoy the State; But sinking underneath his Masters Fate: In Exile with his Godlike Prince he Mourn’d; For him he Suffer’d, and with him Return’d. The Court he practis’d, not the Courtier’s art: Large was his Wealth, but larger was his Heart: Which, well the Noblest Objects knew to choose, The Fighting Warriour, and Recording Muse.173

Dryden also stressed Ormond’s concern with documenting his own actions in the dedication of the Plutarch, where he asserted Ormond’s devotion to history and the need for some contemporary historian to record his life: ‘But

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what Plutarch can this age produce to immortalize a life so Noble? May some excellent Historian at length be found, some Writer not unworthy of his Subject.’174 Other dynasties, especially new upwardly mobile ones, recognized the importance of using history to immortalize dynasties, and many families oversaw the writing up of their family biographies or else had committed to paper orally preserved stories and testimonies. The MacDonnells of Antrim were anxious to preserve family lore. The well-known Irish antiquarian Charles Lynnegar constructed a detailed MacDonnell genealogy in Irish and English for the fourth earl in 1714. An extensive oral history of the family, and of several other associated septs, was taken down from the words of an old man circa 1712. During the early decades of the eighteenth century five panegyric speeches and two congratulatory poems relating to the marquis of Antrim’s landing in Scotland in 1646, together with a detailed narrative of his two escapes from Carrickfergus castle in 1642 and 1643, were committed to paper.175 Contemporary writers also chronicled the achievements of the Hamiltons of Clanbrassil and Montgomerys of Mount Alexander, and emphasized their noble lineages, their loyalty to the Established Church and the Crown, and the prominent roles they had played in helping to civilize Ulster.176 In an article on the Montgomery manuscripts Raymond Gillespie noted that these ‘represent a new departure in the writing of Irish history since they are a conscious attempt by a settler family to portray its history since coming to Ireland in a way that demonstrates the success of the settlement. It is not a justification of colonization but rather a description of the founding of a dynasty.’177 Conclusion Three conclusions can be draw from this study of death amongst the nobility. First, the resident lords, like nobles across early modern Europe, did everything possible to prepare for an orderly death that facilitated the smooth transfer of power from one generation to the next. Though a peer exercised little control over the timing of his demise, the fact that two-thirds of lords lived into their fifties undoubtedly promoted stability within a lineage and allowed for marriage and the rearing of a family. When the moment of death came, the writing of a will, dying a ‘good’ death and a carefully choreographed funeral contributed towards the handover of power from a lord to his heir. Second, the death of a peer or a senior family member offered the living an opportunity to celebrate the loyalty and service of the deceased, along with the family’s social and political alliances, and to signal the dynasty’s ambitions for the future. This process of memorialization began with the funeral itself but also involved building funerary monuments and

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commissioning funeral sermons, celebratory poetry and family histories, many of which might also be printed. Collectively, these aimed to represent a lineage and its founding members as honourable and noble. In an upwardly mobile and hierarchical society the importance of these public displays cannot be overestimated. Third, many peers actively chose where they wished to be buried. The majority identified with an ‘ancient’ burial place or, if new to the peerage, quickly created one for their lineage, usually close to the seats of their power, perhaps in churches that they had helped to build or in monasteries they had sought to protect. Here the dead peer, resplendent in a prominently positioned tomb, continued to form part of the community that had sustained him in life. The fact that so many new peers, who had been born in England or Scotland, were buried in Ireland, signalled their commitment to the country that had given birth to their dynasties. Equally, those lords who had acquired English interests over the course of the seventeenth century often preferred to die there, rather than on the Irish estates that brought them wealth and power. Thus in death some of Ireland’s greatest aristocrats – Lords Anglesey, Clanricarde, Cork, Ormond, Ranelagh and Thomond – trumpeted their ‘Englishness’ by opting to be buried in English churches. Those privileged enough to be interred in Westminster Abbey shared sacred space with royalty, which enhanced the family’s sense of honour and underscored their status as service nobles.

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CHAPTER 17

Conclusion At the heart of this book is the argument that during the course of the

seventeenth century a composite parliamentary peerage played a key role in making Ireland English. Contemporaries acknowledged the effectiveness of the anglicizing processes. An anonymous pamphlet, dating from 1652, and presumably written by an English parliamentarian, noted how ‘we have fought to make Ireland English’.1 An early seventeenth-century Ulster poet, Fear Flatha Ó Gnímh, whose family had served as the hereditary poets to the O’Neills, wrote a lament (‘Pitiful are the Gaels’) that described Ireland as ‘a new England in all but name’.2 Later in the century the poet Dáibhí Ó Bruadair also picked up on how Ireland had become English. In ‘A fateful wound hath made of me’ he attributed mid-century military and political defeat to those who had curried favour and collaborated with the English: Hundreds are proclaiming now themselves as English, By kinship welded to the war-successful faction, They who opened oft a breach in thriving districts, While guarding her estates, maintaining her dominions.3

That Ireland became increasingly English over the course of the seventeenth century is beyond doubt. This book puts the titled peerage, who operated as a reasonably coherent social group, at the centre of these developments. It argues that the peers, who comprised Ireland’s leading developers, entrepreneurs, landlords, patrons, politicians and soldiers, were remarkably effective instruments of English imperialism. In short, these men profoundly shaped the face of early modern Ireland. Yet scholars have shied away from writing the collective history of these lords, in part because of the uneven nature of their archives and in part because of the negative associations that privileged aristocrats (albeit of a later vintage than the ones discussed here) have with Ireland’s colonial past.

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‘Sir Humphrey history’ or the history of the ‘great house’ did not sit well with a tradition that was nationalist and republican. This book addresses this gap in the historiography. It shows how the resident peerage served as key agents in the imperial policies and ‘civilizing’ processes that underpinned English control over Ireland.4 These political, economic, religious, social and cultural anglicizing initiatives began in the 1540s with a series of surrender and regrant agreements then really took off in the early decades of the seventeenth century as the peerage became increasingly Protestant and adopted English legal, administrative, political and economic structures, together with the English language and English culture. Out of this period of profound transition emerged the Protestant ascendancy associated with the eighteenth century and, eventually, the modern Irish state. This was not a linear progression, nor was the outcome predestined. On the contrary, what this study highlights is the haphazard, messy and clumsy nature of the processes surrounding state formation and the very real limitations on central power. Random accidents of longevity, fertility and death, along with political geo­­ graphy, determined aristocratic fortunes as much as royal influence or public policy. Ruthless self-interest often overrode imperial imperatives. The power of a personality, leadership qualities, the strength of kin or courtly connections, access to cash and credit networks, together with human attributes like ambition, determination, greed and snobbery, and simple good fortune, all played their role in determining the (in)effectiveness of Stuart rule in Ireland. Certainly, the Crown expected the peers to promote ‘civility’ in Ireland as part of a wider anglicizing agenda. Many did and the lawless elements of the ‘fighting and feasting’ culture that had characterized the Middle Ages virtually disappeared, even if the established lords retained (and the new ones acquired) aspects of traditional lordship. Across Ireland, and particularly in the planted regions of Ulster and Munster, peers adopted the Crown’s ‘civilizing’ landed policies with varying degrees of enthusiasm. Many acted as ‘improving’ landlords and promoted the new commercial economy so closely associated with the plantations. Avaricious speculators of all creeds and backgrounds grabbed titles, lands and, if they could, offices, and consolidated their position with canny marriages. It was claimed of the earl of Cork that ‘no subject in 40 years hath done or will do so much in building, enclosing and planting with English and altogether after the English fashion, insomuch that all his lands are English colonies, even in the midst of Irish countries’.5 Yet there is little doubt that Cork acted primarily to further his own interests. He was not alone. The greediest investors were often members of the Dublin administration, who enriched themselves, invariably at the expense of the Crown. The Catholic peers in a position to do so also became entrepreneurs and co-opted civilizing processes to strengthen their regional power bases. In short, whether Catholic or Protestant, the love of money did more to ‘effect

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civility than any other persuasion whatsoever’.6 The interventions of peers help to explain the speed with which the redistributive medieval economy was transformed into a commercially oriented one. As major landowners who enjoyed access to cash rentals and capital, along with political influence in Dublin and London, the peers helped to drive wider economic initiatives, particularly those around urbanization, the development of sophisticated credit networks grounded on trust and honour and the introduction of innovative farming practices. Their ‘civilizing’ initiatives reconfigured the Irish landscape and the castles, fortified mansions, schools, churches, gaols, roads and bridges that the peers built stand as potent physical manifestations of the Crown’s message. The level of mutual dependence between the monarch and the titled nobility is striking. On the one hand, the king relied on these lords in his task of making Ireland English and supported aristocratic landed interests if only to promote regional stability. On the other, the Crown remained for the peers the best source for securing titles, land and wealth. Time and again, they paraded their loyalty to the Stuarts. Of course, at moments of intense political tension – the 1613 parliament or during the final months of Wentworth’s rule – or during periods of military crisis, the 1640s and after 1688, relations between the sovereign and many of his titled subjects broke down. Yet even within these crises the majority of Irish nobles preferred to operate within an imperial context and their dogged loyalty to the house of Stuart is one of the most striking themes of these years. Closely linked to this is Catholic survivalism. Royal patronage combined with the respect that the Stuarts clearly had for those of ancient lineage and their commitment to honouring legal agreements, especially jointures and mortgages, undoubtedly facilitated Catholic survivalism. Important, too, were the sheer tenacity, resilience, ingenuity, fecundity and pragmatism of so many recusant families intent on securing the survival of their lineage. Savvy marriages to English heiresses helped, as did kin links with leading Protestant power brokers. The political geography of an Irish estate was as important in 1685 as it had been in 1603, and the great Catholic aristocrats who held vast properties in remote regions prospered providing they remained loyal to the Crown. Catholic survivalism is particularly striking after 1649 when a timely conversion might have been politically expedient. Yet the numbers of Catholic and Protestant peers remained roughly equal throughout the seventeenth century until the severe penal legislation of the post-1690 years left the Catholic lords no alternative but to conform if they wanted to retain their estates and exercise political power. It would be unwise to overstate the extent of Catholic survivalism. It can also be argued that the seventeenth century represented a period of absolute crisis for certain sectors of the Catholic peerage. Many lower-ranking Gaelic

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and, to a lesser extent, Old English lords suffered all-encompassing cultural, political and economic calamities, which began during the early decades of the century with the plantations and ended with the completion of the Williamite land settlement nearly 100 years later. It deprived many of their estates, status and power and forced others to seek service in one of the Catholic continental armies. Though higher-ranking recusant lords (especially those with contacts at court or with extensive estates in remote areas), together with the bulk of the Protestant peerage, also suffered – especially during the 1640s and 1650s – they nevertheless survived the social, economic and political turmoil caused by the civil war with their power largely intact. However, the costs of survival proved enormous and often resulted in the dismemberment of estates, the diminution of their political power or, in the case of Catholic lords, in their conversion to Protestantism. The importance of landholding to the exercise of power cannot be overstated. Land underpinned the social engineering associated with the creation of a composite peerage and ensured that the Crown’s ruling elite had the political muscle and the wealth necessary to support their honour. Over the course of the century the amount of land controlled by the resident peerage increased by almost a half, from 18 per cent (in 1641) to 26 per cent (in c.1670), and despite the unsettled times the relative stability of the landed hierarchy is striking, with a small number of aristocrats consolidating their position at the top of the social and landed pyramid. Established Old English and native lords exploited the fluid land market, mortgages and the opportunities that plantation created to consolidate their position as property owners, much as the newcomers used these windfalls to accumulate territorial empires that underpinned their upward social mobility. Thus from the early seventeenth century power and property owning were inextricably linked, something that became stronger as the peerage increased its overall share of Irish land. Moreover, the number of acres that a lord held broadly correlated with his rank within the peerage. Over the course of the century, regional changes in landholding did occur, particularly the westward shift in Catholic landholding and the significant increase in acres held by the Protestant lords in Leinster and east Munster, but there was also considerable continuity of landholding from the pre-war years amongst the higher- and middle-ranking peers, which facilitated stability within the peerage despite the turbulent times. Inheritance practices, especially the combination of male primogeniture and entail, created enduring landed dynasties. This allowed for the retention of political, economic and social power in the hands of a noble elite, and in many instances the transfer of that power between generations. Further detailed analysis of individual lordships and regional cadastral studies which span the early modern period are needed. Even in the absence of these, developments in Ireland appear to mirror broad trends across early

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modern Europe, where by the early seventeenth century land underpinned noble power and rulers distributed acres with the explicit intention of strengthening monarchical power. There was no equivalent of the revolution in landholding that occurred in early modern Ireland in the other Stuart kingdoms. Instead, it can be compared with the massive land transfers that took place in the Austrian Habsburg composite monarchy, especially Bohemia, or in Muscovite Russia under the Romanovs or in seventeenth-century Sweden.7 This, together with the move towards male primogeniture and away from partible inheritance, helped to define aristocracies across early modern Europe. These developments also drove social mobility. The inability of so many lords to produce legitimate male heirs resulted, on the one hand, in high levels of extinction and, on the other, in continued ennoblements as monarchs maintained the ranks of their ruling aristocracies with new creations. Intense upward social mobility thus occurred across seventeenthcentury Europe as parvenus scrambled for royal favour and patronage. It is, however, important to remember the extent to which traditional lords also prospered and consolidated their power bases. Hamish Scott, whose comparative work on European nobilities is exemplary, draws attention to the unprecedented successes of the Hungarian house of Eszterházy, a lesser noble family that used marriage and royal service to acquire a vast territorial empire and great political power and status. The parallels between the Eszterházy dynasty and the Butlers of Ormond are worthy of further investigation.8 This emphasis on consolidation and continuity now characterizes research on nobles and has effectively replaced theories of aristocratic decline and crisis promoted by a generation of scholars working in the 1960s and 1970s.9 Recent research on the English nobility has taken particular issue with Lawrence Stone’s emphasis on crisis and pointed to the endurance and adaptability of many lineages, even Catholic ones, and has drawn attention to the survival strategies that enterprising aristocrats developed to ensure the longterm sustainability of their lines.10 Equally, Keith Brown’s work on early modern Scotland points to the continuity, success and durability of nobilities in the face of political and economic instability. Brown attributes the survival of Scottish nobles to the effective and energetic adaptations they made ‘in order to preserve their power in face of significant societal change’.11 The similarities with Ireland, especially with regard to the continuities of good lordship, the centrality of land, noble commitment to service, marriage patterns, trends in conspicuous consumption, economic innovation, concepts of honour and the emergence of a distinctive aristocratic culture, are striking. The publication of this book might encourage a new generation of scholars to engage in genuinely comparative ‘three kingdoms’ history around some of these commonalities and allow for rigorous analysis of the differences, which were also very real, especially those around religion. Certainly, historians of

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early modern Ireland can learn much from the methodologies developed by those working on social, cultural and economic history elsewhere. Such interactions can only enrich our understanding of overlooked subjects like masculinity, widowhood and hospitality, and allow us to look with fresh eyes at the history of the seventeenth-century Irish gentry and ‘middling sorts’ or of the family in early modern Ireland. The similarities between aristocratic experiences in the composite Stuart monarchies should not surprise us given the fact that the Irish peerage was modelled on that of England and the human interactions between the kingdoms were constant. Less well documented but equally pertinent are European parallels. Ireland’s status as England’s first ‘colony’ and the fact that the nobles acted as agents of empire allow for comparisons with the territories governed by other early modern expansionist states. Recent research suggests that the Spanish Habsburgs ruled their dominions in South America and interacted with their political elite there much as the Stuarts did in Ireland.12 The relationships that the Austrian Habsburgs enjoyed with their nobles in Bohemia and Lower Austria offer some interesting points of comparison with Ireland.13 Throughout the Austro-Bohemian lands a redistribution of estates to favoured individuals occurred, akin to the Irish land transfers, which resulted in the emergence of a new service nobility that owed its primary allegiance to the Habsburg monarchy. In Lower Austria, as Karin MacHardy has shown, the Catholic monarch favoured court-centred Catholics and ‘Loyalty became equated with catholicism and noble virtue with service to the ruler.’ The king did everything possible to exclude the unruly and more numerous Protestant nobles, to dilute the social and political status of Protestants and to alter the distribution of land in favour of Catholics. As in Ireland, this had dramatic economic consequences and created social tensions as a generation of upwardly mobile Catholic upstarts, who were perceived to lack honour, displaced the traditional Protestant elite.14 In 1620 the Protestant nobles, who had been excluded ‘from a central source of economic, social, political, and cultural capital – not to mention its symbolic power’, rebelled.15 The situation in neighbouring Bohemia differed from that of Lower Austria. The most extensive tenurial changes occurred in Bohemia, which was densely populated (approx. 3 million) and had a thriving economy based on agriculture and proto-industry that maximized its natural resources. Traditionally, the Habsburgs had shared power with local diets in Bohemia but, as the sixteenth century progressed, they determined to do everything possible to erode these regional powers and to impose taxation on the predominantly Protestant nobles. In 1618 the more radical lords rebelled in an attempt to recover their political privileges, but imperial forces defeated them at the battle of White Mountain (1620). The Habsburgs then consolidated

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their position by passing a decree that made conversion to Catholicism a requirement for landholding. This resulted in massive transfers of land and allowed the Habsburgs to create a Catholic service nobility, the majority of whom were ‘foreign’ (mostly Austrian). These arrivistes were delighted to accept land, titles and office in return for their loyalty and for adopting inheritance practices based on primogeniture. The opening up of the previously closed marriage market facilitated further assimilation and the number of marriages between Bohemians and Austrians increased, often across religious boundaries. As in Ireland, tensions characterized the interactions between the newcomers and the natives, who struggled to adapt to changing economic circumstances and to develop imaginative survival strategies that allowed them to retain at least some of their pre-war power and, where possible, to acquire for their lineages additional lands, office and influence.16 The political consequences of this structural transformation and social engineering were very real and, as in Ireland, resulted in major armed insurrections, though in Ireland the nobles did not instigate the 1641 rebellion (see chapter 9). There was also an important difference. As they handed out titles the Stuarts, unlike the Habsburgs, did not insist on religious conformity. Instead, apart from a brief period during the 1620s, the Crown used Irish titles to reward those who had served it reasonably faithfully, and thereby created a peerage of mixed race and religion and of old and new families who promoted the royal ‘civilizing’ and anglicizing agenda. Matters in Ireland, however, changed dramatically after the accession of William III. The defeat of the Jacobites at Aughrim in July 1691 had an impact on the Catholic aristocracy comparable to the defeat of the Bohemian Protestants at the battle of White Mountain in 1620. Catholic peers lost all political power and much of their land. Many opted for continental exile. Thirteen Catholic peers forfeited their titles in 1691 (though some were later revived or served as courtesy titles).17 A few converted to Protestantism and took their seats in the 1692 and 1695 parliaments alongside the Old Protestant lords, who had been elevated to the peerage during the early decades of the seventeenth century. It was these men and their heirs (if they managed to sire sons) who dominated the political establishment well into the eighteenth century. A fresh batch of Williamite ennoblements joined them. These new lineages – Beresford, Cole, Hill, Parsons, Perceval, Rawdon and Southwell – were prosperous descendants of upwardly mobile landed gentlemen who had settled in Ireland during the early decades of the seventeenth century. Many had intermarried with noble families, which facilitated continuity and consolidation. In fact, over half of these early eighteenth-century peers had ‘one pre-1485 Irish ancestor. At least seventeen were related by descent or marriage to a Fitzgerald, eleven to a Barry, eleven to a Butler, nine to an O’Brien, six to a Burke, six to a Barnewall, six to a Dillon and five to a MacCarthy.’18

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Whether in Ireland or in continental Europe, what is striking during the seventeenth century is the level of social and cultural integration across aristocracies and the extent to which nobles acted as cultural, social and political brokers. Shared notions of honour, common educational experiences, continental travel, time spent together socializing, gambling and hunting, or politicking at court or serving alongside each other in battle, together with marriages, kinship links and economic interdependence, undoubtedly forged common ideals of nobleness. These experiences inculcated the importance of securing the survival, needs and future well-being of the dynasty, rather than the individual. They also rendered the members of the aristocracy into a more coherent body, with a communal identity, which served to preserve much of their authority and influence. Yet a significant number of seventeenth-century lords examined in this book simply failed in their fundamental duty to secure the survival of their house. Economic pressures forced many of the lesser Catholic lords into obscurity, while the expropriation of lands and forfeiture of titles after 1690 stripped other houses of their status, wealth and privileges. The experiences of the Protestant peers were different but by the end of the seventeenth century many appear to have run out of steam in the sense that a significant number were no longer key political power brokers, were ruined by debts, or had effectively abandoned Ireland, preferring to live in England. Protestant peers of English and Scottish origin with titles dating from the early seventeenth century were also particularly vulnerable to extinction. It is ironic that these service nobles, whom the king had elevated with the specific purpose of making Ireland English, were the ones who ultimately failed to secure their lineages, with the result that by the early eighteenth century over half of their titles had become extinct. They may have fought ‘to make Ireland English’, their estates may have prospered, they may have exercised great political influence across the Stuart kingdoms, they may have been great patrons, entrepreneurs and ‘civilizing’ agents and they may have married the wealthiest English heiresses, but ultimately biological failure frustrated their long-term dynastic ambitions.

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Notes Chapter One: Introduction   1. An account of the solemn funeral and interrment of the right honourable the Countess of Arran, as it was lately sent in a letter or narrative from Dublin. Bearing date, Aug. 21. 1668 ([London], 1668), pp. 2–3. Also in CSPI, 1666–1669, pp. 637–41. Discussed in full in chapter 16 below.   2. CSPI, 1666–1669, p. 640.   3. For an alphabetical listing of the peers who operated over the course of the century, see appendix II.   4. If extinctions and forfeitures are combined, the overall rate of attrition over three or four generations was 51 per cent; see chapter 2 below.   5. H. M. Scott, ‘ “Acts of time and power”: The Consolidation of Aristocracy in Seventeenth-Century Europe, c.1580–1720’, Bulletin of the German Historical Institute, 30 (2008), pp. 4–5.   6. H. M. Scott (ed.), The European Nobilities in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (2 vols., London, 1995), I, pp. 9–14.   7. Ronald Asch, Nobilities in Transition 1550–1700: Courtiers and Rebels in Britain and Europe (London, 2003), p. 31.   8. Keith Brown, Noble Society in Scotland from the Reformation to the Revolution (Edinburgh, 2000), p. 15.   9. S. J. Connolly, Contested Island: Ireland 1460–1630 (Oxford, 2007), pp. 281, 404–5; Raymond Gillespie, The Transformation of the Irish Economy 1550–1700 (Dundalk, 1991), p. 13. 10. All pre-1603 peers have been described as a ‘ancient’, together with any creations who were of noble blood or junior branches of an aristocratic house. Most of the newcomers were of gentry or mercantile backgrounds, but others, such as the MacDonnells of Antrim or the Touchets of Castlehaven, came from ancient or titled lineages. 11. See pp. 302–10 below. 12. David Edwards, The Ormond Lordship in County Kilkenny, 1515–1642: The Rise and Fall of Butler Feudal Power (Dublin, 2003), pp. 100–2 and pp. 109–13 below. 13. See pp. 401–14 below. 14. Gilbert (ed.), Irish Confederation I, pp. 36–8 (quote p. 36). 15. G. R. Mayes, ‘The Early Stuarts and the Irish Peerage’, English Historical Review, 73 (1958), pp. 227–51, and Victor Treadwell, Buckingham and Ireland, 1616–1628: A Study in Anglo-Irish Politics (Dublin, 1998). 16. For a contemporary Protestant view on identity formation in Ireland see Richard Cox, ‘An apparatus or introductory discourse’ in Hibernica Anglicana; or the history of Ireland from the conquest thereof by the English to this present time (London, 1689); Toby Barnard, ‘Identities, Ethnicity and Tradition among Irish Dissenters c.1650–1750’ in Kevin Herlihy (ed.), The Irish Dissenting Tradition 1650–1750 (Dublin, 1995), p. 29. 17. Joep Leerson, Mere Irish and Fíor-Ghael: Studies in the Idea of Irish Nationality, its Development and Literary Expression prior to the Nineteenth Century (Cork, 1996), offers the best overview of identity formation among the Catholic population in early modern Ireland. 18. Aidan Clarke, ‘The Policies of the “Old English” in Parliament, 1640–1’ in J. L. McCracken (ed.), Historical Studies, V (London, 1965), and ‘Colonial Identity in Early Seventeenth-Century Ireland’ in T. W. Moody (ed.), Historical Studies. XI. Nationality and the Pursuit of National Independence (Belfast, 1978).

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Notes to pp. 6–11

19. Breandan Ó Buachalla, ‘James Our True King: The Ideology of Irish Royalism in the Seventeenth Century’ in D. George Boyce, Robert Eccleshall and Vincent Geoghegan (eds.), Political Thought in Ireland since the Seventeenth Century (London, 1993). Unfortunately, Ó Buachalla’s tome on the Stuarts and the intelligentsia, 1603–1788, Ailing ghéar (Dublin, 1997), is not available in English. Also see Mícheál Mac Craith, ‘The Gaelic Reaction to the Reformation’ in Steven Ellis and Sarah Barber (eds.), Conquest and Union: Fashioning a British State, 1485–1725 (Harlow, 1995), pp. 139–61; Bernadette Cunningham, ‘Irish Language Sources for Early Modern Ireland’, History Ireland, 4 (1996), pp. 41–48; Marc Caball, ‘Bardic Poetry and the Analysis of Gaelic Mentalities’, History Ireland, 2 (1994), pp. 46–50; and Michelle O Riordan, ‘ “Political” Poems in the Mid-Seventeenth-Century Crisis’ in Jane Ohlmeyer (ed.), Ireland from Independence to Occupation (Cambridge, 1995), and The Gaelic Mind and the Collapse of the Gaelic World (Cork, 1990). 20. See pp. 287, 327–8 below. 21. Jane Ohlmeyer, Civil War and Restoration in the Three Stuart Kingdoms: The Political Career of Randal MacDonnell, First Marquis of Antrim (1609–83) (Cambridge, 1993). 22. John Ainsworth (ed.), Inchiquin Manuscripts (IMC, Dublin, 1961), p. 512. 23. On the death of his grandfather in 1688, James Butler, second duke, inherited his Irish dukedom together with his English earldom, and through his grandmother he acquired a Scottish peerage (baron of Dingwall). 24. Anonymous, A brief compendium of the birth, education, heroick exploits and victories of the truly valorous and renowned gentleman, Thomas Earl of Ossory . . . (London?, 1680), p. 3. 25. For a single example see Nahum Tate, A pastoral in memory of His Grace the illustrious Duke of Ormond . . . (London, 1688), dedication and p. 14. 26. Comment. Rinucc., III, p. 520. 27. Quoted in Anne Creighton, ‘ “Grace and favour”: The Cabal Ministry and Irish Catholic Politics, 1667–73’ in Coleman A. Dennehy (ed.), Restoration Ireland: Always Settling and Never Settled (Aldershot, Hampshire, and Burlington, VT, 2008), p. 141. 28. David Edwards, ‘A Haven of Popery: English Catholic Migration to Ireland in the Age of Plantation’ in Alan Ford and John McCafferty (eds.), The Origins of Sectarianism in Early Modern Ireland (Cambridge, 2005), pp. 95–6. 29. T. C. Barnard, ‘The Protestant Interest, 1641–1660’ in Ohlmeyer (ed.), Ireland from Independence to Occupation, and S. J. Connolly, Religion, Law and Power: The Making of Protestant Ireland (Oxford, 1992), p. 2. 30. George Hill (ed.), The Montgomery Manuscripts (1603–1706). Compiled from the family papers by William Montgomery of Rosemount . . . (Belfast, 1869), p. 255. In fact, his wives were New English – one, Mary Moore, the daughter of the first earl of Drogheda, and the other, Catherine Jones, daughter of Arthur, Lord Ranelagh, and granddaughter of Richard Boyle, first earl of Cork. 31. Explored at length in B. Bradshaw and P. R. Roberts (eds.), British Consciousness and Identity: The Making of Britain, 1533–1700 (Cambridge, 1998), especially the essays by Brendan Bradshaw, Marc Caball, Andrew Hadfield, Willy Maley, Alan Ford and Jim Smyth; and Nicholas Canny, ‘Fashioning “British” Worlds in the Seventeenth Century’ in Nicholas Canny, Joseph E. Illick, Gary B. Nash and William Pencak (eds.),‘Empire, Society and Labor: Essays in Honor of Richard S. Dunn’, Pennsylvania History, 64 (1997), Supplemental Issue (College Park, PA, 1997), pp. 26–45. 32. Jane Ohlmeyer, ‘Making Ireland English: The Early Seventeenth-Century Irish Peerage’ in Brian Mac Cuarta (ed.), Reshaping Ireland 1550–1700: Colonization and its Consequences (Dublin, 2011), pp. 131–46. 33. Mayes, ‘The Early Stuarts’. For comparable work on Scotland, see Keith Brown, ‘The Scottish Aristocracy, Anglicization and the Court, 1603–38’, Historical Journal, 36 (1993), pp. 543–76, and ‘The Origins of a British Aristocracy: Integration and its Limitations before the Treaty of Union’ in Steven Ellis and Sarah Barber (eds.), Conquest and Union: Fashioning a British State, 1485–1725 (Harlow, 1995), pp. 222–49. 34. Treadwell, Buckingham and Ireland, p. 299. 35 Explored further in Jane Ohlmeyer, ‘ “Civilizinge of those rude partes”: The Colonization of Ireland and Scotland, 1580s–1640s’ in Nicholas Canny (ed.), The Oxford History of the British Empire, vol. 1 (Oxford, 1998), pp. 124–47, and ‘A Laboratory for Empire? Early Modern Ireland and English Imperialism’ in Kevin Kenny (ed.), Ireland and the British Empire (Oxford, 2004), pp. 26–60. 36. Edwards, The Ormond Lordship, p. 265. 37. Treadwell, Buckingham and Ireland, p. 299. 38. Mark Ellwood, ‘The Roman Catholic Peerage and the Crown in Late Seventeenth-Century Ireland’ (unpublished PhD thesis, Cambridge, 2011).

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485

39. Francis G. James, Lords of the Ascendancy: The Irish House of Lords and its Members, 1600–1800 (Dublin, 1995), ‘The Active Irish Peers in the Early Eighteenth Century’, Journal of British History, 18 (1979), pp. 52–79, and ‘The Aristocracy of Ireland’s Ancien Regime’, Eire-Ireland, 26 (1991), pp. 29–37. 40. See, for example, Toby Barnard, A New Anatomy of Ireland: Protestants in Ireland, 1649–1770 (New Haven, CT, 2003), Making the Grand Figure: Lives and Possessions in Ireland, 1641–1770 (New Haven, CT, 2004), A Guide to the Sources for the History of Material Culture in Ireland, 1500–2000 (Dublin, 2005), and ‘Public Wealth and Private Uses of Wealth in Ireland, c.1660–1760’ in Jacqueline Hill and Colm Lennon (eds.), Luxury and Austerity, in Historical Studies, 21 (Dublin, 1999), pp. 66–83; Toby Barnard and Jane Clark (eds.), Lord Burlington: Architecture, Art and Life (London, 1995); Jane Fenlon, ‘French Influence in Late Seventeenth-Century Portraits’, GPA Irish Artists Review Yearbook (1989–90), pp. 158–65; and Raymond Gillespie, ‘The Problems of Plantations: Material Culture and Social Change in Early Modern Ireland’ in James Lyttleton and Colin Rynne (eds.), Plantation Ireland: Settlement and Material Culture, c.1550–c.1700 (Dublin, 2009). 41. Andrew Carpenter, ‘A Collection of Verse Presented to James Butler, First Duke of Ormonde’, Yale University Library Gazette, 75: 1–2 (October 2000), pp. 64–70, and Verse in English from Tudor and Stuart Ireland (Cork, 2003); Raymond Gillespie, ‘The Religion of the first Duke of Ormond’ in Toby Barnard and Jane Fenlon (eds.), The Dukes of Ormonde, 1610–1745 (Woodbridge, 2000), ‘Reading the Bible in Seventeenth-Century Ireland’ in Bernadette Cunningham and Máire Kennedy (eds.), The Experience of Reading: Irish Historical Perspectives (Dublin, 1999), and Raymond Gillespie, Reading Ireland: Print, Reading and Social Change in Early Modern Ireland (Manchester, 2005); Raymond Gillespie and Andrew Hadfield (eds.), The Oxford History of the Irish Book. III. The Irish Book in English 1550–1800 (Oxford, 2006); Deana Rankin, Between Spenser and Swift: English Writing in Seventeenth-Century Ireland (Cambridge, 2005). 42. John Kerrigan, ‘Orrery’s Ireland and the British Problem’ in David Baker and Willy Maley (eds.), British Identities and English Renaissance Literature (Cambridge, 2002); Jane Ohlmeyer and Steven Zwicker, ‘Patronage and Restoration Politics: John Dryden and the House of Ormond’, Historical Journal, 49 (2006), pp. 677–706. 43. Barnard, A New Anatomy of Ireland. 44. Ibid.; Patricia Stapleton, ‘The Merchant Community of Dublin in the Early Seventeenth Century: A Social, Economic and Political Study’ (unpublished PhD thesis, Trinity College Dublin, 2008); Donal Cregan, ‘Irish Recusant Lawyers in Politics in the Reign of James I’, Irish Jurist, 5 (1970), pp. 306–20; Bríd McGrath, ‘Ireland and the Third University: Attendance at the Inns of Court, 1603–1649’ in D. Edwards (ed.), Regions and Rulers in Ireland, 1100–1650: Essays for Kenneth Nicholls (Dublin 2004), pp. 217–36; Jane Ohlmeyer, ‘Irish Recusant Lawyers during the Reign of Charles I’ in Micheál Ó Siochrú (ed.), Kingdoms in Crisis: Ireland in the 1640s (Dublin, 2001), pp. 63–89, and ‘Records of the Irish Court of Chancery’ in Desmond Greer and Norma Dawson (eds.), Mysteries and Solutions in Irish Legal History (Dublin, 2000), pp. 15–50; Hazel Maynard, ‘Irish Membership of the English Inns of Court, 1660–1699: Lawyers, Litigation and the Legal Profession’ (unpublished PhD thesis, University College Dublin, 2006). 45. Nicholas Canny, The Upstart Earl: A Study of the Social and Mental World of Richard Boyle, First Earl of Cork, 1566–1643 (Cambridge, 1982), and Eleanor O’Keeffe, ‘The Family and Marriage Strategies of James Butler, 1st Duke of Ormonde, 1658–1688’ (unpublished PhD thesis, Cambridge, 2000). 46. Special feature on masculinity in the April 2005 issue of the Journal of British Studies and Alexandra Shepard’s marvellously complicating monograph, Meanings of Manhood in Early Modern England (Oxford, 2003); Alexandra Shepard, ‘Manhood, Credit and Patriarchy in Early Modern England c.1580–1640’, Past and Present, 167 (2000), pp. 85–6; Linda Pollock, ‘Honor, Gender, and Reconciliation in Elite Culture, 1570–1700’, Journal of British Studies, 46 (2007), pp. 3–29; Anne Laurence, ‘Real and Imagined Communities in the Lives of Women in Seventeenth-Century Ireland: Identity and Gender’ in Stephanie Tarbin and Susan Broomhall (eds.), Women, Identities and Communities in Early Modern Europe (Aldershot, 2008), pp. 13–27. 47. Shepard, Meanings of Manhood, pp. 1–2. 48. Ibid., pp. 2–3. 49. Karen Harvey and Alexandra Shepard, ‘What Have Historians Done with Masculinity? Reflections on Five Centuries of British History, circa 1500–1950’, Journal of British Studies, 44 (2005), p. 275. 50. Treadwell, Buckingham and Ireland, p. 15. 51. Thomas Carte, The life of James duke of Ormond (6 vols., Oxford, 1851), and HMC, Ormonde, OS and NS; Grosart (ed.), Lismore Papers; Edward MacLysaght (ed.), Calendar of the Orrery Papers (IMC, Dublin, 1941); Edward Berwick (ed.), The Rawdon Papers . . . (London, 1819); HMC, Report on the Manuscripts of the Late Reginald Rawdon Hastings (4 vols., London, 1928–47), II; many of Conway’s letters are also calendared in CSPD.

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Notes to pp. 17–19

52. A. Mac Lochlainn, ‘Papers at Petworth House’, Analecta Hibernica, 23 (1966), pp. 303–5; Francis W. Steer and Noel H. Osborne (eds.), The Petworth House Archives: A Catalogue (vol. 1, Chichester, 1968); Alison McCann (ed.), The Petworth House Archives: A Catalogue (vol. 2, Chichester, 1979), and Alison McCann (ed.), The Petworth House Archives: A Catalogue (vol. 3, Chichester, 1997). 53. PRONI, D.3078/3, 1/5; John Lowe (ed.), Letter-Book of the Earl of Clanricarde 1643–1647 (IMC, Dublin, 1983), John Smyth, 11th Earl of Clanricarde, The Memoirs and Letters of Ulick, Marquis of Clanricarde, and Earl of Saint Albans (London, 1758), and Bernadette Cunningham, ‘Clanricard Letters: Letters and Papers, 1605–1673, Preserved in the National Library of Ireland Manuscript 3111’, Journal of the Galway Archaeological and Historical Society, 48 (1996), pp. 162–208; BL, Add. MS 18,730 and BL, Add. MS 22,548. 54. John Ainsworth, ‘Survey of Documents in Private Keeping’, Analecta Hibernica, 25 (1967), pp. 62–4 (for Power papers); pp. 151–83 (for Prestons of Gormanston); John F. Ainsworth and Edward MacLysaght (eds.), ‘Survey of Documents in Private Keeping’, Analecta Hibernica, 20 (1958), p. 39 (Dillon family), pp. 72–83 (Chichester), pp. 131–58 (Nugent of Westmeath); Edward MacLysaght (ed.), ‘Survey of Documents in Private Keeping’, Analecta Hibernica, 15 (1944); HMC, Tenth Report, Appendix 5, pp. 107–204 (Fingal); E. MacLysaght (ed.), Kenmare Manuscripts (IMC, Dublin, 1942); NLI, MS 8539 (Ikerrin); PRONI, D.2977, Antrim papers; PRONI, D.1939, Erne papers (the Balfour estate); PRONI, D.389 and T. 712, Donegall estate papers; PRONI, D.778, Trevor estate records; PRONI, D.1503, D.1854, the Annesley papers, and PRONI, D.1618, the Castle Stewart papers. For the dispersed papers of the MacDonnells of Antrim, see Ohlmeyer, Civil War and Restoration, pp. 290–3. Brian C. Donovan and David Edwards (eds.), British Sources for Irish History 1485–1641: A Guide to Manuscripts in Local, Regional and Specialised Repositories in England, Scotland and Wales (IMC, Dublin, 1997), points to the materials extant in English archives that relate to the Annesleys, Bourkes of Clanricarde, Boyles of Cork, Butlers of Ormond, Conways, Digbys, Fitzgeralds of Kildare, Flemings of Slane, Loftuses of Ely, O’Briens of Thomond, Ridgeways of Londonderry, Roches of Fermoy and Touchets of Castlehaven. 55. Diarmuid Mac Iomhair, ‘The House of Louth in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries’, Journal of the County Louth Archaeological Society, 16 (1966), pp. 67–84. 56. See chapter 16 below. 57. PRONI, D.3078/3, 1/5, pp. 1, 20. 58. MacLysaght (ed.), Calendar of the Orrery Papers, p. v; Bodl., Carte MS 161, f. 44. 59. HMC, Ormonde, NS, IV, p. 374; also p. 378. 60. CSPI, 1633–1647, p. 613. 61. O’Keeffe, ‘The Family and Marriage Strategies’, p. 138; PRONI, D.207/15/9. 62. CSPD, 1629–1631, p. 84. 63. Hill (ed.), The Montgomery Manuscripts, p. 173; John Forbes, Memoirs of the earls of Granard, ed. George Arthur Hastings, earl of Granard (London, 1868), p. 5. 64. John Smyth, 11th Earl of Clanricarde, The Memoirs and Letters of Ulick, Marquis of Clanricarde, and Earl of Saint Albans (London, 1958); Grosart (ed.), Lismore Papers (1888); Eustace Budgell, Memoirs of the lives and characters of the illustrious family of the Boyles: particularly of the late eminently learned Charles, earl of Orrery . . . (London, 1737); Thomas Morrice (ed.), A Collection of the State Letters of . . . Roger Boyle, First Earl of Orrery . . . (London, 1742); Carte, Ormond (1851); James Graves, ‘Anonymous Account of the Early Life and Marriage of James, first duke of Ormond’ in Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries, 7 (1862–3), pp. 276–92; Forbes, Memoirs (1868); T. K. Lowry (ed.), Hamilton Manuscripts: containing some account of territories of Upper Clandeboye, Great Ardes, Dufferin in the county of Down, by Sir William Hamilton, afterward Viscount Clandeboye (Belfast, 1867); George Hill, The MacDonnells of Antrim (Belfast, 1873); Hill (ed.), The Montgomery Manuscripts. 65. R. Dudley Edwards, ‘Letter-book of Sir Arthur Chichester 1612–1614’, Analecta Hibernica, 8 (1938), pp. 5–177; Wentworth’s archive is in Sheffield City Library and some has been printed in W. Knowler (ed.), The Letters and Despatches . . . (2 vols., London, 1739). Ormond’s archive is voluminous, see note 51 above. 66. H. Wood, ‘The Public Records of Ireland before and after 1922’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, fourth series, 13 (1930), p. 17. For a detailed listing of the extensive amount of Chancery material that survived until 1922, see H. Wood, A Guide to the Records deposited in the Public Record Office of Ireland (Dublin, 1919), pp. 1–44. For a rough guide to the original records and later transcripts that survived the fire and to Chancery material donated, usually by solicitors, to the National Archives after 1922, see The Fifty-Fifth Report of the Deputy Keeper of the Public Records and Keeper of the State Papers in Ireland (Dublin, 1928), pp. 114 and 125–7, and The Fifty-Sixth Report of the Deputy Keeper of the Public Records and Keeper of the State Papers in Ireland (Dublin, 1931), pp. 34–6, 203–4 and 213–308.

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Notes to pp. 19–20

487

67. K. W. Nicholls, ‘Some Documents on Irish Law and Custom in the Sixteenth Century’, Analecta Hibernica, 26 (1970), ‘A Calendar of Salved Chancery Pleadings concerning County Louth’, County Louth Archaeological Journal, 17 (1972), p. 250, and 18 (1974), and Land, Law and Society in Sixteenth-Century Ireland (O’Donnell Lecture, Dublin, 1976), p. 3. Also see Mary O’Dowd, ‘Women and the Irish Chancery Court in the Late Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries’, Irish Historical Studies, 31 (1999), pp. 470–87, and Ohlmeyer, ‘Records of the Irish Court of Chancery’. 68. The precise nature of the relationship between English and Irish Chancery clearly needs to be explored much more fully. A preliminary examination reveals that leading peers – such as Castlehaven, Cork, Ranelagh, Baltinglass and Thomond – appear, predominantly as plaintiffs in the English Chancery records. Also see J. Ainsworth, ‘Some Abstracts of Chancery Suits Relating to Ireland’, Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, 9 (1939), and Patrick Little, ‘Select Document. Providence and Posterity: A Letter from Lord Mountnorris to his Daughter, 1642’, Irish Historical Studies, 32 (2001), pp. 556–64. 69. Geraldine Talon (ed.), Court of Claims: Submissions and Evidence, 1663 (IMC, Dublin, 2006). 70. The depositions have been published online at www.1641.tcd.ie. The best introduction to the 1641 rebellion and the 1641 depositions remains Aidan Clarke, ‘The Genesis of the Ulster Rising of 1641’ in Peter Roebuck (ed.), Plantation to Partition: Essays in Ulster History, and ‘The 1641 Depositions’ in P. Fox (ed.), Treasures of the Library, Trinity College Dublin (Dublin, 1986). 71. William Smyth, Map-making, Landscapes and Memory: A geography of Colonial and Early Modern Ireland c.1530–1750 (Cork, 2006), p. 125. 72. Jane Ohlmeyer and Éamonn Ó Ciardha (eds.), The Irish Statute Staple Books, 1596–1687 (Dublin, 1998). 73. Belfast was designated a staple town in 1616 yet no staple appears to have met there; Jean Agnew, Belfast Merchant Families in the Seventeenth Century (Dublin, 1996). New Ross became a staple town in 1621 but also appears never to have functioned as one. I am grateful to Bríd McGrath for bringing this to my attention. 74. See the introduction to R. C. Simington (ed.), Books of Survey and Distribution: Being Abstracts of Various Surveys and Instruments of Title, 1636–1703. vol. 1. County of Roscommon (IMC, Dublin, 1949); Robert C. Simington, ‘Annesley Collection Photographic Acquisition by the National Library’, Analecta Hibernica, 16 (1946), pp. 350–4; Geraldine Talon, ‘Books of Survey and Distribution, County Westmeath: A Comparative Survey, with Reference to their Administrative Context and Chronological Sequence’, Analecta Hibernica, 28 (1978), pp. 105–15. 75. J. H. Andrews, Plantation Acres: An Historical Study of the Irish Land Surveys (Belfast, 1985); J. H. Andrews, Shapes of Ireland: Maps and their Makers 1564–1839 (Dublin, 1997); Annaleigh Margey, Mapping Ireland, c.1550–1640: A Catalogue of Early Modern Manuscript Maps of Ireland including Maps Relating to Plantation (IMC, Dublin, 2011). 76. I am grateful to Dr McKenny for allowing me access to his database and for his particular assistance in preparing figures for the peers. His database collates information from the Books of Survey and Distribution (Quit Rent set), the Civil Survey, transplantation lists and letters patent. 77. One hundred Irish or plantation acres equalled 162 statute acres and 100 statute acres equalled 40.5 hectares. Thus a plantation acre was equivalent to an Irish acre and they were larger than a statute (or English) acre by a ratio of 1.62 to 1; Andrews, Plantation Acres, pp. 14–18, 58–9; J. H. Andrews, ‘How Many Acres? A Cartometric Exercise of 1642’, Irish Geography, 34 (2001), p. 8. Also see J. S. Carroll, ‘Cromwell’s Plantation Measure’, in Decies, Old Waterford Society, 3 (1976), p. 25, and Michael MacCarthy-Morrogh, The Munster Plantation: English Migration to Southern Ireland 1583–1641(Oxford, 1986), pp. 287–9. 78. Scott, ‘ “Acts of time and power” ’, p. 14. 79. Andrew Carpenter, Verse in English from Tudor and Stuart Ireland (Cork, 2003); Deana Rankin, Between Spenser and Swift: English Writing in Seventeenth-Century Ireland (Cambridge, 2005); Marc Caball, Poets and Politics: Reaction and Continuity in Irish Poetry, 1558–1625 (Cork, 1998), and ‘Bardic poetry’; O Riordan, ‘ “Political” Poems’; Leerson, Mere Irish and Fíor-Ghael; Tom Dunne, ‘The Gaelic Response to Conquest and Colonisation: The Evidence of the Poetry’, Studia Hibernica, 20 (1980), pp. 7–30, and Tom Dunne (ed.), The Writer as Witness, in Historical Studies, XVI (Cork, 1987), especially his introduction and the chapter by Katherine Simms. 80. Peter Murray (ed.), Portraits and People: Art in Seventeenth-Century Ireland (Cork, 2010). 81. Rolf Loeber, ‘Irish Country Houses and Castles of the Late Caroline Period: An Unremembered Past Recaptured’, Quarterly Bulletin of the Irish Georgian Society, 14 (1973), pp. 1–69. 82. Lawrence Stone, The Crisis of the Aristocracy 1558–1641 (Oxford, 1965). 83. Lawrence Stone, ‘The Anatomy of the Elizabethan Aristocracy’, Economic History Review, 18 (1948), pp. 1–53; for H. R. Trevor-Roper’s critique, ibid., third series, 3 (1951), pp. 279–98, and for Stone’s response, see ibid., 4 (1952), pp. 302–21.

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Notes to pp. 21–3

84. H. M. Scott, ‘The Early Modern Nobility and its Contested Historiographies, c.1950–1980’ in Charles Lipp and Matthew Romaniello (eds.), New Essays on the Early Modern Nobility (Farnham, 2011), pp.11–39. I am grateful to Hamish Scott for allowing me to read this in advance of publication. See especially Scott (ed.), The European Nobilities in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries; Christopher Storrs and H. M. Scott, ‘The Military Revolution and the European Nobility, c.1600–1800’, War in History, 3 (1996), pp. 1–41; Ronald Asch and Adolf Birke (eds.), Princes, Patronage and the Nobility: The Court at the Beginning of the Modern Age (Oxford, 1991), and Brown, Noble Society in Scotland. 85. H. F. Kearney’s review of ‘Crisis of the Aristocracy’, Irish Historical Studies, 15 (1966–7), p. 83. 86. Katherine Simms, From Kings to Warlords: The Changing Political Structure of Gaelic Ireland in the Later Middle Ages (Woodbridge, Suffolk, 1987); Anthony M. McCormack, The Earldom of Desmond, 1463–1583: The Decline and Crisis of a Feudal Lordship (Dublin, 2005); Christopher Maginn, ‘Civilizing’ Gaelic Leinster: The Extension of Tudor Rule in the O’Byrne and O’Toole Lordships (Dublin, 2005), and ‘The Gaelic Peers, the Tudor Sovereigns and English Multiple Monarchy’, Journal of British Studies, 50 (2011), pp. 566–86; Bernadette Cunningham, ‘Political and Social Change in the Lordships of Clanricard and Thomond, 1596–1641’ (unpublished MA thesis, National University of Ireland, University College Galway, 1979); Thomas Connors, ‘The Impact of English Colonial Expansion on Irish Culture: The Clergy, Popular Religion, and the Transformation of the Family in Early Modern Galway’ (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1997). 87. James, Lords of the Ascendancy, ‘The Active Irish Peers in the Early Eighteenth Century’ and ‘The Aristocracy of Ireland’s Ancien Regime’. 88. Ohlmeyer, Civil War and Restoration; Vincent Carey, Surviving the Tudors: The ‘Wizard’ Earl of Kildare and English Rule in Ireland, 1537–1586 (Dublin, 2002); Patrick Little, Lord Broghill and the Cromwellian Union with Ireland and Scotland (Woodbridge, 2004). 89. Canny, Upstart Earl, and Edwards, The Ormond Lordship. 90. O’Keeffe, ‘The Family and Marriage Strategies’; Donald Jackson, Intermarriage in Ireland 1550–1650 (Montreal, 1970); Clodagh Tait, Death, Burial and Commemoration in Ireland, 1550–1650 (London, 2002); Brendan Kane, The Politics and Culture of Honour in Britain and Ireland, 1541–1641 (Cambridge, 2010). 91. Patrick J. S. Little, ‘Family and Faction: The Irish Nobility and the English Court, 1632–42’ (unpublished M. Litt thesis, Trinity College Dublin, 1992); Mayes, ‘The Early Stuarts and the Irish Peerage’; Treadwell, Buckingham and Ireland; Margaret Anne Creighton, ‘The Catholic Interest in Irish Politics in the Reign of Charles II’ (unpublished PhD thesis, Queen’s University Belfast, 2000); and J. J. Cronin, ‘The Irish Royalist Elite of Charles II in Exile, c.1649–1660’ (unpublished PhD thesis, European University Institute, Florence, 2007). 92. See note 79 above. 93. Barnard, ‘The Protestant Interest, 1641–1660’, Barnard, A New Anatomy of Ireland, and T. C. Barnard, Irish Protestant Ascents and Descents 1641–1770 (Dublin, 2004), where many of his essays on the Protestant interest are reprinted; Connolly, Religion, Law and Power. 94. Jane Ohlmeyer, ‘Review Article: The “Old British History” and the Early Modern Period’, Historical Journal (2007), pp. 499–512, and John Morrill, ‘Thinking about the New British History’ in David Armitage (ed.), British Political Thought in History, Literature and Theory, 1500–1800 (Cambridge, 2006), chapter 2. 95. Treadwell, Buckingham and Ireland; Barnard and Fenlon (eds.), The Dukes of Ormonde; Ohlmeyer, Civil War and Restoration; Little, Lord Broghill; Patrick Little, ‘Blood and Friendship: The Earl of Essex’s Protection of the Earl of Clanricarde’s Interests, 1641–6’, English Historical Review, 112 (1997), pp. 927–41, ‘The Earl of Cork and the Fall of the Earl of Strafford’, Historical Journal, 39 (1996), pp. 619–35; ‘Blood and Friendship’, pp. 927–41, and ‘An Irish Governor of Scotland: Lord Broghill, 1655–6’ in A. MacKillop and Steve Murdoch (eds.), Military Governors and Imperial Frontiers c.1600–1800 (Leiden, 2003), pp. 79–97. 96. Stone, Crisis; Brown, Noble Society in Scotland, and Keith Brown, Noble Power in Scotland from the Reformation to the Revolution (Edinburgh, 2011). 97. Declan Downey, ‘Purity of Blood and Purity of Faith in Early Modern Ireland’ in Ford and McCafferty (eds.), The Origins of Sectarianism, pp. 216–28; Micheline Kerney Walsh (ed.), Spanish Knights of Irish Origin: Documents from Continental Archives (4 vols., IMC, 1960–78). 98. After 1660 the earldom became extinct but an illegitimate branch of the family assumed the title, GEC, XII, pp. 12–13; Micheline Kerney Walsh, An Exile of Ireland: Hugh O’Neill, Prince of Ulster (Dublin, 1996). 99. Steve Murdoch, ‘The Northern Flight: Irish Soldiers in Seventeenth-Century Scandinavia’ in Thomas O’Connor and Mary Ann Lyons (eds.), The Ulster Earls and Baroque Europe: Refashioning Irish Identities, 1600–1800 (Dublin, 2010), pp. 106–7.

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Notes to pp. 23–30

489

100. Brown, ‘The Origins of a British Aristocracy’, pp. 222–49. 101. Asch, Nobilities in Transition 1550–1700, p. 2. 102. Scott (ed.), The European Nobilities, II, pp. 1–11; Scott, ‘ “Acts of time and power” ’, pp. 13–20; Karin J. MacHardy, ‘The Rise of Absolutism and Noble Rebellion in Early Modern Habsburg Austria, 1570 to 1620’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 34, (1992), pp. 407–38, 416, and War, Religion and Court Patronage in Habsburg Austria: The Social and Cultural Dimensions of Political Interaction, 1521–1622 (London, 2003), pp. 183–207; R. J. W. Evans, The Making of the Habsburg Monarchy 1550–1700 (Oxford, 1979), pp. 195–216. Thomas Winkelbauer, ‘Ein neues Standardwerk zur Geschichte der böhmischen Aristokratie im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert’, Zeitenblicke, 2 (2005), pp. 1–45, for a summary of Peter Mata’s book, published in Czech, on Bohemia. I am grateful to Peter Wilson for drawing this to my attention and to Richard Kirwan for translating it for me. I am also deeply grateful to Hamish Scott for allowing me to read the relevant chapters in his forthcoming study of the aristocracy in Europe, c.1300–1750.

Chapter Two: The Transformation of the Peerage   1. Explored further in Jane Ohlmeyer, ‘ “Civilizinge of those rude partes”: The Colonization of Ireland and Scotland, 1580s–1640s’ in Nicholas Canny (ed.), The Oxford History of the British Empire, vol. 1 (Oxford, 1998), pp. 124–47, and ‘A Laboratory for Empire? Early Modern Ireland and English Imperialism’ in Kevin Kenny (ed.), Ireland and the British Empire (Oxford, 2004), pp. 26–60.   2. H. M. Scott (ed.), The European Nobilities in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries: Northern, Central and Eastern Europe (2 vols., London, 1995), II, pp. 1–11; H. M. Scott, ‘ “Acts of time and power”: The Consolidation of Aristocracy in Seventeenth-Century Europe, c.1580–1720’, Bulletin of the German Historical Institute, 30 (2008), pp. 18–19; Karin J. MacHardy, ‘The Rise of Absolutism and Noble Rebellion in Early Modern Habsburg Austria, 1570 to 1620’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 34 (1992), pp. 407–38, 416, and War, Religion and Court Patronage in Habsburg Austria: The Social and Cultural Dimensions of Political Interaction, 1521–1622 (London, 2003), pp. 183–207; R. J. W. Evans, The Making of the Habsburg Monarchy 1550–1700 (Oxford, 1979), pp. 195–216. I am also deeply grateful to Hamish Scott for allowing me to read the relevant chapters in his forthcoming study of the aristocracy in Europe, c.1300–1750.   3. G. R. Mayes, ‘The Early Stuarts and the Irish Peerage’, English Historical Review, 73 (1958), pp. 227–51.   4. Lawrence Stone, The Crisis of the Aristocracy 1558–1641 (Oxford, 1965), pp. 104–28.   5. Unless stated otherwise, GEC is the primary source for these snapshots; Mayes, ‘The Early Stuarts and the Irish Peerage’, pp. 227–51.   6. Victor Treadwell, Buckingham and Ireland, 1616–1628: A Study in Anglo-Irish Politics (Dublin, 1998).   7. GEC, I, 458–9; the first Irish viscountcy, created in 1478.   8. GEC, I, 459; styled viscounts from 1541 but there is no evidence of creation.   9. Ciaran Brady, The Chief Governors: The Rise and Fall of Reform Government in Tudor Ireland (Cambridge, 1994), and S. G. Ellis, Ireland in the Age of the Tudors 1447–1603: English Expansion and the End of Gaelic Rule (London, 1998). 10. For further details see Ciaran Brady, ‘The Captains’ Games: Army and Society in Elizabethan Ireland’ in Thomas Bartlett and Keith Jeffery (eds.), A Military History of Ireland (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 144–7. 11. Katherine Simms, ‘Warfare in the Medieval Gaelic Lordships’, Irish Sword, 47 (1975), pp. 98–108, and From Kings to Warlords: The Changing Political Structure of Gaelic Ireland in the Later Middle Ages (Woodbridge, Suffolk, 1987); Colin Breen, The Gaelic Lordship of the O’Sullivan Beare: A Landscape Cultural History (Dublin, 2005); Patricia Kilroy, Fall of the Gaelic Lords 1534–1616 (Dublin, 2008). 12. Patrick Duffy, David Edwards and Elizabeth Fitzpatrick (eds.), Gaelic Ireland: Land, Lordship and Settlement c.1250–c.1650 (Dublin, 2001), p. 44. 13. Brady, The Chief Governors, pp. 169–208; Vincent Carey, Surviving the Tudors: The ‘Wizard’ Earl of Kildare and English Rule in Ireland, 1537–1586 (Dublin, 2002); Anthony M. McCormack, The Earldom of Desmond, 1463–1583: The Decline and Crisis of a Feudal Lordship (Dublin, 2005); Christopher Maginn, ‘Civilizing’ Gaelic Leinster: The Extension of Tudor Rule in the O’Byrne and O’Toole Lordships (Dublin, 2005); Christopher Maginn, ‘The Gaelic Peers, the Tudor Sovereigns and English Multiple Monarchy’, Journal of British Studies, 50 (2011), pp. 566–86. I am grateful to Dr Maginn for allowing me to read his article in advance of publication. 14. Brendan Bradshaw, The Irish Constitutional Revolution of the Sixteenth Century (Cambridge, 1979), pp. 231–57.

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15. John Davies, A discouerie of the true causes why Ireland was neuer entirely subdued, nor brought vnder obedience of the crowne of England, vntill the beginning of his Maiesties happie raigne (London, 1612), p. 268; Debora Shuger, ‘Irish, Aristocrats, and Other White Barbarians’, Renaissance Quarterly, 50 (1997), pp. 494–525. 16. The Statutes at Large, passed in the Parliaments held in Ireland . . ., vol. 1, 1310–1612 (Dublin, 1765), 28th Henry VIII, ch. XV, pp. 120–1. 17. Edmund Curtis and R. B. McDowell (eds.), Irish Historical Documents, 1172–1922 (London, 1943), p. 55; Raymond Gillespie, ‘Seventeenth-Century Irish Music and its Cultural Context’ in Barra Boydell and Kerry Houston (eds.), Music, Ireland and the Seventeenth Century (Dublin, 2009), pp. 26–39. 18. Bradshaw, The Irish Constitutional Revolution, pp. 193–230; Maginn, ‘Civilizing’ Gaelic Leinster, pp. 63–90. 19. GEC, VIII, p. 171; James Gairdner and R. H. Brodie (eds.), Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic of the reign of Henry VIII (21 vols., London, 1864–1920), XVI, p. 167. 20. Colm Lennon, ‘Eustace, James, third Viscount Baltinglass (1530–1585)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, Sept. 2004; online edn., Jan. 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/ article/8936, accessed 12 Nov. 2008]). 21. Brendan Kane, The Politics and Culture of Honour in Britain and Ireland, 1541–1641 (Cambridge, 2010), pp. 31–7. 22. Duffy, Edwards and Fitzpatrick (eds.), Gaelic Ireland, p. 45. 23. David Edwards, ‘Collaboration without Anglicisation: The MacGiollapadraig Lordship and Tudor Reform’ in Duffy, Edwards and Fitzpatrick (eds.), Gaelic Ireland, pp. 78–96, 84 (quote). 24. Richard Lawrence, The interest of Ireland in its trade and wealth stated in two parts: first part observes and discovers the causes of Irelands not more increasing in trade and wealth from the first conquest till now: second part proposeth expedients to remedy all its mercanture maladies . . . by which it is kept poor and low; both mix’d with some observations on the politicks of government relating to the incouragement of trade and increase of wealth: with some reflections on principles of religion as it relates to the premisses (Dublin, 1682), II, pp. 67–8. A catalogue of the nobility for 1571 listed a total of 32 lords (not all of whom were entitled to sit in Parliament and others, like Tyrone, who is not listed): six earls (Kildare, Ormond, Desmond, Clanricarde, Thomond and Clancare) plus their eldest sons (Barons Offaly, Thurles, Inchiquin, Dunkellin, Ibracken and Valentia), along with six viscounts (Barry, Roche, Preston of Gormanston, Eustace of Baltinglass, Butler of Mountgarret and Decies) and 20 barons. 25. Emmett O’Byrne, ‘O’Neill (Ó Néill), Conn Bacach’, DIB, VII, p. 745. 26. Emmett O’Byrne, ‘O’Brien (Ó Briain), Murchadh’, DIB, VII, p. 66. 27. Bernadette Cunningham, ‘Political and Social Change in the Lordships of Clanricard and Thomond, 1596–1641’ (unpublished MA thesis, National University of Ireland, University College Galway, 1979), pp. 130–4, 154–68, 168 (quote); Brian Ó Dálaigh, ‘A Comparative Study of the Wills of the First and Fourth Earls of Thomond’, North Munster Antiquarian Journal, 34 (1992), pp. 48–63. 28. Thomas Connors, ‘The Impact of English Colonial Expansion on Irish Culture: The Clergy, Popular Religion, and the Transformation of the Family in Early Modern Galway’ (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1997), chapter 1; David Beresford, ‘Burke, Ulick (de Burgh, Uilleag) (‘Uilleag na gCeann’)’, DIB, II, pp. 65–6: Kane, The Politics and Culture of Honour, pp. 161–92. 29. Kane, The Politics and Culture of Honour, p. 37. 30. Cunningham, ‘Political and Social Change’, p. 168, and ‘The Composition of Connacht in the Lordships of Clanricarde and Thomond, 1577–1641’, Irish Historical Studies, 24 (1984), pp. 1–14. Also see Bernadette Cunningham, ‘Theobald Dillon, a Newcomer in Sixteenth-Century Mayo’, Cathair na Mart: Journal of the Westport Historical Society, 6 (1986), pp. 24–32. 31. Terry Clavin, ‘MacCarthy Mór, Donal’, DIB, V, pp. 821–5. 32. Anthony M. McCormack, ‘Fitzgerald, James Fitzgerald, fifteenth earl of Desmond (c.1570–1601)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, Sept. 2004; online edn., Jan. 2008 [http://www. oxforddnb.com/view/article/9563, accessed 12 Nov. 2008]). 33. Nicholas Canny, Making Ireland British 1580–1650 (Oxford, 2001), chapter 2. 34. Thomas Smith, A letter sent by I.B. Gentleman vnto his very frende Maystet [sic]R.C. Esquire vvherin is conteined a large discourse of the peopling & inhabiting the cuntrie called the Ardes, and other adiacent in the north of Ireland, and taken in hand by Sir Thomas Smith one of the Queenes Maiesties priuie Counsel, and Thomas Smith Esquire, his sonne (London, 1572), n.p., and Thomas Blennerhasset, A direction for the plantation in Vlster Contayning in it, sixe principall thinges, viz. 1. The securing of that wilde contrye to the crowne of England. 2. The withdrawing of all the charge of the garrison and men of warre. 3. The rewarding of the old seruitors to their good content. 4. The means how to increase the reuenue to the

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Crowne, with a yearely very great summe. 5. How to establish the puritie of religion there. 6. And how the vndertakers may with securitie be inriched (London, 1610). 35. Davies, A discouverie, p. 219. 36. Charles Hughes, Shakespeare’s Europe: Unpublished chapters of Fynes Moryson’s Itinerary Being a Survey of the Condition of Europe at the end of the 16th century (London, 1903), p. 234. 37. Andrew Hadfield and Willy Maley (eds.), Edmund Spenser: A View of the State of Ireland, from the First Printed Edition 1633 (Oxford, 1997), p. 140. 38. CSPI, 1603–1606, p. 563. 39. CSPI, 1625–1632, pp. 56–7. 40. John J. Silke, ‘O’Donnell, Rury, styled first earl of Tyrconnell (1574/5–1608)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, Sept. 2004; online edn., May 2006 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/ article/20559, accessed 2 Dec. 2008]). 41. Nicholas Canny, ‘O’Neill, Hugh, second earl of Tyrone (c. 1550–1616)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, Sept. 2004; online edn., Jan. 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/ article/20775, accessed 2 Dec. 2008]). 42. Edwards, ‘Collaboration without Anglicisation’, pp. 78–96. 43. J. J. N. McGurk, ‘O’Brien, Donough, fourth earl of Thomond (d. 1624)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/20453, accessed 2 Dec. 2008]); Donough O’Brien, History of the O’Briens (London, 1949), and Ivar O’Brien, The O’Briens of Thomond: The O’Briens in Irish History 1500–1865 (Chichester, 1986). 44. CSPI, 1603–1606, p. 84; CSPI, 1611–1614, pp. 412–13; David Edwards, ‘Butler, Thomas, tenth earl of Ormond and third earl of Ossory (1531–1614)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, Sept. 2004; online edn., Jan. 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/4209, accessed 2 Dec. 2008]). 45. Cunningham, ‘Political and Social Change’, pp. 226, 231, 240. See also Bernadette Cunningham, ‘Clanricard Letters: Letters and Papers, 1605–1673, preserved in the National Library of Ireland manuscript 3111’, Journal of the Galway Archaeological and Historical Society, 48 (1996), pp. 162–208. 46. CSPI, 1603–1606, p. 215. 47. Ibid., p. 257. 48. Colm Lennon, ‘Burke, Richard, fourth earl of Clanricarde and first earl of St Albans (1572–1635)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/ article/67043, accessed 2 Dec. 2008]), and Cunningham, ‘Clanricard Letters’, p. 181. 49. David Newman Johnson, ‘Portumna Castle: A Little-known Early Survey and Some Observations’ in John Bradley (ed.), Settlement and Society in Medieval Ireland: Studies Presented to F. X. Martin (Kilkenny, 1988), pp. 477–503; H. A. Tipping, ‘Somerhill, Kent’, Country Life, (1922), pp. 310–17; Anthony Hamilton, count de Grammont, Memoirs of the Life of Count of Grammont Containing in Particular the Amorous Intrigues of the Court of England . . ., translated by A. Boyer (London, 1714), pp. 267–70. 50. J. J. N. McGurk, ‘Barry, David fitz James, de facto third Viscount Buttevant (1550–1617)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/1553, accessed 2 Dec. 2008]); In the 1613 Parliament the king admitted Lord Barry to ‘his place and voice in parliament according to his degree’ since his elder brother ‘is deaf and dumb’; M. C. Griffith (ed.), Irish Patent Rolls of James I. Facsimile of the Irish Record Commission’s Calendar Prepared Prior to 1830 (IMC, Dublin, 1966), p. 250. 51. Robert Dunlop, ‘Roche, David, seventh Viscount Roche of Fermoy (1573?–1635)’, rev. Bernadette Cunningham, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/ view/article/23909, accessed 2 Dec. 2008]), and Eithne Donnelly, ‘The Roches, Lords of Fermoy: The History of a Norman Irish Family’, Journal of the Cork Historical and Archaeological Society, second series, 41 (1936), pp. 20–8, 78–84; continued 42, pp. 40–52. 52. John McCavitt, ‘The Flight of the Earls, 1607’, Irish Historical Studies, 29 (1994), pp. 159–73, and Colm Lennon, ‘St Lawrence, Christopher, seventh Baron Howth (d. 1589)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/24507, accessed 2 Dec. 2008]). 53. Pádraig Lenihan, ‘Nugent, Richard, first earl of Westmeath (1583–1642)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/20397, accessed 2 Dec. 2008]), and Mayes, ‘The Early Stuarts and the Irish Peerage’, p. 241. 54. CSPI, 1608–1610, pp. 321–3, 327; John Kingston, ‘Lord Dunboyne’, Reportum Novum: Dublin Diocesan Historical Record, 3 (1961–2), pp. 62–82. 55. John Kingston, ‘Catholic Families of the Pale’, Reportum Novum: Dublin Diocesan Historical Record, 1 (1956), pp. 323–50; John Kingston, ‘Catholic Families of the Pale’, Reportum Novum: Dublin Diocesan Historical Record, 2 (1960), pp. 236–56.

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Notes to pp. 37–41

56. Stone, Crisis, p. 127. 57. Treadwell, Buckingham and Ireland, pp. 104–5. 58. Mayes, ‘The Early Stuarts and the Irish Peerage’, p. 227. 59. Treadwell, Buckingham and Ireland, p. 104. 60. See figures in Jonathan Dewald, The European Nobility 1400–1800 (Cambridge, 1996) p. 27. Also see Ronald Asch, Nobilities in Transition 1550–1700: Courtiers and Rebels in Britain and Europe (London, 2003), pp. 15, 16, 26. 61. CSPI, 1603–1606, pp. 230–9; Joseph McLaughlin, ‘Richard Hadsor’s “Discourse” on the Irish State, 1604’, Irish Historical Studies, 30 (1997), pp. 337–53. 62. Treadwell, Buckingham and Ireland, pp. 299–300. 63. Ute Lotz-Heumann, ‘St John, Oliver, first Viscount Grandison of Limerick (1559–1630)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, Sept. 2004; online edn., Jan. 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb. com/view/article/24501, accessed 2 Dec. 2008]). 64. CSPI, 1625–1660, p. 101, and CSPI, 1647–60, p. 102; Alfred John Kempe (ed.), The Loseley Manuscripts (London, 1835), p. 468. 65. Kane, The Politics and Culture of Honour, pp. 208–20. 66. Aidan Clarke, The Old English in Ireland, 1625–42 (New York, 1966), p. 250. 67. Treadwell, Buckingham and Ireland, p. 111. 68. The additionall propositions of His Majestie . . . (London, 1645). 69. Bodl., Carte MS 22, f. 85. 70. Mayes, ‘The Early Stuarts and the Irish Peerage’, pp. 248–51; Stone, Crisis, pp. 104–28. 71. Fingal (£2,700), Powerscourt (£2,000), Cork (£4,500+), Antrim (£5,000), Blayney of Monaghan(£1,500), Westmeath (£1,500), Valentia (£2,000), Dowth (£2,000), Iveagh (£2,000), Costello-Gallen (£2,500), Charlemont (£2,000), Moore (£1,000), Barrymore (£1,000), Kinalmeaky (£1,000) and Broghill (£1,000), plus three non-residents, Chaworth (£1,500), Pope (£2,500) and Fairfax (£1,300). 72. Mayes, ‘The Early Stuarts and the Irish Peerage’, p. 239; CSPD, 1611–1618, p. 504. 73. David L. Smith, ‘Blount, Mountjoy, first earl of Newport (c. 1597–1666)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, Sept. 2004; online edn., Jan. 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/ article/2692, accessed 12 Nov. 2008]), and Christopher Maginn, ‘Blount, Charles, eighth Baron Mountjoy and earl of Devonshire (1563–1606)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, Sept. 2004; online edn., Jan. 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/2683, accessed 12 Nov. 2008]). 74. Mayes, ‘The Early Stuarts and the Irish Peerage’, p. 241. Treadwell, Buckingham and Ireland, p. 105. 75. David A. Pailin, ‘Herbert, Edward, first Baron Herbert of Cherbury and first Baron Herbert of Castle Island (1582?–1648)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, Sept. 2004; online edn., Jan. 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/13020, accessed 12 Nov. 2008]). 76. Bodl., Carte MS 159, ff. 97v-98; CSPI, 1663–1665, p. 593; CSPI, 1669–1670, pp. 542–4. 77. Mayes, ‘The Early Stuarts and the Irish Peerage’, pp. 235–8. 78. Treadwell, Buckingham and Ireland, pp. 48–9; Ute Lotz-Heumann, ‘St John, Oliver, first Viscount Grandison of Limerick (1559–1630)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, Sept. 2004; online edn., Jan. 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/24501, accessed 14 Nov. 2008]). 79. M. Perceval-Maxwell, ‘Butler, Elizabeth, duchess of Ormond and suo jure Lady Dingwall (1615– 1684)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/ article/67044, accessed 12 Nov. 2008]). 80. HMC, Report on the manuscripts of the earl of Denbigh, preserved at Newnham Paddox, Warwickshire, part v (London, 1911), p. 14. 81. Vernon F. Snow, ‘Essex and the Aristocratic Opposition to the Early Stuarts’, Journal of Modern History, 32 (1960), pp. 224–33. 82. Sir Edward Walker, Historical Discourses (London, 1705), p. 307. 83. Ibid., p. 291. 84. Discussed at length in Mayes, ‘The Early Stuarts and the Irish Peerage’. 85. Kevin Sharpe, ‘Crown, Parliament and Locality: Government and Communication in Early Stuart England’, English Historical Review, 101 (1986), pp. 329–35. 86. CSPI, 1625–1632, p. 305; Treadwell, Buckingham and Ireland, p. 305; John D. Krugler, ‘Calvert, George, first Baron Baltimore (1579/80–1632)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, Sept. 2004; online edn., Jan. 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/4420, accessed 12 Nov. 2008]).

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  87. James Horn, ‘Tobacco Colonies: The Shaping of English Society in the Seventeenth-Century Chesapeake’ in Canny (ed.), The Oxford History of the British Empire, I, pp. 178, 186; Francis J. Bremer, ‘Calvert, Cecil, second Baron Baltimore (1605–1675)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004; online edn., Jan. 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/37257, accessed 12 Nov. 2008]); and John D. Krugler, ‘Calvert, Leonard (1610?–1647)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, Sept. 2004; online edn., May 2006 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/ view/article/4424, accessed 12 Nov. 2008]). Baltimore’s daughter Grace married Sir Robert Talbot, Monsignor John Hanly (ed.), The Letters of Saint Oliver Plunkett 1625–1681, Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland (Dublin, 1979), p. 26.   88. Treadwell, Buckingham and Ireland, p. 112; Lawrence Stone, ‘Marriage among the English Nobility in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 3 (1961), p. 195.   89. TNA, PROB 11/347/39; Brian Ó Dálaigh, ‘An Inventory of the Contents of Bunratty Castle and the Will of Henry, Fifth Earl of Thomond, 1639’, North Munster Antiquarian Journal, 36 (1995), pp. 139–65, p. 140.   90. Treadwell, Buckingham and Ireland, p. 111.   91. Ibid.   92. Castlehaven and Ridgeway of Londonderry.   93. Lambert of Cavan, Wingfield of Powerscourt, Bourke of Brittas and MacDonnell of Antrim.   94. Castle Stewart and Balfour of Glenawley.   95. Caulfeild of Charlemont, Digby of Geashill, Lady Offaly, MacDonnell of Antrim and Boyle of Cork.   96. Blayney, Docwra, Aungier of Longford, Wilmot of Athlone, Power of Valentia and Nugent of Westmeath.   97. Loftus of Ely, Folliott of Ballyshannon, Esmond of Limerick, Netterville of Dowth, Dillon of Roscommon, Hamilton of Claneboye and Montgomery of the Ards.   98. Roper of Baltinglass, Brabazon of Meath, Bourke of Mayo, Sarsfield of Kilmallock.   99. MacCarthy of Muskerry, Maguire of Enniskillen, Boyle of Kinalmeaky, Boyle of Broghill, Jones of Ranelagh, Barry of Barrymore, Plunkett of Fingal and Taaffe. 100. Mayes, ‘The Early Stuarts and the Irish Peerage’, p. 242. 101. Ibid., p. 243. 102. John McCavitt, Sir Arthur Chichester, Lord Deputy of Ireland 1605–16 (Belfast, 1998). 103. In December 1623 Laurence Parsons reported that ‘Sir Charles Maccarthy is in discourse to be speedily created a viscount & that his son shall haue one of my lo depties daughters’, NLI, MS 13,237, f. 6. 104. Comment. Rinucc, I, p. 311. 105. Patrick Little, ‘O’Brien, Murrough, first earl of Inchiquin (c.1614–1674)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/20463, accessed 2 Dec. 2008]), and O’Brien, The O’Briens of Thomond. 106. CSPI, 1625–1632, p. 305. 107. CSPI, 1608–1610, pp. xi, 193, 457, 469–70; Mayes, ‘The Early Stuarts and the Irish Peerage’, p. 241. For his patent, dated 18 July 1623, see CSPI, 1625–1632, p. 75. 108. Frederick Fitzgerald, ‘Lettice, Baroness of Offaly and the Siege of her Castle of Geashill, 1642’, Journal of the Kildare Archaeological Society, 3 (1902), pp. 418–24. 109. HMC, Report 12. Appendix 1 (London, 1888), p. 436; HMC, Report 12. Appendix 2 (London, 1888), p. 116; CSPI, 1615–1625, pp. 147, 169, 249, 264, 270; CSPI, 1625–32, p. 13; CSPI, 1625–32, p. 291; fully summarized in CSPI, 1647–60, pp. 94–6. 110. J. Coleman, ‘Antiquarian Remains and Historic Places in Kinsale District’, Journal of the Cork Historical and Archaeological Society, second series, 17 (1912), pp. 30–9, 77–81. 111. M. J. Blake, Castle Bourke (Galway, 1929), pp. 5–7. 112. Gilbert (ed.), Contemporary History, I, pp. 145, 172, 173. 113. John Lowe (ed.), Letter-Book of the Earl of Clanricarde 1643–1647 (IMC, Dublin, 1983), p. 10. 114. Cunningham, ‘Theobald Dillon’, pp. 24–32, and Gerald Dillon, ‘The Dillon Peerages’, Irish Genealogist, 3 (1958), pp. 87–92. 115. Mayes, ‘The Early Stuarts and the Irish Peerage’, p. 240. 116. Ibid., pp. 233; Dillon, ‘The Dillon Peerages’, pp. 92–100. 117. Mayes, ‘The Early Stuarts and the Irish Peerage’, p. 241. 118. Ibid., pp. 233–4, and John Prendergast, ‘The Butlers, Lords Ikerrin, before the Court of Transplantation at Athlone, ad 1656, and at the Second Court of Claims’, Butler Society Journal, 3 (1987), pp. 72–6.

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Notes to pp. 44–52

119. Fear Cualann, ‘The Break-up of Mount Merrion’, Catholic Bulletin, 15 (1925), pp. 1,189–97; John Kingston, ‘Catholic Families of the Pale’, Reportum Novum: Dublin Diocesan Historical Record, 2 (1957–8), pp. 88–94. 120. Kingston, ‘Catholic Families of the Pale’, pp. 88–108. Also see Carmel McAsey, ‘Booterstown’, Dublin Historical Record, 21:3 (1969), pp. 81–94. Also see E. MacLysaght (ed.), Kenmare Manuscripts (IMC, Dublin, 1942). 121. T. Crofton Croker (ed.), Autobiography of Mary Countess of Warwick (London, 1848), p. 1. 122. CSPI, 1611–1614, p. xxvii. 123. Mayes, ‘The Early Stuarts and the Irish Peerage’, p. 242. 124. Mary Ann Lyons, ‘Brabazon, Sir William (d. 1552)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, Sept. 2004; online edn., Jan. 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/3154, accessed 20 Oct. 2008]). 125. Mayes, ‘The Early Stuarts and the Irish Peerage’, p. 243. 126. Comment. Rinucc., I, p. 267; Harold O’Sullivan, ‘Moore, Garret, first Viscount Moore of Drogheda (1565/6–1627)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb. com/view/article/19110, accessed 2 Dec. 2008]), and Laurence P. Murray, ‘The Moores of Ardee’, Journal of Louth Archaeological and Historical Society, 5:4 (1932), pp. 472–84. 127. Mervyn Edward Wingfield, first Baron Powerscourt, Muniments of the Ancient Family of Wingfield (privately printed, London, 1894; reprinted, Durham, NC, 1987) and CSPI, 1663–1665, pp. 60–2. 128. Mayes, ‘The Early Stuarts and the Irish Peerage’, pp. 241–2; CSPD, 1619–1623, pp. 11, 14. 129. Walter Fitzgerald, ‘Baltinglass Abbey, its Possessions, and their Post-Reformation Proprietors’, Journal of the County Kildare Archaeological Society, 5 (1906–8), pp. 379–414. 130. Treadwell, Buckingham and Ireland, p. 53. 131. Dewald, The European Nobility, pp. 36–40; Asch, Nobilities in Transition, pp. 37–8. 132. CSPD, 1627–1628, pp. 89, 91, 107; Sean Kelsey, ‘Conway, Edward, first Viscount Conway and first Viscount Killultagh (c.1564–1631)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, Sept. 2004; online edn., May 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/6120, accessed 12 Nov. 2008]); Mayes, ‘The Early Stuarts and the Irish Peerage’, p. 237. For the correspondance see HMC, Hastings and CSPI. 133. CSPD, 1619–1623, pp. 483–4. 134. CSPD, 1611–1618, p. 519. 135. R. M. Armstrong, ‘Rawdon, Sir George, first baronet (1604–1684)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, Sept. 2004; online edn., Jan. 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/ article/23177, accessed 12 Nov. 2008]). 136. Mayes, ‘The Early Stuarts and the Irish Peerage’, p. 243. 137. John McGurk, Sir Henry Docwra, 1564–1631: Derry’s second founder (Dublin, 2005). 138. CSPI, 1603–1606, p. 327. 139. CSPD, 1611–1618, p. 23. 140. Treadwell, Buckingham and Ireland, p. 54. 141. Clarendon, History, I, pp. 294–5. 142. Mayes, ‘The Early Stuarts and the Irish Peerage’, p. 240. 143. CSPI, 1625–1632, p. 139; Kane, The Politics and Culture of Honour, p. 153. 144. W. Knowler (ed.), The Letters and Despatches (2 vols., London, 1739), II, p. 342; Donnelly, ‘The Roches, Lords of Fermoy’. 145. HMC, Ormonde, NS, VI, p. 475. 146. Lowe (ed.), Letter-Book, pp. 25, 150. 147. Quoted in GEC, III, p. 28. 148. J. D. Davies, ‘Butler, Thomas, sixth earl of Ossory (1634–1680)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, Sept. 2004; online edn., Jan. 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/ article/4210, accessed 6 Nov. 2008]). 149. Sean O’Brien, ‘The Butlers of Lower Grange, Viscounts Galmoy’, Old Kilkenny Review, Journal of the Kilkenny Archaeological Society, 16 (1964), pp. 16–23. It was rumoured that Walter Bagnall had been created Viscount of Newry and Mountgarret, earl of Wexford, ‘but the patents never came to light’, Gilbert (ed.), Contemporary History, I, p. 121. 150. Terry Clavin, ‘Barnewall, Nicholas, first Viscount Barnewall of Kingsland (1592–1663)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/1482, accessed 6 Nov. 2008]); Kingston, ‘Catholic Families of the Pale’, Reportum Novum: Dublin Diocesan Historical Record, 1 (1956), pp. 323–50. 151. Pádraig Lenihan, ‘Preston, Thomas, first Viscount Tara (b. in or after 1585, d. 1655)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/22731, accessed 6 Nov. 2008]).

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152. Gilbert (ed.), Contemporary History, I, p. 121. 153. Aidan Clarke, ‘King, John, first Baron Kingston (c.1620–1676)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, Sept. 2004; online edn., May 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/ article/15571, accessed 6 Nov. 2008]). 154. Sean Kelsey, ‘Clotworthy, John, first Viscount Massereene (d. 1665)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/5709, accessed 6 Nov. 2008]). 155. Patrick Little, ‘Coote, Charles, first earl of Mountrath (c.1610–1661)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, Sept. 2004; online edn., Jan. 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/ article/6240, accessed 6 Nov. 2008]). 156. W. N. Osborough, ‘Barry, James, first Baron Barry of Santry (1603–1673)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/1561, accessed 6 Nov. 2008]), and F. Elrington Ball, ‘Some Notes on the Irish Judiciary in the Reign of Charles II, 1660– 1685’, Journal of the Cork Historical and Archaeological Society, 7 (1901), pp. 26–2, 90–104, 138–49, 215–27; 8 (1902), pp. 179–85. 157. Edward M. Furgol, ‘Trevor, Marcus, first Viscount Dungannon (1618–1670)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, Sept. 2004; online edn., May 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/ article/27731, accessed 6 Nov. 2008]). 158. Jane Ohlmeyer, ‘O’Brien, Daniel, first Viscount Clare (1577?–1663)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, Sept. 2004; online edn., Jan. 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/ article/20447, accessed 6 Nov. 2008]). 159. John D’Alton, Illustrations, Historical and Genealogical of King James’s Irish Army List (1689) (Limerick, 1997), pp. 258–63. 160. Harman Murtagh, ‘Butler, Richard, first earl of Arran (1639–1686)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/58099, accessed 6 Nov. 2008]). 161. CSPI, 1663–1665, pp. 60–2, 656–7, 669–71; CSPI, 1669–1667, pp. 75–6. 162. Powerscourt, Muniments, pp. 40–1. 163. Susanna Balfour was a daughter of Sir William Balfour, lieutenant of the Tower of London, NLI, G[eneological] O[ffice] 73, p. 117, and not of Sir William Balfour of Pitcullo, as stated in A. N. L. Grosjean, ‘Hamilton, Hugh, first Baron Hamilton of Glenawly (c.1607–1678)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/12074, accessed 18 Sept. 2008]). 164. During his years in Stockholm he married the daughters of high-profile Scots and secured a Swedish title (and presumably lands as well) before returning to live in Ulster. Interestingly, Glenawly’s daughter by his first wife married a Swede, while his two younger daughters by his second spouse wed Irish peers; George Hamilton, A History of the House of Hamilton (Edinburgh, 1933), p. 1,016, Steve Murdoch and Alexia Grosjean,‘Scotland, Scandinavia and Northern Europe 1580–1707’, database www.standrews. ac.uk/history/ssne/, and Mary Elizabeth Ailes, Military Migration and State Formation (Lincoln, NB, 2002), pp. 31, 52, 62, 65–6, 86–7, 127–8, 146 n. 59; Steve Murdoch, ‘The Northern Flight: Irish Soldiers in Seventeenth-Century Scandinavia’ in Thomas O’Connor and Mary Ann Lyons (eds.), The Ulster Earls and Baroque Europe: Refashioning Irish Identities, 1600–1800 (Dublin, 2010), pp. 106–7. 165. Ossory, Arran and Shannon, all of whom were young boys in 1641, were not listed in the Books of Survey and Distribution. Also missing are Tara and Glenawly, who were both resident on the Continent, and Massareene, whose omission is intriguing. 166. Richard Boyle, earl of Burlington (created 1664), Arthur Annesley, earl of Anglesey (created 1661), Edward, earl of Conway (created 1679). 167. The exceptions were O’Brien of Inchiquin, whose baronage title dated from 1543, and Ormond’s sons, the earls of Arran and Ossory. 168. Lawrence, The interest of Ireland, II, pp. 63–6. 169. The following became extinct: Roper of Baltinglass (1672), Preston of Tara (1674), Hamilton of Clanbrassil (1675), Butler of Ossory (1680) and Hamilton of Glenawly (1681). Stewart of Castle Stewart became dormant in 1678. 170. BL, Add. MS 18,730 (Annesley diary, 1675–84), entry for 3 July 1678. 171. BL, Add. MS 40,860 (Annesley diary, 1671–2). 172. A. F. Pollard, ‘Talbot, Sir William, first baronet (d. 1634)’, rev. Sean Kelsey, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004; online edn., Jan. 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/ article/26944, accessed 11 Nov. 2008]); John Kingston, ‘Catholic Families of the Pale’, Reportum Novum: Dublin Diocesan Historical Record, 2 (1957–8), pp. 96–108. 173. Piers Wauchope, ‘Talbot, Richard, first earl of Tyrconnell and Jacobite duke of Tyrconnell (1630– 1691)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/ article/26940, accessed 11 Nov. 2008]); D’Alton, Illustrations, pp. 43–60.

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Notes to pp. 55–61

174. He sat as MP for Kilmallock during 1665–6. Toby Barnard, ‘Boyle, Michael (1609/10–1702)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, Sept. 2004; online edn., Jan. 2008 [http://www. oxforddnb.com/view/article/3131, accessed 28 Nov. 2008]); Ball, ‘Some Notes on the Irish Judiciary’, pp. 36–42. 175. According to the Books of Survey and Distribution, Sir Richard Lane (senior) held 1,148 profitable plantation acres in County Roscommon. 176. HMC, Ormonde, NS, VII, p. 174; Toby Barnard, ‘Lane, George, first Viscount Lanesborough (1620–1683)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, Sept. 2004; online edn., Jan. 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/58510, accessed 11 Nov. 2008]). 177. John Forbes, Memoirs of the earls of Granard, ed. George Arthur Hastings, earl of Granard (London, 1868), pp. 34, 36; Aidan Clarke, Prelude to Restoration in Ireland: The End of the Commonwealth, 1659–1660 (Cambridge, 1999), p. 31. 178. CSPD, March 1678–Dec. 1678, p. 165. 179. HMC, Ormonde, NS, VI, p. 527. 180. Ibid., VII, p. 5. 181. D’Alton, Illustrations, p. 636; MacLysaght (ed.), Kenmare Manuscripts. 182. Piers Wauchope, ‘MacCarthy, Justin, first Viscount Mountcashel (c.1643–1694)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, Sept. 2004; online edn., May 2006 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/ view/article/17380, accessed 25 Nov. 2008]). 183. Piers Wauchope, ‘Sarsfield, Patrick, Jacobite first earl of Lucan (d. 1693)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/24671, accessed 25 Nov. 2008]), and John A. Murphy, Justin MacCarthy, Lord Mountcashel: Commander of the First Irish Brigade in France (Cork, 1959); J. G. Simms, ‘A Jacobite Colonel: Lord Sarsfield of Kilmallock’, Irish Sword, 2 (winter 1955), pp. 205–10. 184. Constantia Maxwell, Irish History from Contemporary Sources (1509–1610), pp. 101–2. 185. GEC, I, appendix F. 186. Lloyd Bonfield, ‘Marriage Settlements and the “Rise of Great Estates”: The Demographic Aspect’, Economic History Review, NS, 32 (1979), p. 491. 187. These figures do not include those who had been attained and whose titles and estates were forfeited. 188. NA, prerogative will book 4/206/1, ff. 211–2, Richard, earl of Clanricarde, 17 Oct. 1664. 189. C. W. Fitzgerald, The Earls of Kildare and their Ancestors 1057 to 1773 (Dublin, 1858), pp. 233–46. 190. Dillon, ‘The Dillon Peerages’, pp. 87–92. 191. Peter Roebuck, ‘The Donegal Family and the Development of Belfast, 1600–1850’ in P. Butel and L. M. Cullen (eds.), Cities and Merchants: French and Irish Perspectives on Urban Development, 1500–1900 (Dublin, 1986), pp. 125–36. 192. Bonfield, ‘Marriage Settlements’, p. 489. 193. Anonymous, ‘Gerald Aungier of the East India Company: The Story of a Younger Son’, Notes and Queries, 146 (1924), pp. 204–8. 194. Scott, ‘ “Acts of time and power” ’, p. 6. 195. Barnewall of Trimleston, Bourke of Brittas, Bourke of Castle Connell, Butler of Dunboyne, Butler of Galmoy, Dungan of Clane, Fleming of Slane, Hamilton of Strabane, Magennis of Iveagh, MacCarthy of Clancarthy, O’Brien of Clare, O’Dempsey of Clanmalier and Sarsfield of Kilmallock. 196. Jane Ohlmeyer and Steven Zwicker, ‘John Dryden, the House of Ormond, and the Politics of AngloIrish Patronage’, Historical Journal, 49 (2006), pp. 677–706. 197. David Edwards, The Ormond Lordship in County Kilkenny, 1515–1642: The Rise and Fall of Butler Feudal Power (Dublin, 2003), and ‘The Poisoned Chalice: The Ormond Inheritance, Sectarian Division and the Emergence of James Butler, 1614–1642’ in Toby Barnard and Jane Fenlon (eds.), The Dukes of Ormonde, 1610–1745 (Woodbridge, Suffolk, 2000), pp. 55–82; William Neely, ‘The Ormond Butlers of County Kilkenny’ in William Nolan and Kevin Whelan (eds.), Kilkenny: History and Society (Dublin, 1990), pp. 107–26. 198. CSPI, 1603–1606, pp. 84, 72; CSPI, 1611–1614, pp. 412–13, 422–3, 458. 199. Of his two daughters only Mary Cavendish (d.1710) outlived him. 200. HMC, Ormonde, NS, VII, pp. 406, 407–8 (for quote). 201. Ibid., pp. 313–14 ,and Bodl., Carte MS 141, ff. 167–8. For the clear affection that the first duke had for Mary Somerset, see HMC, Ormonde, NS, VII, p. 458. 202. HMC, Ormonde, NS, VII, p. 461. 203. Thomas died on 26 or 27 February 1689. Of their daughters, Mary, Emilia and Henrietta died as infants, whilst Elizabeth and Mary survived into adulthood and in 1697 accompanied their mother to Ireland. With the death of the second duke in 1745, his brother Charles, earl of Arran

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(1671–1758), succeeded. On Charles’s death the line became extinct and the lands passed to the great-grandson of the first duke’s brother, Richard of Kilcash. 204. Scott (ed.), The European Nobilities, I, pp. 14–15. 205. Donnelly, ‘The Roches, Lords of Fermoy’, pp. 49–51. 206. MacLysaght (ed.), Kenmare Manuscripts. 207. M. Beckett, Sir George Rawdon, a Sketch of his Life and Times (Belfast, 1935); A. P. W. Malcolmson, ‘A Variety of Perspectives on Laurence Parsons, Second Earl of Rosse’ in William Nolan and Timothy P. O’Neill (eds.), Offaly: History & Society. Interdisciplinary Essays on the History of an Irish County (Dublin, 1998), pp. 440–4.

Chapter Three: The Transformation of Noble Culture   1. Michael Hartnett, Haicéad (Oldcastle, County Meath, 1993), pp. 55–9; Brendan Kane, The Politics and Culture of Honour in Britain and Ireland, 1541–1641 (Cambridge, 2010), pp. 149–51.   2. Hartnett, Haicéad, p. 55.   3. Richard Lawrence, The interest of Ireland in its trade and wealth stated in two parts: first part observes and discovers the causes of Irelands not more increasing in trade and wealth from the first conquest till now: second part proposeth expedients to remedy all its mercanture maladies . . . by which it is kept poor and low; both mix’d with some observations on the politicks of government relating to the incouragement of trade and increase of wealth: with some reflections on principles of religion as it relates to the premisses (Dublin, 1682), I, p. 14.   4. John C. Mac Erlean, S. J., The Poems of David Ó Bruadair (3 vols., London, 1910–17), I, p. 67.   5. Comment. Rinucc., V, p. 133.   6. Bernadette Cunningham, ‘Colonized Catholics: Perceptions of Honour and History in Michael Kearney’s Reading of Foras feasa ar Éirinn’ in Vincent P. Carey and Ute Lotz-Heumann (eds.), Taking Sides: Colonial and Confessional Mentalités in Early Modern Ireland (Dublin, 2003), p. 163.   7. Gilbert (ed.), Contemporary History, I, p. 207.   8. Ibid., pp. 145, 172, 173.   9. Comment. Rinucc., II, p. 489. 10. Cunningham, ‘Colonized Catholics’, p. 161. 11. N. J. A. Williams (ed.), Pairlement Chloinne Tomais (Dublin, 1981), p. 83. 12. Kane, The Politics and Culture of Honour, pp. 37, 148–52, 155 (quote). 13. Mac Erlean, The Poems of David Ó Bruadair, I, p. 133. 14. Brendan Kane, ‘From Irish Eineach to British Honor? Noble Honor and High Politics in Early Modern Ireland, 1500–1650’, History Compass, 7 (2009), p. 420; Kane, The Politics and Culture of Honour, pp. 7, 48–51; Joep Leersson, Mere Irish nad Fíor-Ghael: Studies in the Idea of Irish Nationality, its Development and Literary Expression prior to the Nineteenth Century (Cork, 1996), and Marc Caball, Poets and Politics: Reaction and Continuity in Irish Poetry, 1558–1625 (Cork, 1998). 15. Ronald Asch, Nobilities in Transition 1550–1700: Courtiers and Rebels in Britain and Europe (London, 2003), pp. 7, 11. 16. Lawrence, The interest of Ireland, I, p. 16. 17. Bernadette Cunningham, ‘Clanricard Letters: Letters and Papers, 1605–1673, Preserved in the National Library of Ireland Manuscript 3111’, Journal of the Galway Archaeological and Historical Society, 48 (1996), pp. 181 (quote), 189–90. 18. HMC, Ormonde, NS, VI, pp. 475–6. 19. John Lowe (ed.), Letter-Book of the Earl of Clanricarde 1643–1647 (IMC, Dublin, 1983), p. 25. 20. There were clearly occasions when this did not happen. For the example of Lord Ridgeway, see M. C. Griffith (ed.), Irish Patent Rolls of James I: Facsimile of the Irish Record Commission’s Calendar Prepared prior to 1830 (IMC, Dublin, 1966), p. 554. 21. Ibid., p. 304. 22. CSPI, 1615–1625, p. 578. 23. G. R. Mayes, ‘The Early Stuarts and the Irish Peerage’, English Historical Review, 73 (1958), p. 233. 24. CSPI, 1625–1632, p. 434; CSPI, 1660–1662, p. 537. 25. Lodge, I, p. 205; Griffith (ed.), Irish Patent Rolls of James I, p. 373. 26. George Hill, MacDonnells of Antrim (Belfast, 1873), p. 196. 27. Quoted in Paul Walsh, The Will and Family of H. O’Neill, Earl of Tyrone (Dublin, 1930), p. 42. 28. Griffith (ed.), Irish Patent Rolls of James I, p. 3. 29. H. F. Kearney, ‘The Court of Wards and Liveries in Ireland, 1622–1641’, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Antiquaries, 57, Section C (1955–6), p. 30. For examples see Griffith (ed.), Irish Patent Rolls of James I.

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Notes to pp. 70–4

30. F. M. O’Donoghue, ‘Parliament in Ireland under Charles II’ (unpublished MA thesis, University College Dublin, 1970), p. 38. 31. Kevin Sharpe, ‘Crown, Parliament and Locality: Government and Communication in Early Stuart England’, English Historical Review, 101 (1986), p. 324. 32. John Kingston, ‘Lord Dunboyne’, Reportum Novum: Dublin Diocesan Historical Record, 3 (1961–2), pp. 62–82. HMC, Report 15. Appendix 1, Part II (London, 1897); D. Alan Orr, ‘England, Ireland, Magna Carta, and the Common Law: The Case of Connor Lord Maguire, Second Baron of Enniskillen’, Journal of British Studies, 39 (2000), pp. 389–421. 33. R. B. Grassby, ‘Social Status and Commercial Enterprise under Louis XIV’, Economic History Review, NS, 13 (1960), pp. 19–38. 34. Lawrence, The interest of Ireland, I, p. 15. 35. Kane, The Politics and Culture of Honour, p. 10. 36. Cunningham, ‘Colonized Catholics’; William Palmer, ‘That “Insolent Liberty”: Honor, Rites of Power, and Persuasion in Sixteenth-Century Ireland’, Renaissance Quarterly, 46 (1993), pp. 308–27; James Kelly, That damn’d thing called honour: Duelling in Ireland, 1570–1860 (Cork, 1995); Clodagh Tait, Death, Burial and Commemoration in Ireland, 1550–1650 (London, 2002). Also see Deana Rankin, Between Spenser and Swift: English Writing in Seventeenth-Century Ireland (Cambridge, 2005). For Kane see note 38 below. 37. Palmer, ‘That “Insolent Liberty” ’, pp. 308 (quote), 309–10. 38. Kane, The Politics and Culture of Honour; ‘From Irish Eineach to British Honor?’, pp. 414–30; ‘Making the Irish European: Gaelic Honor Politics and its Continental Contexts’, Renaissance Quarterly, 61 (2008), pp., 1139–66; Brendan Kane, ‘Scandal, Wentworth’s Deputyship and the Breakdown of Stuart Honour Politics’ in Brian Mac Cuarta (ed.), Reshaping Ireland 1550–1700: Colonization and its Consequences (Dublin, 2011), pp. 147–62. 39. Kane, The Politics and Culture of Honour, pp. 47ff. 40. Ibid., p. 21. 41. Kane, ‘From Irish Eineach to British Honor?’, pp. 415, 419. 42. Kane, The Politics and Culture of Honour, p. 46. 43. Ibid., p. 123. 44. Kane, ‘From Irish Eineach to British Honor?’, p. 415. 45. M. E. James, English Politics and the Concept of Honour, 1485–1642 (Past and Present Suppl. III, Oxford, 1978); M. E. James, Family, Lineage and Civil Society (Oxford, 1974). Also see Vernon F. Snow, ‘Essex and the Aristocratic Opposition to the Early Stuarts’, Journal of Modern History, 32 (1960), pp. 224–33. 46. James, English Politics and the Concept of Honour, p. 63. 47. Richard Cust, ‘Honour and Politics in Early Stuart England: The Case of Beaumont v. Hastings’, Past and Present, 149 (1995), p. 93. 48. Quoted in Cynthia Herrup, ‘To Pluck Bright Honour from the Pale-Faced Moon’: Gender and Honour in the Castlehaven Story’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, sixth series, 6 (1996), pp. 137–160, quote at p. 139. 49. Alexandra Shepard, ‘Manhood, Credit and Patriarchy in Early Modern England c.1580–1640’, Past and Present, 167 (2000), p. 75. 50. Quoted in Herrup, ‘To Pluck Bright Honour from the Pale-Faced Moon’, p. 155. 51. Linda Pollock, ‘Honor, Gender, and Reconciliation in Elite Culture, 1570–1700’, Journal of British Studies, 46 (2007), pp. 3–29, p. 8. 52. Kane, The Politics and Culture of Honour, pp. 158–80; Toby Barnard, A New Anatomy of Ireland: Protestants in Ireland, 1649–1770 (New Haven, CT, 2003), p. 46. 53. J. Barry, ‘Guide to the Records of the Genealogical Office, Dublin’, Analecta Hibernica, 26 (1970), pp. 3–44. 54. Cunningham, ‘Colonized Catholics’, pp. 150–6. 55. Gilbert (ed.), Contemporary History, I, pp. 244–5. 56. H. M. Scott (ed.), The European Nobilities in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries: Western Europe (2 vols., London, 1995), I, p. 43. 57. Ibid., pp. 41–3; Roger Manning, Swordsmen: The Martial Ethos in the Three Kingdoms (Oxford, 2003), and An Apprenticeship in Arms: The Origins of the British Army 1585–1702 (Oxford, 2006). 58. Pádraig Lenihan, Confederate Catholics at War, 1642–49 (Cork, 2001); Pádraig Lenihan, ‘Confederate Military Strategy, 1643–7’ in Micheál Ó Siochrú (ed.), Kingdoms in Crisis: Ireland in the 1640s (Dublin, 2001), pp. 158–75 and ‘Conclusion: Ireland’s Military Revolution(s)’ in Pádraig Lenihan (ed.), Conquest and Resistance: War in Seventeenth-Century Ireland (Leiden, 2001), pp. 345–7.

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Notes to pp. 74–9

499

59. Jane Ohlmeyer, ‘The Baronial Context of the Civil War in Ireland’ in John Adamson (ed.), The Civil Wars (London, 2008), pp. 106–24. 60. Griffith (ed.), Irish Patent Rolls of James I, p. 487, for his estates see pp. 534–5. 61. CSPI, 1615–1625, p. 308. 62. Ibid., p. 309. 63. Griffith (ed.), Irish Patent Rolls of James I, p. 510. 64. Nicholas Canny, The Upstart Earl: A Study of the Social and Mental World of Richard Boyle, First Earl of Cork, 1566–1643 (Cambridge, 1982), pp. 10–11, 14–15, 19, 23, 43; Clodagh Tait, ‘Colonising Memory: Manipulations of Death, Burial and Commemoration in the Career of Richard Boyle, First Earl Of Cork (1566–1643)’, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, 101, Section C (2001), pp. 107–34; Patrick Little, ‘The Earl of Cork and the Fall of the Earl of Strafford’, Historical Journal, 39 (1996), pp. 619–35. 65. Grosart (ed.), Lismore Papers, first series, V, p. 84. 66. Jane Ohlmeyer and Steven Zwicker, ‘Patronage and Restoration Politics: John Dryden and the House of Ormond’, Historical Journal (2006), pp. 677–706. 67. Clarendon, Rebellion, II, pp. 492–3. 68. E. N. Hooker and H. T. Swedenberg, Jr., et al. (eds.), The Works of John Dryden (20 vols., Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1953–2000), II, ll. 817–28. 69. Ibid., XVII, pp. 235–6. 70. Aphra Behn, Poems: A Pindarick Poem on The Happy Coronation Of His Most Sacred Majesty James II And His Illustrious Consort Queen Mary (London, 1685), [p. 17]. 71. Anonymous, A brief compendium of the birth, education, heroick exploits and victories of the truly valorous and renowned gentleman, Thomas Earl of Ossory (London?, 1680), p. 3. 72. Lawrence, The interest of Ireland, I, preface. 73. An elegy to the memory of the Right Houorable [sic] Thomas, Earl of Ossory who depated [sic] this life July the 30th, 1680 (London, 1680). 74. Hooker and Swedenberg et al. (eds.), The Works of John Dryden, VII, 17. 75. James Cleland, Hero-paideia, or The institution of a young noble man (Oxford, 1612), p. 179. 76. CSPI, 1611–1614, p. 352; R. Dudley Edwards, ‘Letter-book of Sir Arthur Chichester 1612–1614’, Analecta Hibernica, 8 (1938), p. 101. 77. Edwards, ‘Letter-book of Sir Arthur Chichester 1612–1614’, pp. 70, 117. Fully discussed in Kane, The Politics and Culture of Honour, pp. 199 ff. 78. CSPI, 1615–1625, pp. 25, 79. 79. CSPI, 1625–1632, p. 90; CSPI, 1625–1632, pp. 133, 139–40. 80. Cunningham, ‘Clanricard Letters’, p. 204; Kane, The Politics and Culture of Honour, pp. 161–92. 81. Lowe (ed.), Letter-Book of the Earl of Clanricarde, p. 253. 82. Journals of the Irish House of Lords, vol. 1, 1634–1698 (Dublin, 1779), pp. 253, 381, 439; John Ainsworth, ‘Survey of Documents in Private Keeping’, Analecta Hibernica, 25 (1967), p. 158. 83. Dougal Shaw, ‘Thomas Wentworth and Monarchical Ritual in Early Modern Ireland’, Historical Journal, 49 (2006), pp. 331–55, especially, pp. 353–4; ‘Restoration through Ritual in Ireland: The Celebrations of 1661’ in Thomas Herron and Michael Potterton (eds.), Ireland in the Renaissance, c.1540–1660 (Dublin, 2007), pp. 325–36; and Kane, ‘Scandal, Wentworth’s Deputyship and the Breakdown of Stuart Honour Politics’, pp. 147–62. 84. John Davies, A discourse of the true causes why Ireland was never entirely subdued, nor brought under obedience of the crown of England (London, 1612), p. 246. 85. Cited in Shaw, ‘Thomas Wentworth and Monarchical Ritual’, p. 350. 86. Alan Fletcher, ‘Select Document: Ormond’s Civic Entry into Kilkenny, 29/31 August 1646’, Irish Historical Studies, 35 (2007), pp. 365–78. 87. CSPI, 1666–1669, pp. 205, 208, 214. 88. Pollock, ‘Honor, Gender and Reconciliation’, pp. 9–16; Susan Dwyer Amussen, ‘Punishment, Discipline, and Power: The Social Meanings of Violence in Early Modern England’, Journal of British Studies, 34 (1995), pp. 1–34. 89. Colm Lennon, ‘St Lawrence, Christopher, ninth Baron Howth (d. 1619)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, Sept. 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/24508, accessed 5 Aug. 2010]). 90. CSPI, 1608–1610, pp. 169–71. 91. Ibid., pp. 107–12. Also see pp. 147, 153. 92. Ibid., pp. 321–3, 327; CSPI, 1611–1614, p. 49. 93. CSPI, 1608–1610, pp. 330–1; also pp. 376–8. 94. CSPI, 1611–1614, pp. 59, 60–1, 83 (quote).

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Notes to pp. 79–86

  95. CSPI, 1608–1610, pp. 200–1, also see pp. 190–1, 255, 344–5.   96. Valerie McGowan-Doyle, ‘Reputations Built on Violence: The Barons of Howth and the Elizabethan Re-Conquest’, paper at a conference on ‘Nobility in Early Modern Ireland’, Galway, 22–23 May 2009.   97. The court of castle chamber fined Christopher, ninth Lord Howth, for recusancy in 1607 and again in 1616, Jon G. Crawford (ed.), A Star Chamber Court in Ireland: The Court of Castle Chamber, 1571–1641 (Dublin, 2005), pp. 298, 329.   98. Kathleen M. Lynch, Roger Boyle, First Earl of Orrery (Knoxville, TN, 1965), pp. 28–9.   99. CSPI, 1625–1632, pp. 553, 566. 100. CSPI, 1669–1670, pp. 321–2. 101. CSPD, Jan. to Nov. 1671, p. 169. 102. CSPI, 1666–1669, pp. 493, 526. 103. Ibid., pp. 321–2. 104. HMC, Ormonde, OS, I, p. 59. 105. John Kingston, ‘Lord Dunboyne’, Reportum Novum, Dublin Diocesan Historical Record, 3:1 (1961–2), pp. 62–82. HMC, Report 15. Appendix 1, Part II (London, 1897), p. 292; Londonderry, Meath, Gormanston, Valentia, Moore, Netterville, Baltinglass, Howth, Dunsany, Upper Ossory, Louth, Charlemont, Esmond sat under the presidential control of Aungier. 106. Mary Hickson (ed.), Ireland in the Seventeenth Century (2 vols., London, 1884), II, pp. 192 ff, quote at p. 204. 107. Cust, ‘Honour and Politics in Early Stuart England’, pp. 57–94, 76 (quote). 108. T. C. Barnard, ‘Lawyers and the Law in Later Seventeenth-Century Ireland’, Irish Historical Studies, 28 (1993), p. 270. CSPI, 1615–1625, pp. 400, 434, 470; CSPI, 1647–1660, p. 53; TNA, PRO C2/ ChasI/C64/60: Cork v Sir William Power. 109. Journals of the Irish House of Lords, I, pp. 147, 162, 432; HMC, Ormonde, NS, III, p. 201; HMC, Report on the Manuscripts of the Duke of Buccleugh and Queensferry, vol. III (London, 1926), p. 401; CSPI, 1633–1647, pp. 159, 268. 110. Coleman Dennehy, ‘Parliament in Ireland 1661–6’ (unpublished MLitt thesis, University College Dublin, 2002), pp. 50–2. Also Journals of the Irish House of Lords, I, p. 432. 111. Journals of the Irish House of Lords, I, pp. 428–9. 112. HMC, Report 11. Appendix 2 (London, 1887), pp. 316–17. 113. HMC, Ormonde, NS, IV, p. 287. 114. Rankin, Between Spenser and Swift, pp. 244–55. 115. M. Perceval Maxwell, ‘Sir Robert Southwell and the Duke of Ormond’s Reflections on the 1640s’ in Ó Siochrú (ed.), Kingdoms in Crisis, p. 231. 116. James Touchet, earl of Castlehaven, The memoirs of James, Lord Audley, Earl of Castlehaven, his engagement and carriage in the wars of Ireland from the year 1642 to the year 1651 written by himself (London, 1680). [Arthur Annesley, earl of Anglesey,] A letter from a person of honour in the countrey written to the Earl of Castlehaven: being observations and reflections upon His Lordships memoires concerning the wars of Ireland (London, 1681). Ormond responded with A letter from His Grace James Duke of Ormond, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, in answer to the Right Honourable Arthur Earl of Anglesey Lord Privy-Seal . . . (London, 1682). This in turn provoked a hard-hitting response from Annesley, A letter from the Right Honourable Arthur Earl of Anglesey Lord Privy Seal, in answer to his grace the Duke of Ormond’s letter of November the 12th, 1681 . . . (London, 1682). 117. Pollock, ‘Honor, Gender and Reconciliation’, p. 27. 118. Kane, ‘From Irish Eineach to British Honor?’, p. 420. 119. Raymond Gillespie, ‘The Social Thought of Richard Bellings’ in Ó Siochrú (ed.), Kingdoms in Crisis, p. 220. 120. Raymond Gillespie, ‘The Religion of the first Duke of Ormond’ in Toby Barnard and Jane Fenlon (eds.), The Dukes of Ormonde, 1610–1745 (Woodbridge, Suffolk, 2000), pp. 109–10.

Chapter Four: Landed Nobility   1. H. J. Habakkuk, ‘The Rise and Fall of English Landed Families, 1600–1800’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, fifth series, 29 (1979), pp. 187–207.   2. K. W. Nicholls, Land, Law and Society in Sixteenth-Century Ireland (O’Donnell Lecture, Dublin, 1976), pp. 4–10.   3. Geraldine Talon (ed.), Court of Claims: Submissions and Evidence, 1663 (IMC, Dublin, 2006), pp. 227–32.

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501

  4. See, for example, the Gormanston papers catalogued in John Ainsworth, ‘Survey of Documents in Private Keeping’, Analecta Hibernica, 25 (1967), pp. 153–4 and chapter 1 above.   5. M. C. Griffith (ed.), Irish Patent Rolls of James I. Facsimile of the Irish Record Commission’s Calendar Prepared prior to 1830 (IMC, Dublin, 1966); James Morrin, Calendar of the Patent and Close Rolls of Chancery in Ireland (Dublin, 1861); J. C. Erck, Repertory . . . of the Patent Rolls (2 vols., Dublin, 1836 and 1852). For an example of a recent transcript, see Michael Coyle, ‘Letters Patent to Sir Edward Blaney Dated 18th June, 1612’, Clogher Record, 10 (1980), pp. 215–22.   6. Kevin McKenny, ‘The Restoration Land Settlement in Ireland: A Statistical Interpretation’ in Coleman A. Dennehy (ed.), Restoration Ireland: Always Settling and Never Settled (Aldershot, Hampshire, and Burlington, VT, 2008), pp. 35–52.   7. McKenny, ‘The Restoration Land Settlement in Ireland’, pp. 47–9, 41 nobles emerged with about 20 per cent of land (1,793,451 acres); when lesser nobility are included, this figure increases to 40 per cent (3,635,957 acres). In 1641 this group held 2,687,313 acres (29.5 per cent).   8. I am grateful to Dr McKenny for allowing me access to his database and for his particular assistance in preparing figures for the peers. His database collates information from the Books of Survey and Distribution (Quit Rent set), the Civil Survey, transplantation lists and letters patent.   9. Table 6 is based on figures given in the Books of Survey and Distribution and appendix I. 10. Table 7 is based on figures given in the Books of Survey and Distribution and appendix I. 11. Habakkuk, ‘The Rise and Fall of English Landed Families’, p. 201. 12. Ladies Ormond (30,974 acres), Mountrath (12,851 acres), Clancarthy (6,387 acres), Antrim (5,906 acres), Castlehaven (4,887 acres), Fingal (3,337 acres), Brittas (2,298 acres), Clanricarde (1,424 acres), Louth (978), Wilmot (174 acres), Kerry (169 acres) and Mayo (124 acres). 13. Based on figures given in the Books of Survey and Distribution. 14. H. M. Scott and Christopher Storrs, ‘The Consolidation of Noble Power in Europe, c.1600–1800’ in H. M. Scott (ed.), The European Nobilities in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries: Western Europe (2 vols., London, 1995), I, pp. 31–2. 15. H. M. Scott, ‘ “Acts of time and power”: The Consolidation of Aristocracy in Seventeenth-Century Europe, c.1580–1720’, Bulletin of the German Historical Institute, 30 (2008), p. 20. 16. Brian C. Donovan and David Edwards (eds.), British Sources for Irish History 1485–1641: A Guide to Manuscripts in Local, Regional and Specialised Repositories in England, Scotland and Wales (IMC, Dublin, 1997), p. 213. 17. Scott, ‘ “Acts of time and power” ’, p. 6. 18. Keith Brown, Noble Society in Scotland: Wealth, Family and Culture, from Reformation to Revolution (Edinburgh, 2000), p. 37. 19. A geographical description of the kingdom of Ireland (London, 1642), p. 17. 20. Carmel McAsey, ‘Chapelizod, Co. Dublin’, Dublin Historical Record, 17 (1962), p. 40. 21. William Smyth, Map-making, Landscapes and Memory: A Geography of Colonial and Early Modern Ireland c.1530–1750 (Cork, 2006), pp. 234–49. For a detailed analysis of the community living in north County Dublin, see Maighréad Ní Mhurchadha, Fingal, 1603–60: Contending Neighbours in North Dublin (Dublin, 2005). 22. Lords Cavan (40 acres), Cork (121 acres), Kingston (1,425 acres) and Lane (877 acres). 23. McAsey, ‘Chapelizod’, pp. 40–4. 24. HMC, Ormonde, OS, I, p. 56. 25. Ibid., NS, VII, pp. 500–1. 26. Charles Calthrope, The relation between the lord of a mannor and the copy-holder his tenant delivered in the learned readings of . . . Char. Calthrop . . . (second edition, London, 1650); Christopher Brooks, Law, Politics and Society in Early Modern England (Oxford, 2008), p. 333. 27. Mary O’Dowd, ‘ “Irish Concealed Land Papers” in the Hastings Manuscripts in the Huntington Library, San Marino, California’, Analecta Hibernica, 31 (1984), pp. 69–173; Victor Treadwell (ed.), The Irish Commission of 1622: An Investigation of the Irish Administration 1615–22 and its Consequences 1623–24 (IMC, Dublin, 2006). 28. T. O. Ranger, ‘Richard Boyle and the Making of an Irish Fortune, 1588–1614’, Irish Historical Studies, 10 (1957), pp. 257–97 (quote at p. 297). 29. O’Dowd, ‘ “Irish Concealed Land Papers” ’, pp. 69–173. 30. William Roulston, ‘Seventeenth-Century Manors in the Barony of Strabane’ in James Lyttleton and Tadhg O’Keefe (eds.), The Manor in Medieval and Early Modern Ireland (Dublin, 2005), pp. 160–187 (quote at p. 161). 31. CSPI, 1666–1669, p. 646. 32. W. Knowler (ed.), The earl of Strafforde’s letters and despatches with an essay towards his life by Sir George Radcliffe . . . (2 vols., London, 1739), I, 450. Also see Nicholas Canny, ‘The Attempted Anglicisation

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Notes to pp. 100–9

of Ireland in the Seventeenth Century’ in J. F. Merritt (ed.), The Political World of Thomas Wentworth, earl of Strafford 1621–1641 (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 157–86. 33. Raymond Gillespie, ‘The Problems of Plantations: Material Culture and Social Change in Early Modern Ireland’ in James Lyttleton and Colin Rynne (eds.), Plantation Ireland: Settlement and Material Culture, c.1550–c.1700 (Dublin, 2009), p. 49. 34. Hiram Morgan, ‘The Colonial Venture of Sir Thomas Smith in Ulster, 1571–5’, Historical Journal, 28 (1987), pp. 261–78, and R. Dunlop, ‘The Plantation of Leix and Offaly 1556–1622’, English Historical Review, 6 (1891), pp. 61–96; Phil Withington, ‘Plantation and Civil Society’ in Micheál Ó Siochrú and Éamonn Ó Ciardha (eds.), The Plantation of Ulster: Ideology and Practice (Manchester, 2011); Treadwell (ed.), The Irish Commission of 1622. 35. CSPI, 1606–1608, p. 268. 36. For details see Geoffrey Parker, The Thirty Years’ War (London, 1984), p. 98. Similarly ‘Reduktion’, or land-resumption polices pursued by the Swedish Crown during the seventeenth century, enabled it to claw back considerable chunks of land from the nobility, A. F. Upton, ‘The Swedish Nobility, 1600–1772’ in Scott (ed.), The European Nobilities, II, pp. 24–5. 37. Denis Power, ‘The Archaeology of the Munster Plantation’ in Audrey J. Horning et al. (eds.), The Post-Medieval Archaeology of Ireland 1550–1850 (Bray, County Wicklow, 2007), pp. 23–36. 38. Gilbert (ed.), Irish Confederation, V, pp. 20–1. 39. Comment. Rinucc., II, p. 266. 40. Brian Ó Dálaigh, ‘An Inventory of the Contents of Bunratty Castle and the Will of Henry, Fifth Earl of Thomond, 1639’, North Munster Antiquarian Journal, 36 (1995), pp. 139–65. 41. Michael MacCarthy-Morrogh, The Munster Plantation: English Migration to Southern Ireland 1583–1641 (Oxford, 1986), p. 281. 42. Toby Barnard, ‘Boyle, Richard, first earl of Cork (1566–1643)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, Sept. 2004; online edn., May 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/3133, accessed 29 July 2009]). 43. MacCarthy-Morrogh, The Munster Plantation pp.141–3, 245–7. 44. Grosart (ed.), Lismore Papers, first series, V, pp. 33, 138. 45. Dorothea Townshend, The Life and Letters of the Great Earl of Cork (London, 1904), pp. 468ff., for an overview of his holdings when he made his will in November 1642 (he died in September 1643). 46. Grosart (ed.), Lismore Papers, first series, V, p. 48. 47. Nicholas Canny, Making Ireland British, 1580–1650 (Oxford, 2001), p. 318; also pp. 318–26. 48. James Lyttleton, ‘Gaelic Classicism in the Irish Midland Plantations: An Archaeological Reflection’ in Thomas Herron and Michael Potterton (eds.), Ireland in the Renaissance, c.1540–1660 (Dublin, 2007), pp. 248–9. 49. Townshend, Life and Letters, p. 491. 50. Ibid., p. 492. 51. Ibid., pp. 469–70, 475. 52. Grosart (ed.), Lismore Papers, second series, I, pp. 156–7, also see I, pp. 148–9; Nicholas Canny, The Upstart Earl: A Study of the Social and Mental World of Richard Boyle, First Earl of Cork, 1566–1643 (Cambridge, 1982). 53. Robert Dunlop, ‘Roche, David, seventh Viscount Roche of Fermoy (1573?–1635)’, rev. Bernadette Cunningham, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/ view/article/23909, accessed 29 July 2009]). 54. Based on figures given in the Books of Survey and Distribution. 55. Griffith (ed.), Irish Patent Rolls of James I, p. 402; David Edwards, ‘A Haven of Popery: English Catholic Migration to Ireland in the Age of Plantation’ in Alan Ford and John McCafferty (eds.), The Origins of Sectarianism in Early Modern Ireland (Cambridge, 2005), p. 117. 56. Griffith (ed.), Irish Patent Rolls of James I, p. 209. 57. David Dickson, Old World Colony: Cork and South Munster 1630–1830 (Cork, 2005), pp. 14–15. 58. David Sweetman, The Medieval Castles in Ireland (Cork, 1999), p. 161. 59. Dionysius Massari, ‘My Irish Campaign’, Catholic Bulletin, 6–10 (1916–20), 6:4 (1916), p. 218. 60. Gilbert (ed.), Irish Confederation, I, p. 67. 61. MacCarthy-Morrogh, The Munster Plantation, p. 185. 62. David Edwards, The Ormond Lordship in County Kilkenny, 1515–1642. The Rise and Fall of Butler Feudal Power (Dublin, 2003), pp. 11–13. 63. Ibid., pp. 13–14, 56, 77, 100–1. 64. Ibid., pp. 29–42, 51–2.

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Notes to pp. 111–18

503

65. Griffith (ed.), Irish Patent Rolls of James I, p. 525. 66. Smyth, Map-making, pp. 276–342; Griffith (ed.), Irish Patent Rolls of James I, p. 460. 67. Edwards, The Ormond Lordship, pp. 56–7, HMC, Report 4. Part 1. Report and Appendix (London, 1874), p. 567. 68. Hanneke Ronnes, ‘Continental Traces at Carrick-on-Suir and Contemporary Irish Castles: A Preliminary Study of Date-and-Initial Stones’ in Thomas Herron and Michael Potterton (eds.), Ireland in the Renaissance, c.1540–1660 (Dublin, 2007), pp. 255–73; D. M. Waterman, ‘Some Irish Seventeenth-Century Houses and their Architectural Ancestry’ in E. M. Jope (ed.), Studies in Building History: Essays in Recognition of the Work of B. H. St. O’Neill (London, 1961), pp. 252, 258; James Graves, ‘Anonymous Account of the Early Life and Marriage of James, first duke of Ormond’, Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries, 7 (1862–3), p. 277. 69. William Brereton, Travels in Holland, the United Provinces, England, Scotland and Ireland, 1634–1635, ed. and publ. by Edward Hawkins, printed for the Chetham Society, vol. 1 (Manchester, 1844); republished by CELT: Corpus of Electronic Texts: a project of University College, Cork College Road, Cork, Ireland, http://www.ucc.ie/celt (2007); consulted 16 June 2009, p. 402. 70. David Edwards, ‘The Poisoned Chalice: The Ormond Inheritance, Sectarian Division and the Emergence of James Butler, 1614–1642’ in Toby Barnard and Jane Fenlon (eds.), The Dukes of Ormonde, 1610–1745 (Woodbridge, Suffolk, 2000), p. 57. 71. Canny, Making Ireland British, pp. 270–5. 72. Edwards, The Ormond Lordship, p. 27. 73. Edwards, ‘The Poisoned Chalice’, p. 57. 74. Ibid., pp. 71–4, 78–80. 75. Graves, ‘Anonymous Account of the Early Life’, p. 288. 76. Edwards, The Ormond Lordship, pp. 100–1. 77. NLI, MS 2543. 78. For details see chapter 13 below. 79. Edwards, The Ormond Lordship, pp. 128–38. 80. W. C. Dickinson and G. Donaldson (eds.), A Source Book of Scottish History (3 vols., Edinburgh, 1961), III, p. 261. 81. McKenny, ‘The Restoration Land Settlement in Ireland’, pp. 35–52; Raymond Gillespie, Colonial Ulster: The Settlement of East Ulster 1600–1641 (Cork, 1985); Philip Robinson, The Plantation of Ulster: British Settlement in an Irish Landscape, 1600–1670 (Dublin, 1984), and M. Perceval-Maxwell, The Scottish Migration to Ulster in the Reign of James I (London, 1973). 82. Colm J. Donnelly, ‘The Archaeology of the Ulster Plantation’ in Horning et al. (eds.), The PostMedieval Archaeology of Ireland, pp. 37–50. 83. PRONI, D.3078/3, 1/5, p. 127. 84. Ibid., p. 157. 85. Ibid., pp. 34, 37 (quote), 85; O’Dowd, ‘ “Irish Concealed Land Papers” ’, p. 123. 86. NHI, III, p. 199; Robinson, The Plantation of Ulster, pp. 74–5. 87. Lodge, III, p. 200. 88. O’Dowd, ‘ “Irish Concealed Land Papers” ’, pp. 95, 138. 89. Details of these deeds are in the Oxfordshire archives. For a listing, see Donovan and Edwards (eds.), British Sources for Irish History, pp. 209–11. 90. O’Dowd, ‘ “Irish Concealed Land Papers” ’, p. 165. 91. Rolf Loeber and Terence Reeves-Smyth, ‘Lord Audley’s Grandiose Building Schemes in the Ulster Plantation’ in Brian Mac Cuarta (ed.), Reshaping Ireland 1550–1700. Colonization and its Consequences (Dublin, 2011), pp. 82–100. I am grateful to Professor Loeber for sharing this with me in advance of publication. 92. HMC, Report on the Manuscripts of the late Reginald Rawdon Hastings Esq. of The Manor House, Ashbyde-la-Zouche (4 vols., London, 1928–47), IV, p. 181. 93. CSPI, 1615–1625, pp. 92–3. 94. George Hill, Plantation in Ulster (Belfast, 1877), p. 537. 95. The archive is extant in the Huntington Library as part of the Hastings papers. It has been extensively used by Canny, Making Ireland British, and Charlene McCoy, ‘War and Revolution: County Fermanagh and its Borders, c.1640–c.1666’ (unpublished PhD thesis, Trinity College Dublin, 2007), pp. 39–44, 312–16, 317–27, 334–6. 96. Constantia Maxwell (ed.), Irish History from Contemporary Sources (1509–1610) (London, 1923), pp. 300–1; Perceval-Maxwell, Scottish Migration, pp. 3–10, 47–8, 60–4. 97. John Hanly (ed.), The Letters of Saint Oliver Plunkett 1625–81: Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland (Dublin, 1979), p. 247.

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Notes to pp. 118–20

  98. Of the 2,200 acres he owned in County Londonderry, 2,030 acres were described in the ‘Civil survey’ (of 1654) as ‘profitable’ and fit for both arable and pastoral farming, while only the remaining 170 acres of ‘red bog’ were described as ‘unprofitable and waste’, R.C. Simington (ed.), The Civil Survey, A.D. 1654–1656 (IMC, 10 vols., Dublin, 1931–61), III, pp. 155–7.   99. Gillespie, Colonial Ulster, pp. 11–13; Civil Survey, X, pp. 56–7, 60–1. 100. Hector McDonnell, ‘A Fragment of an Irish Manuscript History of the MacDonalds of Antrim’, Ulster Journal of Archaeology, 64 (2005), p. 281; George Hill, MacDonnells of Antrim (Belfast, 1873), pp. 377–89; and Jimmy Irvine, ‘Richard Dobbs’ Notes for his Description of County Antrim, Written in 1683’, The Glynns, 7 (1979), pp. 43–4. 101. William Smyth, ‘Territorial, Social and Settlement Hierarchies in Seventeenth-Century Kilkenny’ in William Nolan and Kevin Whelan (eds.), Kilkenny: History and Society: Interdisciplinary Essays on the History of an Irish County (Dublin, 1990), p. 156. 102. Maurice Lee, Great Britain’s Solomon: James VI and I in his Three Kingdoms (Urbana, IL, 1990), p. 212. 103. ‘Acts of the Corporation of Colerain from the 4th. day of July 1623 to the 29th. day of July 1669’, f. 25v. Manuscript in private hands. I am grateful to Dr Bríd McGrath for bringing this reference to my attention. 104. Perceval-Maxwell, Scottish Migration, pp. 231–2; Colin Breen, ‘Randal MacDonnell and Early Seventeenth-Century Settlement in Northeast Ulster, 1603–1630’, Ó Siochrú and Ó Ciardha (eds.), The Plantation of Ulster. 105. ‘A report of the voluntary works done by servitors . . . within the counties of Downe, Antryme, and Monahan’ (PRONI, T[ranscripts] 811/3, f. 13); William Smyth, ‘Society and Settlement in Seventeenth-Century Ireland: The Evidence of the “1659 census” ’ in William J. Smyth and Kevin Whelan (eds.), Common Ground: Essays on the Historical Geography of Ireland Presented to T. Jones Hughes (Cork, 1988), pp. 73–5. 106. BL, Add. MS 46,188, f. 120. 107. The surviving leases do not provide a complete record of those who held land from the earls of Antrim but, in the absence of rentals or other contemporary lists, they are the only source that we have. Only 15 leases survive from the first third of the seventeenth century. In 1637, the second earl re-let the whole estate and 117 leases survive from this date. The remaining leases date, in the most part, from the later part of the century. Most of the tenants mentioned in the leases would have sub-let their holdings, however only one sub-lease survives in the collection. More than 50 per cent of the 1637 lessees were described as ‘Esquire’ or ‘Gentleman’ and many of them were substantial landholders; Ian Montgomery, ‘Tenants on the Estates of the Earls of Antrim in the Seventeenth Century’, Directory of Irish Family History Research, 23 (2000), pp. 80–92. Also see 1641 rental for the barony of Dunluce, which indicates that for a sizable number of tenants who leased their property directly from the earl no deed is known at all. See BL, Harl. MS 2,138, ff. 111–16. 108. McDonnell, ‘A Fragment of an Irish MSS’, pp. 278, 280. 109. ‘A report of the voluntary works done by servitors . . . within the counties of Downe, Antryme, and Monahan’ (PRONI, T.811/3, f. 13). 110. TNA, State Papers 23/237/25, ff. 62–9. Presumably this inventory is incomplete and comprises only the couple’s more valuable and easily portable possessions and larger items such as long dining tables, benches and wardrobes. Hector MacDonnell, ‘A Seventeenth-Century Inventory from Dunluce Castle, County Antrim’, Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries, 122 (1992), pp. 109–27. 111. I am grateful to Dr Colin Breen, School of Environmental Science, University of Ulster, for taking me around the excavation. 112. Gillespie, Colonial Ulster, p. 232. 113. Maxwell (ed.), Irish History, p. 301. 114. Ibid., p. 291. 115. Patrick Darcy, one of Ireland’s most able Catholic lawyers, helped to draw up the new leases, SCL, Strafford MS 7, f. 21 and MS 17, f. 49. Darcy also represented the earls of Ormond and Cork; Liam O’Malley, ‘Patrick Darcy, Galway Lawyer and Politician, 1598–1668’ in Diarmuid Ó Cearbhaill (ed.), Galway: Town and Gown 1484–1984 (Dublin, 1984), pp. 91–9. 116. Gillespie, Colonial Ulster, pp. 90–2, 133–5, 153–5; Raymond Gillespie (ed.), Settlement and Survival on an Ulster Estate: The Brownlow Leasebook 1667–1711 (Belfast, 1988), pp. lvii–lix; I. D. Whyte, Agriculture and Society in Seventeenth-Century Scotland (Edinburgh, 1979), pp. 44–7; Peter Roebuck, ‘The Economic Situation and Functions of Substantial Landowners 1600–1815: Ulster and Lowland Scotland Compared’ in Rosalind Mitchison and Peter Roebuck (eds.), Economy and Society in Scotland and Ireland, 1500–1939 (Edinburgh, 1988), p. 86, suggests that by the later seventeenth century these manor courts had become redundant.

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Notes to pp. 120–6

505

117. See, for example, PRONI, D.2977/3A/3/24/1. 118. Antrim’s leases were typical of early seventeenth-century leases in Ulster; W. H. Crawford, ‘LandlordTenant Relations in Ulster 1609–1820’, Irish Economic and Social History, 2 (1975), p. 7; Gillespie, Colonial Ulster, pp. 70–1. 119. Crawford, ‘Landlord-Tenant Relations’, p. 8. 120. Ibid., p. 11; I. D. Whyte and K. A. Whyte, ‘Some Aspects of the Structure of Rural Society in Seventeenth-Century Lowland Scotland’ in T. M. Devine and David Dickson (eds.), Ireland and Scotland 1600–1850: Parallels and Contrasts in Economic and Social Development (Edinburgh, 1983), p. 40, and Whyte, Agriculture and Society, pp. 159–62. 121. David Dickson, ‘Property and Social Structure in Eighteenth-Century South Munster’ in L. M. Cullen and F. Furet (eds.), Ireland and France, Seventeenth–Twentieth Centuries: Towards a Comparative Study of Rural History (Paris, 1980), p. 130; Roebuck, ‘The Economic Situation’, pp. 83–6, and idem., ‘The Making of an Ulster Great Estate: The Chichesters, Barons of Belfast and Viscounts of Carrickfergus’ in Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, 79, section C (1979), pp. 16–19, 24–5. 122. SCL, Strafford MS 17, f. 151. 123. CSPI, 1608–1610, p. xi. 124. Ibid., pp. xi, 193, 457, 469–70; G. R. Mayes, ‘The Early Stuarts and the Irish Peerage’, English Historical Review, 73 (1958), p. 241. For his patent, dated 18 July 1623, see CSPI, 1625–1632, p. 75. 125. W. Scott and J. Bliss (eds.), The works of . . . William Laud . . . Archbishop of Canterbury (7 vols., Oxford, 1847–60), VII, p. 407, and Jane Ohlmeyer, Civil War and Restoration in the Three Stuart Kingdoms: The Career of Randal MacDonnell, Marquis of Antrim (Dublin, 2001), p. 54. 126. SCL, Strafford MS 7, f. 178. 127. Scott and Bliss (eds.), The works of . . . William Laud, VII, p. 528. 128. David Grummitt, ‘Cromwell, Edward, third Baron Cromwell (c. 1559–1607)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, Sept. 2004; online edn., Jan. 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/ article/6763, accessed 27 July 2009]). 129. Thomas Fitzpatrick, ‘The Wars of 1641 in County Down: The Deposition of High Sheriff Peter Hill (1645)’, Ulster Journal of Archaeology, second series, 12 (1906), pp. 65, 67. 130. Roebuck, ‘The Making of an Ulster Great Estate’, p. 8. 131. Gillespie, Colonial Ulster, p. 56; Perceval-Maxwell, Scottish Migration, pp. 56–60. 132. George Hill (ed.), The Montgomery Manuscripts (1603–1706). Compiled from the family papers by William Montgomery of Rosemount . . . (Belfast, 1869), p. 66. 133. John Stevenson, Two Centuries of Life in Down, 1600–1800 (Belfast, 1920), p. 46. 134. Gillespie, Colonial Ulster, p. 232. 135. Perceval-Maxwell, Scottish Migration, pp. 234–42. 136. T. K. Lowry (ed.), Hamilton Manuscripts: containing some account of territories of Upper Clandeboye, Great Ardes, Dufferin in the county of Down, by Sir William Hamilton, afterward Viscount Clandeboye (Belfast, 1867), pp. 49–50. 137. CSPI, 1625–1632, pp. 497, 529, 541. 138. Ibid., p. 497. 139. Ibid., p. 521. 140. Brereton, Travels; http://www.ucc.ie/celt (2007); consulted 16 June 2009. 141. CSPD, 1635, pp. 509, 602; CSPD, 1635–1636, p. 270. 142. CSPD, 1633–1634, pp. 369–70; R. M. Armstrong, ‘Rawdon, Sir George, first baronet (1604– 1684)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, Sept. 2004; online edn., Jan. 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/23177, accessed 12 Nov. 2008]). 143. CSPI, 1603–1606, pp. 184, 559. 144. Griffith (ed.), Irish Patent Rolls of James I, pp. 199, 276, 515; Coyle, ‘Letters Patent to Sir Edward Blaney’, pp. 215–22. 145. Patrick Duffy, ‘The Territorial Organisation of Gaelic Landownership and its Transformation in County Monaghan, 1591–1640’, Irish Geography, 14 (1981), pp. 1–27; Patrick Duffy, ‘A Lease from the Estate of the Earl of Essex, 1624’, Clogher Record, 13 (1990), p. 102. 146. TCD, MS 834, ff. 74v–75v. 147. Robinson, Plantation of Ulster, pp. 63–5, 79. 148. McCoy, ‘War and Revolution: County Fermanagh’, pp. 34–6. 149. Perceval-Maxwell, Scottish Migration, p. 201. 150. Ibid., p. 324. 151. John D. Johnston, ‘Settlement on a Plantation Estate: The Balfour Rentals of 1632 and 1636’, Clogher Record, 12 (1985), pp. 92–109.

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Notes to pp. 126–31

152. Raymond Gillespie, ‘The Trials of Bishop Spottiswood 1620–40’, Clogher Record, 12 (1987), pp. 320–33. 153. John D. Johnston, ‘The Plantation of County Fermanagh 1610–1641: An Archaeological and Historical Study’ (unpublished MA thesis, Queens University Belfast, 1976), pp. 74–5, and ‘Settlement on a Plantation Estate’, pp. 92–109; Inquisitionum in officio rotulorum cancellariae Hiberniae asservatorum repertorium, II (Dublin, 1829), Fermanagh (45), Chas I (1639/40). 154. George Hamilton, A History of the House of Hamilton (Edinburgh, 1933), p. 34. 155. Robinson, Plantation of Ulster, p. 148; Perceval-Maxwell, Scottish Migration, p. 195; William Roulston, ‘Seventeenth-Century Manors in the Barony of Strabane’ in James Lyttleton and Tadhg O’Keefe (eds.), The Manor in Medieval and Early Modern Ireland (Dublin, 2005), pp. 179–80. 156. PRONI, D.623/B/13/1 in Roulston, ‘Seventeenth-Century Manors in the Barony of Strabane’, p. 184. 157. Robinson, Plantation, pp. 118, 162; Perceval-Maxwell, Scottish Migration, p. 329. 158. Perceval-Maxwell, Scottish Migration, p. 277; Canny, Making Ireland British, p. 231. 159. Roebuck, ‘The Making of an Ulster Great Estate’, pp. 9–11. 160. Ibid., pp. 1–25; John McCavitt, Sir Arthur Chichester, Lord Deputy of Ireland 1605–16 (Belfast, 1998), pp. 64–5. 161. Brereton, Travels; http://www.ucc.ie/celt (2007); consulted 16 June 2009, pp. 368–9; Waterman, ‘Some Irish Seventeenth-Century Houses’, p. 260; Ruairí Ó Baoill, ‘Archaeology of Post-Medieval Carrickfergus and Belfast, 1550–1750’ in Horning et al. (eds.), The Post-Medieval Archaeology of Ireland, pp. 96–7. 162. Peter Roebuck, ‘The Donegal Family and the Development of Belfast, 1600–1850’ in P. Butel and L. M. Cullen (eds.), Cities and Merchants: French and Irish Perspectives on Urban Development, 1500–1900 (Dublin, 1986), pp. 125–36; CSPI, 1647–1660, p. 336. 163. Brereton, Travels; http://www.ucc.ie/celt (2007); consulted 16 June 2009, p. 370. 164. CSPI, 1666–1669, p. 530. 165. S. J. Carleton, Heads and Hearths: The Hearth Money Rolls and Poll Tax Returns for County Antrim, 1660–69 (Belfast, 1991), pp. 37, 91. 166. O’Dowd, ‘ “Irish Concealed Land Papers” ’, pp. 94, 158; John Prendergast, ‘Charlemont Fort, especially in its Connection with Sir Toby Caulfeild’, Journal of the Royal Historical and Archaeological Association of Ireland, fourth series, 6 (1893–4), pp. 319–44. 167. Waterman, ‘Some Irish Seventeenth-Century Houses’, p. 264. 168. CSPI, 1615–1625, p. 309. 169. O’Dowd, ‘ “Irish Concealed Land Papers” ’, pp. 81–3. 170. Ibid., p. 158. 171. CSPI, 1611–14, p. xxvii. 172. Mayes, ‘The Early Stuarts and the Irish Peerage’, p. 242. 173. Sir John Davies, A Discovery of the True Causes why Ireland was never entirely subdued (London, 1612), pp. 281–2. 174. McCoy, ‘War and Revolution: County Fermanagh’, pp. 54–7. 175. Ibid., pp. 95, 98. 176. CSPI, 1625–32, p. 305. 177. Sir John Temple, The Irish Rebellion . . . (London, 1679), p. 39. According to Maguire’s confession, ‘all the Lords and Gentleman in the Kingdom that were Papists were engaged in this plot’. 178. Gilbert (ed.), Contemporary History, I, pp. 501–2. 179. McCoy, ‘War and Revolution: County Fermanagh’, pp. 128–9. 180. Ibid., pp. 133–4, 160–5, 173, 207–9, 260–4, 275–81. 181. Ibid., pp. 246–52; Alan Orr, ‘England, Ireland, Magna Carta, and the Common Law: The Case of Connor Maguire, Second Baron of Enniskillen’, Journal of British Studies, 39 (2000), pp. 389–421, and Treason and the State: Law, Politics, and Ideology in the English Civil War (Cambridge, 2002), p. 154. 182. McCoy, ‘War and Revolution: County Fermanagh’, pp. 350–1. 183. Griffith (ed.), Irish Patent Rolls of James I, p. 539. 184. See particularly Henry Goff, ‘English Conquest of an Irish Barony: The Changing Patterns of Land Ownership in the Barony of Scarawalsh 1540–1640’, and Rolf Loeber and Magda StouthamerLoeber, ‘The Lost Architecture of the Wexford Plantation’ in Kevin Whelan (ed.), Wexford: History and Society. Interdisciplinary Essays on the History of an Irish County (Dublin, 1987). 185. O’Dowd, ‘ “Irish Concealed Land Papers” ’, pp. 127–8, 133. 186. Mervyn Edward Wingfield, first baron Powerscourt, Muniments of the Ancient Family of Wingfield (privately printed, London, 1894; reprinted, Durham, NC, 1987), and CSPI, 1663–1665, pp. 60–2. 187. Goff, ‘English Conquest of an Irish Barony’, pp. 141–2.

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Notes to pp. 132–8

507

188. Lodge, IV, pp. 109–17. 189. Loeber and Stouthamer-Loeber, ‘The Lost Architecture of the Wexford Plantation’, pp. 176–85. 190. Hickson (ed.), Ireland, II, p. 77. 191. To the Parliament of the Common-wealths of England, Scotland, and Ireland. The humble petition of Edward Earle of Meath in the dominion of Ireland (London, 1654). 192. TCD, MS 810, f. 267. 193. Acts of the Privy Council of England, Sept. 1627–June 1628 (London, 1940), p. 323. 194. TCD, MS 817, ff. 187v. 195. John Forbes, Memoirs of the earls of Granard, ed. George Arthur Hastings, earl of Granard (London, 1868), pp. 34, 36; Aidan Clarke, Prelude to Restoration in Ireland: The End of he Commonwealth, 1659–1660 (Cambridge, 1999), p. 31. 196. CSPD, March 1678 to Dec. 1678 with addenda 1674–1679, p. 165. 197. Scott, ‘ “Acts of time and power” ’, pp. 13–20. 198. John Cunningham is currently undertaking this. 199. Scott, ‘ “Acts of time and power” ’, pp. 18–19; R. J. W. Evans, The Making of the Habsburg Monarchy 1550–1700 (Oxford, 1979), pp. 195–216. 200. Thomas McErlean, ‘The Archaeology of Parks and Gardens, 1600–1900: An Introduction to Irish Garden Archaeology’ in Horning et al. (eds.), The Post-Medieval Archaeology of Ireland, pp. 275–9. 201. I am deeply grateful to Hamish Scott for allowing me to read the relevant chapters in his forthcoming study of the aristocracy in Europe, c.1300–1750.

Chapter Five: Religion   1. A Letter from a person of honour . . . written to the earl of Castlehaven (London, 1681), p. 31.   2. Hamish Scott, ‘ “Acts of time and power”: The Consolidation of Aristocracy in Seventeenth-Century Europe, c.1580–1720’, Bulletin of the German Historical Institute, 30 (2008), pp. 18–19; Karin J. MacHardy, ‘The Rise of Absolutism and Noble Rebellion in Early Modern Habsburg Austria, 1570 to 1620’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 34 (1992), pp. 407–38, 416, and War, Religion and Court Patronage in Habsburg Austria: The Social and Cultural Dimensions of Political Interaction, 1521–1622 (London, 2003), pp. 183–207; R. J. W. Evans, The Making of the Habsburg Monarchy 1550–1700 (Oxford, 1979), pp. 195–216.   3. C. Scott Dixon, ‘Living with Religious Diversity in Early-Modern Europe’ in C. Scott Dixon, Dagmar Freist and Mark Greengrass (eds.), Living with Religious Diversity in Early-Modern Europe (Farnham, Surrey, 2009), pp. 1–20.   4. Raymond Gillespie, ‘The Religion of Irish Protestants: A View from the Laity, 1580–1700’ in Alan Ford, James Mc Guire and Kenneth Milne (eds.), As by Law Established: The Church since the Reformation (Dublin, 1995), pp. 89–99.   5. Míchéal Mac Craith, ‘The Political and Religious Thought of Florence Conry and Hugh McCaughwell’ in Alan Ford and John McCafferty (eds.), The Origins of Sectarianism in Early Modern Ireland (Cambridge, 2005), pp. 183–202, and Marc Caball, ‘Politics and Religion in the Poetry of Fearghal Óg Mac An Bhaird and Eoghan Ruadh Mac An Bhaird’ in Pádraig Ó Riain (ed.), The Life of Red Hugh O’Donnell: Historical and Literary Contexts (Irish Texts Society, Dublin, 2002), pp. 74–97.   6. Breandán Ó Buachalla, ‘James Our True King: The Ideology of Irish Royalism in the Seventeenth Century’ in D. George Boyce, Robert Eccleshall and Vincent Geoghegan (eds.), Political Thought in Ireland since the Seventeenth Century (London, 1993), p. 10.   7. Ó Buachalla, ‘James Our True King’, p. 14.   8. Aidan Clarke, The Old English in Ireland 1625–42 (New York, 1966).   9. Ó Buachalla, ‘James Our True King’, p. 11; J. Bossy, ‘The Counter-Reformation and the People of Catholic Ireland, 1596–1641’ in T. D. Williams (ed.), Historical Studies, 8 (1971), pp. 155–69. 10. B. Ó Cuív (ed.), ‘A Modern Irish Devotional Tract’, Celtica, I (1950), pp. 207–37, especially p. 220. 11. HMC, Ormonde, NS, IV, p. 347. 12. John Silke, ‘Primate Lombard and James I’, Irish Theological Quarterly, 22 (1955), p. 131; see Brian Mac Cuarta, Catholic Revival in the North of Ireland, 1603–41 (Dublin, 2007), chapter 6. 13. CSPI, 1603–1606, pp. 362–5; John Kingston, ‘Catholic Families of the Pale’, Repertorium Novum: Dublin Diocesan Historical Record, 1 (1956), pp. 388–9. 14. CSPI, 1611–1614, pp. 248–9, 348–9, 351. 15. Igor Pérez Tostado, Irish Influence at the Court of Spain in the Seventeenth Century (Dublin, 2008), pp. 90–2. Glyn Redworth, ‘Beyond Faith and Fatherland: The Appeal of the Catholics of Ireland,

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Notes to pp. 138–42

c.1623’, Archivium Hibernicum, 52 (1998), pp. 3–23; CSPI, 1615–1625, pp. 440–1, 475, 485; ‘Keeping the Faith at Gormanston 1569–1629’ in Father Luke Wadding: A Commemorative Volume, ed. Franciscan Fathers (Dublin, 1957). 16. CSPI, 1625–1632, p. 689. 17. Fabio Troncarelli and Igor Pérez Tostado, ‘A plot without “capriccio”: Irish Utopia and Political Activity in Madrid, 1639–40’ in Declan Downey and Julio Crespo MacLennan (eds.), Spanish-Irish Relations through the Ages (Dublin, 2008), pp. 123–36. 18. Cited in Clarke, The Old English in Ireland, pp. 179–80, and Gilbert (ed.), Irish Confederation, I, p. lxv; II, p. 85. 19. Quoted in James Brennan, ‘A Gallican Interlude in Ireland’, Irish Theological Quarterly, 24 (1957), p. 232. 20. Anne Creighton, ‘The Catholic Interest in Irish Politics in the Reign of Charles II’ (unpublished PhD thesis, Queen’s University Belfast, 2000), pp. 327–30; CSPI, 1669–1670, pp. 560–63. 21. Peter Walsh, The Controversial Letters, or the grand controversie concerning the pretended temporal authority of popes over the whole earth and the true sovereign of kings within their own respective kingdoms (2nd edn., London, 1674), and The History and Vindication of the Loyal Formulary, or Irish Remonstrance . . . (London?, 1674), pp. xxiii–xxiv. 22. Walsh, History, p. xxxv. 23. Monsignor John Hanly (ed.), The Letters of Saint Oliver Plunkett 1625–1681, Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland (Dublin, 1979), pp. 104, 111. 24. Ibid., p. 127. 25. Ibid., pp. 164, 166; CSPI, 1669–1670, p. 280. 26. NHI, III, pp. 380–1; Donal Cregan, ‘The Social and Cultural Background of a Counter-Reformation Episcopate, 1618–60’ in Art Cosgrove and Donal McCartney (eds.), Studies in Irish History presented to R. Dudley Edwards (Dublin, 1979), pp. 85–117. 27. Patrick J. Corish, The Catholic Community in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (Dublin, 1981), p. 26; Mac Cuarta, Catholic Revival in the North of Ireland, p. 128. 28. NHI, III, pp. 380–1; Mac Cuarta, Catholic Revival in the North of Ireland, p. 235; Raymond Gillespie, ‘Catholic Religious Practices and Payments in Seventeenth-Century Ireland’, Archivium Hibernicum, 47 (1993), p. 4. 29. Rolf Loeber and Magda Stouhamer-Loeber, ‘Kildare Hall, the Countess of Kildare’s Patronage of the Jesuits and the Liturgical Setting of Catholic Worship in Early Seventeenth-Century Dublin’ in Elizabeth Fitzpatrick and Raymond Gillespie (eds.), The Parish in Medieval and Early Modern Ireland (Dublin, 2006), pp. 245–6. After 1630 the Poor Clares relocated to Dillon estates near Athlone and the Capuchins to the County Meath estate of the baron of Slane. 30. Mac Cuarta, Catholic Revival in the North of Ireland, p. 213. 31. Gillespie, ‘Catholic Religious Practices’, pp. 5–6. 32. M. C. Griffith (ed.), Irish Patent Rolls of James I: Facsimile of the Irish Record Commission’s Calendar Prepared prior to 1830 (IMC, Dublin, 1966), p. 398; Mac Cuarta, Catholic Revival in the North of Ireland, p. 120. 33. Bernadette Cunningham, ‘ “Zeal for God and for souls”: Counter-Reformation Preaching in Early Seventeenth-Century Ireland’ in Alan J. Fletcher and Raymond Gillespie (eds.), Irish Preaching 700–1700 (Dublin, 2001), pp. 108–26. 34. Cunningham, ‘ “Zeal for God and for souls” ’, p. 125. 35. Brendan Kane, The Politics and Culture of Honour in Britain and Ireland, 1541–1641 (Cambridge, 2010), p. 151. 36. Corish, The Catholic Community, pp. 29–30. 37. Tadhg Ó hAnnracháin, Catholic Reformation in Ireland: The Mission of Rinuccini 1645–1649 (Oxford, 2002), pp. 51–2; Mac Cuarta, Catholic Revival in the North of Ireland, p. 227; Cregan, ‘The Social and Cultural Background of a Counter-Reformation Episcopate’, pp. 85–117. 38. Ó hAnnracháin, Catholic Reformation in Ireland, p. 40. 39. Comment. Rinucc., IV, p. 387. 40. NHI, III, p. 431. 41. Hanly (ed.), The Letters of Saint Oliver Plunkett, p. 111. 42. Griffith (ed.), Irish Patent Rolls of James I, p. 399. See Colm Lennon, ‘Mass in the Manor House: The Counter-Reformation in Dublin, 1560–1630’, and Raymond Gillespie, ‘Catholic Religious Cultures in the Diocese of Dublin, 1614–97’ in J. Kelly and D. Keogh (eds.), History of the Catholic Diocese of Dublin (Dublin, 2000), pp. 112–26 and 127–43. 43. Michael Questier, Catholicism and Community in Early Modern England: Politics, Aristocratic Patronage and Religion, c.1550–1640 (Cambridge, 2006); Mac Cuarta, Catholic Revival in the North of Ireland, pp. 179–80.

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Notes to pp. 142–6

509

44. Jon G. Crawford (ed.), A Star Chamber Court in Ireland: The Court of Castle Chamber, 1571–1641 (Dublin, 2005), pp. 301, 326, 524; CSPI, 1615–1625, pp. 122–3; Ivar O’Brien, The O’Briens of Thomond. The O’Briens in Irish History 1500–1865 (Chichester, 1986), p. 53. 45. Mac Cuarta, Catholic Revival in the North of Ireland, pp. 156–8, 203. 46. Ibid., pp. 137–9. 47. Elizabeth Andrewes married Viscount Mountgarret; for a description of her English priest (1619), see B. Mac Cuarta (ed.), ‘Old English Catholicism in Chester Documents, 1609–19’, Archivium Hibernicum, 57 (2003), p. 10. I owe this reference to Dr Mac Cuarta. Also see Mac Cuarta, Catholic Revival in the North of Ireland, pp. 147–8, 181. 48. HMC, Report 12. Appendix 1 (London, 1888), pp. 398–9; Clarke, The Old English, p. 62; Bernadette Cunningham, ‘The Poor Clare Order in Ireland’ in Edel Bhreathnach, Joseph MacMahon and John McCafferty (eds.), The Irish Franciscans, 1534–1990 (Dublin, 2009), pp. 159–74. 49. Brian Jackson, ‘Sectarianism: Division and Dissent in Irish Catholicism’ in Ford and McCafferty (eds.), The Origins of Sectarianism, pp. 203–15. 50. Rolf Loeber and Magda Stouhamer-Loeber, ‘Kildare Hall, the Countess of Kildare’s Patronage of the Jesuits and the Liturgical Setting of Catholic Worship in Early Seventeenth-Century Dublin’ in Elizabeth Fitzpatrick and Raymond Gillespie (eds.), The Parish in Medieval and Early Modern Ireland (Dublin, 2006), pp. 242, 286; George A. Little, ‘The Jesuit University of Dublin c.1627’, Dublin Historical Record, 13 (1952), pp. 34–47; Gilbert (ed.), Irish Confederation, VI, pp. 22–23. 51. John Bradley, ‘From Frontier Town to Renaissance City: Kilkenny, 1500–1700’ in Peter Borsay and Lindsay Proudfoot (eds.), Provincial Towns in Early Modern England and Ireland: Change, Convergence and Divergence (Oxford, 2002), pp. 33–8; David Edwards, ‘The Poisoned Chalice: The Ormond Inheritance, Sectarian Division and the Emergence of James Butler, 1614–1642’ in Toby Barnard and Jane Fenlon (eds.), The Dukes of Ormonde, 1610–1745 (Woodbridge, Suffolk, 2000), p. 69 (quote); David Edwards, The Ormond Lordship in County Kilkenny, 1515–1642: The Rise and Fall of Butler Feudal Power (Dublin, 2003), pp. 267–8, 273. 52. Comment. Rinucc., II, p. 15. 53. Dionysius Massari, ‘My Irish Campaign’, Catholic Bulletin, 6–10 (1916–20), 6:4 (1916), pp. 219–21. 54. David Dickson, Old World Colony: Cork and South Munster 1630–1830 (Cork, 2005), p. 9; Cregan, ‘The Social and Cultural Background of a Counter-Reformation Episcopate’, p. 97. 55. Mac Cuarta, Catholic Revival in the North of Ireland, pp. 32–4. 56. CSPI, 1625–1632, p. 511. 57. Ibid., pp. 510–11; Mac Cuarta, Catholic Revival in the North of Ireland, pp. 102–6. 58. Mac Cuarta, Catholic Revival in the North of Ireland, pp. 62, 100–1; on Scottish Catholics in early seventeenth-century Ireland, see Brian Mac Cuarta, ‘Scots Catholics in Ulster, 1603–41’ in David Edwards (ed.), The Scots in Stuart and Cromwellian Ireland 1600–1660 (Manchester, forthcoming). Also see Cathaldus Gilbin (ed.), Irish Franciscan Mission to Scotland (Dublin, 1964), and Fiona MacDonald, Missions to the Gaels: Reformation and Counter-Reformation in Ulster and the Highlands and Islands of Scotland (Edinburgh, 2005). 59. Charlene McCoy, ‘War and Revolution: County Fermanagh and its Borders, c.1640–c.1666’ (unpublished PhD thesis, Trinity College Dublin, 2007), pp. 90–3; Mac Cuarta, Catholic Revival in the North of Ireland, pp. 84–5. 60. Bernadette Cunningham, ‘Clanricard Letters: Letters and Papers, 1605–1673, Preserved in the National Library of Ireland Manuscript 3111’, Journal of the Galway Archaeological and Historical Society, 48 (1996), pp. 172–3. 61. Tom Connors, ‘The Impact of English Colonial Expansion on Irish Culture: The Clergy, Popular Religion, and the Transformation of the Family in Early Modern Galway’ (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1997), p. 272. 62. John Smyth, 11th Earl of Clanricarde, The Memoirs and Letters of Ulick, Marquis of Clanricarde, and Earl of Saint Albans (London, 1758), p. 326. 63. Comment. Rinucc., V, pp. 102–3. 64. Ibid., IV, pp. 15–23. 65. Ó hAnnracháin, Catholic Reformation in Ireland, pp. 45–7. 66. CSPI, 1625–1632, pp. 487, 641, 687; Cal Chancery rolls, 1625–33, pp. 505–6; Gilbert (ed.), Contemporary History, I, pp. 52–3, 75. 67. HMC, Calendar of the Stuart Papers belonging to his Majesty the king preserved at Windsor Castle (7 vols, London, 1902–23), I, pp. 86, 198–9, 212, 226. 68. Cregan, ‘The Social and Cultural Background of a Counter-Reformation Episcopate’, p. 90.

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Notes to pp. 146–50

69. Lodge, IV, pp. 292–6. 70. Stephen B. Barnwell, ‘The Barnewell Family during the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries’, Irish Genealogist, 3:8 (1963), p. 318. 71. CSPI, 1625–1632, p. 436. 72. Cregan, ‘Counter Reformation Episcopate’, pp. 90–1; Aoife Duignan, ‘For the Preservation of Religion and the Safety of the Nation. The Connacht Group, 1625–42’ (unpublished MA dissertation, University College Dublin, 2000), p. 14. 73. Mac Cuarta, Catholic Revival in the North of Ireland, p. 211. 74. Hanly (ed.), The Letters of Saint Oliver Plunkett, p. 502. 75. Mac Cuarta, Catholic Revival in the North of Ireland, pp. 213, 234–5. 76. Gilbert (ed.), Irish Confederation, I, p. 85. 77. Helena Concannon, The Poor Clares in Ireland (ad 1629–ad 1929) (Dublin, 1929), pp. 22–4, and Mrs Thomas Concannon, Irish Nuns in Penal Days (Edinburgh, 1931), p. 27. 78. Concannon, Irish Nuns, p. 23; Frances Clarke, ‘Dillon, Cecily (c.1603–1653)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, (Oxford, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/67217, accessed 10 Sept. 2009). 79. Brocard M. Mansfield, ‘Lady Thurles, 1588–1673’, Butler Society Journal, 3 (1987), p. 42. 80. Concannon, Irish Nuns, p. 19. 81. ‘Obituary Notices of the English Benedictine Nuns of Ghent in Flanders . . , 1627–1811’, Catholic Record Society, 19 (1917); Miscellanea, 11, pp. 53–4. 82. Ruth Clark, Strangers and Sojourners at Port Royal: Being an Account of the Connections between the British Isles and the Jansenists of France and Holland (Cambridge, 1932), pp. 41–3. 83. Eleanor O’Keeffe, ‘The Family and Marriage Strategies of James Butler, 1st Duke of Ormonde, 1658–1688’ (unpublished PhD thesis, Cambridge, 2000), p. 146. 84. Raymond Gillespie, ‘Scotland and Ulster: A Presbyterian Perspective, 1603–1700’ in William P. Kelly and John R. Young (eds.), Scotland and the Ulster Plantations: Explorations in the British Settlements of Stuart Ireland (Dublin, 2009), pp. 84–107; Robert Armstrong, ‘Of Stories and Sermons: Nationality and Spirituality in the Later Seventeenth Century’ in Robert Armstrong and Tadhg Ó hAnnracháin (eds.), Community in Early Modern Ireland (Dublin, 2007), pp. 215–31. 85. Quoted in M. Perceval-Maxwell, The Scottish Migration to Ulster in the Reign of James I (London, 1973), p. 270. 86. A sermon preached at New-town the 29 of Octob. 1663. At the funeral of the right honourable Hugh Earl of Mount-Alexander, Lord Viscount Mountgomery of Ards, late master of the ordnance, and one of His Majesties most honourable Privy Council in Ireland. By George Rust D.D. and dean of Connor (Dublin, 1664), pp. 36, 39; A declaration by the presbytery at Bangor, in Ireland, July 7. 1649, setting forth the apparent ruine of religion, and the great violation of the covenant following upon the present change of command in this province: with some observations upon the Lord Vicount of Ards late declaration, of July 4 (Edinburgh, 1649); Robert Armstrong, ‘Viscount Ards and the Presbytery: Politics and Religion among the Scots of Ulster in the 1640s’ in Kelly and Young (eds.), Scotland and the Ulster Plantations, pp. 18–40. 87. A sermon preached at New-town, pp. 37–8. 88. George Hill (ed.), The Montgomery Manuscripts (1603–1706). Compiled from the family papers by William Montgomery of Rosemount . . . (Belfast, 1869), p. 206. 89. Hill (ed.), Montgomery Manuscripts, p. 299; HMC, Seventh Report, p. 771. 90. Bodl., Carte MS 221, f. 371. 91. M. Perceval-Maxwell, ‘The Duke of Ormond, and Protestant Dissent in Ulster’ in Kelly and Young (eds.), Scotland and the Ulster Plantations, pp. 122–36; J. T. Gilbert, A History of the City of Dublin (3 vols., Dublin, 1859), I, p. 157. 92. David L. Wykes, ‘Williams, Daniel (c.1643–1716)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, Sept. 2004; online edn., Oct. 2009 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/29491, accessed 22 March 2010]). 93. Lodge, III, p. 137. 94. HMC, Report 6, Appendix (London, 1877), p. 746. 95. HMC, Ormonde, NS, VI, pp. 358–9, 394. 96. Ibid., NS, VII, p. 108. 97. Ibid., pp. 139–40, 156–7. 98. CSPI, 1633–1634 (London, 1863), p. 179, and Alan Ford, The Protestant Reformation in Ireland, 1590–1641 (Frankfurt am Main, 1987). 99. John McCafferty, ‘Protestant Prelates or Godly Pastors? The Dilemma of the Early Stuart Episcopate’ in Ford and McCafferty (eds.), The Origins of Sectarianism, pp. 54–72.

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Notes to pp. 150–3

511

100. NHI, III, pp. 227–9, 433–4; John McCafferty, The Reconstruction of the Church of Ireland: Bishop Bramhall and the Laudian Reforms, 1633–1641 (Cambridge, 2007), p. 38; Robert Armstrong, ‘Protestant Churchmen and the Confederate Wars’ in Ciaran Brady and Jane Ohlmeyer (eds.), Making Good: British Interventions in Early Modern Ireland (Cambridge, 2005), pp. 230–51; James McGuire, ‘Policy and Patronage: The Appointment of Bishops, 1660–1’ in Ford, McGuire and Milne (eds.), As by Law Established, pp. 112–9. 101. McCoy, ‘War and Revolution’, pp. 82–6. 102. CSPD, 1635, p. 599; CSPI, 1666–1669, p. 486. 103. T. K. Lowry (ed.), Hamilton Manuscripts: containing some account of territories of Upper Clandeboye, Great Ardes, Dufferin in the county of Down, by Sir William Hamilton, afterward Viscount Clandeboye (Belfast, 1867), pp. 50–1. 104. Ibid., p. 54. 105. Ibid., p. 85. 106. Ford, The Protestant Reformation in Ireland, pp. 29, 128–35; Brian Ó Dálaigh, ‘A Comparative Study of the Wills of the First and Fourth Earls of Thomond’, North Munster Antiquarian Journal, 34 (1992), p. 51. 107. Dorothea Townshend, Life and Letters of the Great Earl of Cork (London, 1904), p. 498. 108. Ibid., p. 502. 109. TNA, PROB 11/527/100. 110. Mervyn Edward Wingfield, first baron Powerscourt, Muniments of the Ancient Family of Wingfield (privately printed, London, 1894; reprinted, Durham, NC, 1987), p. 41. 111. Toby Barnard, A New Anatomy of Ireland: Protestants in Ireland, 1649–1770 (New Haven, CT, 2003), p. 239, plate 17. 112. Lori Anne Ferrell and Peter McCullough (eds.), The English Sermon Revised: Religion, Literature and History 1600–1750 (Manchester, 2000), pp. 10–11. 113. Raymond Gillespie, ‘The Reformed Preacher: Irish Protestant Preaching 1660–1700’ in Alan J. Fletcher and Raymond Gillespie (eds.), Irish Preaching 700–1700 (Dublin, 2001), p. 128. 114. Townshend, Life and Letters, p. 503. 115. TNA, PROB 11/448/259. 116 PRONI, T. 956/22. 117. HMC, Ormonde, NS, IV, p. 618. 118. Peter Gaunt (ed.), The Correspondence of Henry Cromwell 1655–1659: British Library Lansdowne Manuscripts (Camden 5th series, vol. 31, Cambridge, 2007), p. 386. 119. Bodl., Carte MS 173, f. 1. 120. HMC, Ormonde, NS, IV, p. 327. 121. BL, Stowe MS, 845 ff. 54–55. 122. Bodl., Carte MS 49, f. 159. 123. Townshend, Life and Letters, p. 505. 124. Thomas Morris, A sermon preached at the funeral of the Right Honourable Roger Earl of Orrery, who dyed the 16th of October, at Castle-Martyr, and was buried at Youghall in Ireland the 18th of the same month, in the year 1679 (London, 1681), pp. 33–4. 125. Grosart (ed.), Lismore Papers, second series, IV, pp. 100, 103. 126. Morris, A sermon preached at the funeral of the Right Honourable Roger Earl of Orrery, pp. 33–4. 127. Ibid. 128. Quoted in Patrick Little, ‘Select Document. Providence and Posterity: A Letter from Lord Mountnorris to his Daughter, 1642’, Irish Historical Studies, 32 (2001), pp. 562–3. 129. CSPD, 1631–1633, p. 263. 130. TNA, PROB 11/374/147. 131. Marc Caball, ‘Providence and Exile in Early Seventeenth-Century Ireland’, Irish Historical Studies, 29 (1994), pp. 174–88; Raymond Gillespie, Devoted People: Belief and Religion in Early Modern Ireland (Manchester, 1997), p. 57; and John McCafferty, ‘St. Patrick for the Church of Ireland: James Ussher’s Discourse’, Bullń, 3 (1997/8), pp. 87–101. Similar themes permeate the ‘political’ poetry; for further details see Michelle O Riordan, ‘ “Political” Poems in the Mid-SeventeenthCentury Crisis’ in Jane Ohlmeyer (ed.), Ireland from Independence to Occupation, 1641–1660 (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 112–27. 132. Gillespie, Devoted People, pp. 50–5; Raymond Gillespie, ‘The Religion of Irish Protestants: A View from the Laity, 1580–1700’ in Ford, McGuire and Milne (eds.), As by Law Established, pp. 89–99. 133. Anonymous, ‘The Birmingham Chalice’, Journal of the Cork Historical and Archaeological Society, 17 (1936), pp. 42–3; Anonymous, ‘The Roche Chalice, Kinsale’, Journal of the Cork Historical and Archaeological Society, 19, second series (1913), pp. 128–31.

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Notes to pp. 153–7

134. Clodagh Tait, Death, Burial and Commemoration in Ireland, 1550–1650 (London, 2002), p. 142. 135. Clodagh Tait, ‘Harnessing Corpses: Death, Burial, Disinterment and Commemoration in Ireland, c.1550–1655’ (unpublished PhD thesis, Cork, 1999), p. 254. 136. Connors, ‘The Impact of English Colonial Expansion on Irish Culture’, pp. 380–1. 137. ‘A Seventeenth-Century Will’, Irish Builder, 33:763 (1891), p. 218; John Kingston, ‘Catholic Families of the Pale’, Repertorium Novum: Dublin Diocesan Historical Record, 2 (1960), pp. 236–56. 138. Lodge, VI, p. 168. 139. Diarmuid Mac Iomhair, ‘The House of Louth in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries’, Journal of the County Louth Archaeological Society, 16:2 (1966), pp. 69–70. 140. Ibid., p. 77. 141. NA, RC 5/19/part 3/pp. 269, 271. 142. John F. Ainsworth and Edward MacLysaght (eds.), ‘Survey of Documents in Private Keeping’, Analecta Hibernica, 20 (1958), p. 137. 143. Lodge, I, p. 245. 144. Clodagh Tait, ‘“As legacie upon my soule”: The Wills of the Irish Catholic Community, c.1550– 1660’ in Armstrong and Ó hAnnracháin (eds.), Community in Early Modern Ireland, pp. 179–98. 145. George Hill, MacDonnells of Antrim (Belfast, 1873), pp. 435–6. 146. CSPI, 1615–1625, p. 324; Griffith (ed.), Irish Patent Rolls of James I, p. 509. 147. A copie of a letter from the Lord Intrim [sic]in Ireland to the right honourable earle of Rutland, bearing date the 25 day of February . . . (London, 1642), pp. 3–4. 148. Hector McDonnell and Jane Ohlmeyer (eds.), ‘New Light on the Marquis of Antrim and the “Wars of the Three Kingdoms” ’, Analecta Hibernica (2009), p. 48. 149. Hector McDonnell and Jane Ohlmeyer (eds.), ‘Meditations by Katherine Manners, duchess of Buckingham, 1646’, Analecta Hibernica (2009), pp. 69–81. 150. Kenneth Charlton, Women, Religion and Education in Early Modern England (London, 1999), p. 177. 151. Margaret MacCurtain, ‘Religion, Science, Theology and Ethics, 1500–2000’ in Angela Bourke et al. (eds.), The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing. vol. IV. Irish Women’s Writing and Traditions (Cork, 2002), p. 461. 152. Raymond Gillespie, ‘The Religion of the first Duke of Ormond’ in Barnard and Fenlon (eds.), The Dukes of Ormonde, pp. 102–13. 153. Raymond Gillespie, ‘Reading the Bible in Seventeenth-Century Ireland’ in Bernadette Cunningham and Máire Kennedy (eds.), The Experience of Reading: Irish Historical Perspectives (Dublin, 1999), p. 23. 154. Henry Leslie, archdeacon of Down, A sermon preached at the funeral of the most honourable Rose, Lady Marchioness of Antrim at Carrickfergus, the 4th of July 1695 (Dublin, 1695), pp. 23–7. 155. Little, ‘Select Document. Providence and Posterity: A Letter from Lord Mountnorris to his Daughter, 1642’, pp. 556–64. 156. Ibid., p. 565. 157. Ibid., pp. 562–3. 158. HMC, Report on the Manuscripts of Lord Montagu of Beaulieu (London, 1900), p. 193. 159. M. Perceval-Maxwell, ‘Sir Robert Southwell and the Duke of Ormond’s Reflections on the 1640s’ in Micheál Ó Siochrú (ed.), Kingdoms in Crisis: Ireland in the 1640s (Dublin, 2001), p. 231; BL, Add. MS 18,730, Annesley’s Diary 1675–1684. 160. [Peter, Pett], The Happy Future State of England: or, A Discourse by Way of Letter to the late Earl of Anglesey, Vindicating him from the Reflections of an Affidavit published by the House of Commons Ao 1680 by occasion whereof observations are made concerning infamous witnesses (London, 1688), p. 13. Also see John Gibney, ‘Some remarks on those who were friends and enemyes to the duke of Ormonde and to the Acts of Settlement of Ireland, c.1692’, Analecta Hibernica, 42 (2011), pp. 50–1. 161. ‘And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God’ (Romans 12:2). 162. ‘For not the hearers of the law are just before God, but the doers of the law shall be justified’ (Romans 2:13) and ‘But this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right hand of God’ (Hebrews 10:12). 163. BL, Add. MS 18,730, Annesley’s Diary 1675–1684. 164. Annabel Patterson and Martin Dzelzainis, ‘Marvell and the Earl of Anglesey: A Chapter in the History of Reading’, Historical Journal, 44 (2001), pp. 703–26. Strangely, this article makes no mention at all of Anglesey’s Irish connections. 165. H. F. Kearney, ‘The Court of Wards and Liveries in Ireland, 1622–1641’, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Antiquaries, 57, Section C (1955–6), pp. 29–68; Clarke, The Old English in Ireland, pp. 48–9, 58, 115–16.

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Notes to pp. 157–62

513

166. Declan Downey, ‘Purity of Blood and Purity of Faith in Early Modern Ireland’ in Ford and McCafferty (eds.), The Origins of Sectarianism, pp. 226–8. 167. Quoted in Timothy Cochran, Studies in the History of Classical Teaching (Dublin, 1911), pp. 62–3. 168. Thomond held numerous public offices: governor of County Clare and Thomond, a member of the Irish Privy Council, a commissioner for the presidency of Munster, and for the plantation of Ulster, and president of Munster; Ò Dálaigh, ‘A Comparative Study of the Wills of the First and Fourth Earls of Thomond’, pp. 48–63. 169. Comment. Rinucc., I, p. 311; Ó Dálaigh, ‘A Comparative Study of the Wills of the First and Fourth Earls of Thomond’, pp. 50, 52. 170. M. J. Bourke, ‘The Fitzmaurices – Lords of Kerry’, Journal of the Cork Historical and Archaeological Society, second series, 26 (1920), pp. 10–18. 171. Thomond remained a patron to Mac Bruaideadha poets until his death in 1624; Bernadette Cunningham, ‘Political and Social Change in the Lordships of Clanricard and Thomond, 1596– 1641’ (unpublished MA thesis, National University of Ireland, University College Galway, 1979), pp. 131–2. See also Jane Stevenson and Peter Davidson (eds.), Early Modern Women Poets: An Anthology (Oxford, 2001), pp. 174–7. 172. John Ainsworth (ed.), Inchiquin Manuscripts (IMC, Dublin, 1961), p. 512. 173. Mansfield, ‘Lady Thurles’, p. 423. 174. Thomas Carte, The life of James duke of Ormond (6 vols., Oxford, 1851), VI, p. 214. A zealous convert, Ormond later adopted similar tactics. For instance, after recovering the estates of his kinsman, Lord Dunboyne, he promised to restore them to the impoverished baron on the condition that ‘he lets me have the breeding of his sonne, a youth of about 13 years old’, HMC, Report 11. Appendix 5 (London, 1887), p. 14. 175. Griffith (ed.), Irish Patent Rolls of James I, p. 473. 176. O’Brien, O’Briens of Thomond, p. 60. 177. Gráinne McLaughlin, ‘Latin Invective Verse in the Commentarius Rinuccinianus’ in Jason Harris and Keith Sidwell (eds.), Making Ireland Roman: Irish Neo-Latin Writers and the Republic of Letters (Cork, 2009), pp. 156–7. 178. Michael Hartnett, Haicéad (Oldcastle, County Meath, 1993), p. 61. 179. CSPI, 1608–1610, pp. 374, 425; CSPI, 1611–1614, pp. 19, 24. 180. Townshend, The Life and Letters, pp. 478–9. 181. CSPI, 1611–1614, pp. 245 (quote), 279–80. 182. C. W. Fitzgerald, The Earls of Kildare and their Ancestors 1057 to 1773 (Dublin, 1858), p. 241; Griffith (ed.), Irish Patent Rolls of James I, p. 249. 183. PRONI, D.3078/3/1/5, p. 2. 184. Ibid. p. 3; CSPD, 1623–1625, pp. 488–9; CSPD, 1629–1631, pp. 35, 38, 40; CSPI, 1625–1632, pp. 490, 537; PRONI, D.3078/3, 1/5, pp. 24–5, 29, 32. 185. PRONI, D.3078/3, 1/5, p. 112. 186. Ibid. p. 97–9; A. F. Pollard, ‘Talbot, Sir William, first baronet (d. 1634)’, rev. Sean Kelsey, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004; online edn., Jan. 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb. com/view/article/26944, accessed 30 July 2009]). 187. Jane Ohlmeyer, ‘Fitzgerald, George, sixteenth earl of Kildare (bap. 1612, d. 1660)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, Sept. 2004; online edn., Jan. 2008 [http://www. oxforddnb.com/view/article/9550, accessed 30 July 2009]); Grosart (ed.), Lismore Papers, first series, V, p. 6; Rolf Loeber, A Biographical Dictionary of Architects in Ireland 1600–1720 (London, 1981), p. 109; TCD, MS 813, ff. 279, 330–331v (quote). 188. PRONI, D.3078/3, 1/5, p. 38. 189. Ibid., pp. 50–1. 190. CSPI, 1625–1632, pp. 459, 461, 479, 480, 484, 493. 191. Jane Ohlmeyer, Civil War and Restoration in the Three Stuart Kingdoms: The Career of Randal MacDonnell, Marquis of Antrim (Dublin, 2001), p. 54. 192. In 1613 Antrim had secured letters patent allowing Abercorn to hold his son’s wardship; Griffith (ed.), Irish Patent Rolls of James I, p. 479. 193. The Statutes at Large, passed in the Parliaments held in Ireland . . . II. 1634–1662 (Dublin, 1765), pp. 516–19. 194. CSPI, 1666–1669, pp. 65, 388; CSPI, 1669–1670, pp. 580–1. Ormond also became guardian to another nephew, Nicholas Purcell of Loughmo, CSPI, 1660–1662, p. 109; CSPI, 1669–1670, pp. 229–30. 195. HMC, Ormonde, NS, III, pp. 283, 300. 196. CSPD, March 1677 to Feb. 1678, p. 25.

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Notes to pp. 162–70

197. HMC, Ormonde, NS, V, p. 40; ibid., VI, pp. 190, 510–11. 198. HMC, Report 13. Appendix 5 (London, 1892), p. 236. 199. CSPD, March 1677 to Feb. 1678, p. 142; CSPD, Jan. 1679 to Aug. 1680, p. 286; HMC, Ormonde, NS, V, p. 250. 200. John D’Alton, Illustrations, Historical and Genealogical of King James’s Irish Army List (1689) (Limerick, 1997), p. 145. 201. CSPD, Jan. 1679 to Aug. 1680, pp. 498–9. 202. HMC, Ormonde, NS, V, p. 341. 203. Ibid., p. 340; CSPD, Sept. 1680 to Dec. 1681, pp. 336, 380, 656. 204. CSPD, Jan. 1679 to Aug. 1680, pp. 617–18. 205. HMC, Ormonde, NS, V, p. 277. 206. CSPD, Jan. to June 1683, pp. 29, 283; CSPD, Jan. 1679 to Aug. 1680, pp. 542–3, 555–6; CSPD, Sept. 1680 to Dec. 1681, pp. 674–5. 207. CSPD, Oct. 1683 to April 1684, pp. 217–18. 208. Ibid., p. 247. 209. The case of John Burke, second son to William, late Earl of Clanricard, and of his six sons; humbly offered to the consideration of the . . . House of Commons (London?, 1701). 210. NLI MS 2451/9285, f. 187. 211. HMC, Ormonde, NS, IV, p. 214. 212. Ibid., NS, V, p. 543. 213. Ibid., NS, IV, pp. 361–2. 214. Ibid., OS, II, p. 280. 215. Gillespie, ‘The Religion of the first Duke of Ormond’, p. 109. 216. John Prendergast, ‘The Butlers, Lords Ikerrin, before the Court of Transplantation at Athlone, ad 1656, and at the Second Court of Claims’, Butler Society Journal, 3 (1987), pp. 72–6. 217. HMC, Ormonde, NS, VI, pp. 38–40, 44. 218. Ibid., NS, V, pp. 556–8, 577–8, 611. 219. Micheál Ó Siochrú, God’s Executioner: Oliver Cromwell and the English Conquest of Ireland (London, 2008), p. 106. 220. Comment. Rinucc., I, pp. 469–70. 221. William Knowler (ed.), The earl of Strafforde’s letters and despatches with an essay towards his life by Sir George Radcliffe . . . (2 vols., London, 1739), II, p. 342. 222. Mary Hickson (ed.), Ireland in the Seventeenth Century (2 vols., London, 1884), I, p. 380. 223. Ibid. 224. O’Brien, O’Briens of Thomond, pp. 91–2. 225. John A. Murphy, ‘Inchiquin’s Changes of Religion’, Journal of Cork Historical and Archaeological Society, 72 (1967), pp. 58–68. 226. J. O’Donoghue, Historical memoirs of the O’Briens compiled from the Irish Annalists (Dublin, 1860), p. 304; Lodge, II, p. 55. 227. Comment. Rinucc., II, p. 467. 228. Gilbert (ed.), Irish Confederation, VII, p. 88. 229. Gerald Dillon, ‘The Dillon Peerages’, Irish Genealogist, 3 (1958), p. 86.

Chapter Six: Marriage   1. Stephen B. Barnwell, ‘The Barnewell Family during the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries’, Irish Genealogist, 3 (1963), pp. 311–21.   2. Terence O’Donnell, ‘Lord Trimleston’s Advice of his Son – A Fragment’, Riocht na Midhe, 3 (1964), pp. 152–4. Matthias died on 10 December 1692, slain at Ortheuville, aged 22. His headstone (in French) reads (p. 154): ‘Here lies the valiant and able Lord Trimleston of the illustrious house of Barnewall etc’.   3. John Ainsworth, ‘Survey of Documents in Private Keeping’, Analecta Hibernica, 25 (1967), pp. 165–6, p. 163.   4. HMC, Report of the Manuscripts of the Earl of Egmont volume II (London, 1909), pp. 500–1. I owe this reference to Dr Eamon Darcy.   5. For an excellent introduction to marriage as a rite of passage see David Cressy, Birth, Marriage and Death: Ritual, Religion and Life-cycle in Tudor and Stuart England (Oxford, 1997).   6. Ted McCormick, ‘ “A proportionable mixture”: William Petty, Political Arithmetic, and the Transmutation of the Irish’ in Coleman A. Dennehy (ed.), Restoration Ireland: Always Settling and

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Notes to pp. 170–5

515

Never Settled (Aldershot, Hampshire, and Burlington, VT, 2008), pp. 123–39, quotes from pp. 126, 128.   7. Anne Laurence, ‘Real and Imagined Communities in the Lives of Women in Seventeenth-Century Ireland: Identity and Gender’ in Stephanie Tarbin and Susan Broomhall (eds.), Women, Identities and Communities in Early Modern Europe (Aldershot, 2008) pp. 13–27.   8. Donald Jackson, Intermarriage in Ireland 1550–1650 (Montreal, 1970).   9. Art Cosgrove, ‘Marriage in Medieval Ireland’, Patrick J. Corish, ‘Catholic Marriage under the Penal Code’, and Margaret MacCurtain, ‘Marriage in Tudor Ireland’ in Art Cosgrove (ed.), Marriage in Ireland (Dublin, 1985), pp. 25–50, 67–77 and 251–66; Margaret MacCurtain and Mary O’Dowd (eds.), Women in Early Modern Ireland (Edinburgh, 1991) 10. Nicholas Canny, The Upstart Earl: A Study of the Social and Mental World of Richard Boyle First Earl of Cork, 1566–1643 (Cambridge, 1982); Patrick Little, ‘The Earl of Cork and the Fall of the Earl of Strafford’, Historical Journal, 39 (1996), pp. 619–35, and ‘The Geraldine Ambitions of the First Earl of Cork’, Irish Historical Studies, 23 (2002). 11. Eleanor O’Keeffe, ‘The Family and Marriage Strategies of James Butler, 1st Duke of Ormonde, 1658–1688’ (Cambridge PhD thesis, 2000), p. 1. 12. A. P. W. Malcolmson, The Pursuit of the Heiress: Aristocratic Marriage in Ireland, 1750–1820 (Belfast, 1982). 13. For the Bourkes of Castle Connell, see CSPI, 1603–1606, p. 473. 14. J. J. N. McGurk, ‘Esmonde, Laurence, Baron Esmonde of Limerick (c.1570–1645)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, Sept. 2004; online edn., Jan. 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb. com/view/article/8884, accessed 14 Sept. 2009]). 15. Alison Forrestal, Catholic Synods in Ireland, 1600–1690 (Dublin, 1998), pp. 151–2. 16. Tom Connors, ‘The Impact of English Colonial Expansion on Irish Culture: The Clergy, Popular Religion, and the Transformation of the Family in Early Modern Galway’ (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1997), pp. 66–72. 17. Keith Brown, ‘The Origins of a British Aristocracy: Integration and its Limitations before the Treaty of Union’ in Steven Ellis and Sarah Barber (eds.), Conquest and Union: Fashioning a British State, 1485–1725 (Harlow, 1995), pp. 222–49, and Keith Brown, ‘The Scottish Aristocracy, Anglicization and the Court, 1603–38’, Historical Journal, 36 (1993), pp. 543–76. 18. Cynthia Herrup, ‘The Patriarch at Home: the Trial of the 2nd Earl of Castlehaven for Rape and Sodomy’, History Workshop Journal, 41 (1996), pp. 1–18. 19. Cressy, Birth, Marriage and Death, p. 290. 20. Anthony Hamilton, count de Grammont, Memoirs of the Life of Count of Grammont Containing in Particular the Amorous Intrigues of the Court of England . . . translated A. Boyer (London, 1714), p. 188. 21. James R. Farr, ‘The Pure and Disciplined Body: Hierarchy, Morality, and Symbolism in France during the Catholic Reformation’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 21 (1991), pp. 399–400 (quote); Ingrid H. Tague, ‘Love, Honor, and Obedience: Fashionable Women and the Discourse of Marriage in the Early Eighteenth Century’, Journal of British Studies, 40 (2001), pp. 76–106. 22. Sharon Kettering, ‘The Patronage Power of Early Modern French Noblewomen’, Historical Journal, 43 (1989), pp. 817–41. 23. Francis Lord Viscount Shannon, Discourses useful for the vain modish ladies and their gallants, under these following heads ([London], 1696). 24. Shannon, Discourses, pp. 3, 19, 21. 25. TNA, PROB 11/365/35. 26. T. Crofton Croker (ed.), Autobiography of Mary Countess of Warwick (London, 1848). 27. NLI, unpublished calendar of the Lismore Papers, p. 1,091, entry in his diary for 4 July 1654. 28. Thomas Morrice (ed.), A Collection of the State Letters of . . . Roger Boyle, First Earl of Orrery. . . (London, 1742, later edn. 2 vols., Dublin, 1743), p. 49. 29. Orrery Papers (consulted on microfilm in NLI, P7076, originals in West Suffolk RO). Series of letters from Anglesey to Orrery, 1661–2, Anglesey to Orrery, London, 23 July 1672. 30. Shannon, Discourses, preface. 31. BL, Add. MS 18,730 Annesley’s diary 1675–1684; Alicia died in 1684 without issue and Baron Altham promptly remarried. 32. Ibid. 33. Lawrence Stone, ‘Marriage among the English Nobility in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 3 (1961), pp. 182–206. 34. CSPI, 1611–1614, pp. 503–4; David Edwards, The Ormond Lordship in County Kilkenny, 1515– 1642: The Rise and Fall of Butler Feudal Power (Dublin, 2003), pp. 109–13.

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Notes to pp. 175–82

35. James Graves, ‘Anonymous Account of the Early Life and Marriage of James, first Duke of Ormond’, Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries, 7 (1862–3), pp. 286–7; Eleanor O’Keeffe, ‘The Family and Marriage Strategies of James Butler, 1st Duke of Ormonde, 1658–1688’ (unpublished PhD thesis, Cambridge, 2000), p. 20. 36. HMC, Ormonde, NS, III, p. 452. 37. CSPD, March 1677 to Feb. 1678, p. 445. 38. Ibid., pp. 458–9, 646 (quote), 662. 39. Robert C. Ritchie, ‘Coote, Richard, first earl of Bellamont (1636–1701)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, Sept. 2004; online edn., Jan. 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/ article/6247, accessed 2 Sept. 2009]). 40. HMC, Ormonde, NS, VI, p. 19. 41. Bodl., Carte MS 48, f. 82. 42. Morrice (ed.), A Collection of the State Letters, pp. 184, 215–16 (quote). 43. Ibid., pp. 217–18. 44. Forrestal, Catholic Synods in Ireland, pp. 19–20, 60–1, 120. 45. Quoted in Cressy, Birth, Marriage and Death, pp. 290–1. 46. Andrew Carpenter, Verse in English from Tudor and Stuart Ireland (Cork, 2003), p. 135. 47. Grosart (ed.), Lismore Papers, first series, V, pp. 112 (quote), 534. 48. Patrick Little, ‘Family and Faction: The Irish Nobility and the English Court, 1632–42’ (unpublished MLitt thesis, Trinity College Dublin, 1992), p. 209. 49. O’Keeffe, ‘The Family and Marriage Strategies of James Butler’, pp. 70–1; David Hosford, ‘Cavendish, William, first duke of Devonshire (1641–1707)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, Sept. 2004; online edn., Oct. 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/4948, accessed 22 Feb. 2010]). 50. Carpenter, Verse in English, pp. 363–4. 51. Katherine Philips, Poems By The Most Deservedly Admired Mrs Katherine Philips The Matchless Orinda . . . (London, 1667); Jane Stevenson and Peter Davidson (eds.), Early Modern Women Poets: An Anthology (Oxford, 2001), pp. 325–30; Carpenter, Verse in English, pp. 363–4. 52. Keith Brown, Noble Society in Scotland: Wealth, Family and Culture, from Reformation to Revolution (Edinburgh, 2000), p. 114. 53. Laurence P. Murray, ‘The Moores of Ardee’, Journal of Louth Archaeological and Historical Society, 5:4 (1932), pp. 472–84. 54. Sean Kelsey, ‘Conway, Edward, earl of Conway (c.1623–1683)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, Sept. 2004; online edn., Jan. 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/ article/39681, accessed 2 Sept. 2009]). 55. Sarah Hutton, ‘Conway, Anne, Viscountess Conway and Killultagh (1631–1679)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, Sept. 2004; online edn., Jan. 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/ article/6119, accessed 2 Sept. 2009]). 56. Data derived from Lodge and GEC. 57. CSPD, Jan. 1679 to Aug. 1680, pp. 313–14. 58. Ibid., p. 496. 59. HMC, Ormonde, NS, IV, p. 261; CSPD, Jan. 1679 to Aug. 1680, pp. 274, 288–300. 60. CSPD, Jan. 1679 to Aug. 1680, pp. 288 (quote), 300–1. 61. Ibid., p. 387. 62. Ibid., p. 504. 63. Ibid., pp. 534 (quote), 566. 64. Geraldine Talon (ed.), Court of Claims: Submissions and Evidence, 1663 (IMC, Dublin, 2006), pp. 39–40, 267–8. 65. Sandra Cavallo and Lyndan Warner (eds.), Widowhood in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Harlow, 1999). 66. TNA, PROB 11/317/57. 67. TNA, PROB 11/413/24. 68. TNA, PROB 11/445/117 (Clancarthy), PROB 11/404/48 (Cork), Lodge, I, p. 245 (Dillon of Costello-Gallen), PROB 11/404/85 (Orrery), PROB 11/365/35 (Shannon), PROB 11/347/39 (Thomond). 69. CSPI., 1663–1665, p. 317. 70. HMC, Ormonde, OS, I, p. 45; CSPI, 1669–1670, p. 307. 71. Charles McNeill, ‘Rawlinson Manuscripts Class C and D’, Analecta Hibernica, 2 (1931), p. 22. 72. Lodge, III, p. 200.

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Notes to pp. 182–7

517

  73. BL, Add. MS 19,842, ff. 138, 140 and 141.   74. Edward Berwick (ed.), The Rawdon Papers . . . (London, 1819), pp. 265–6.   75. HMC, Ormonde, NS, V, p. 405.   76. Ibid., p. 222.   77. Quoted in O’Keeffe, ‘The Family and Marriage Strategies of James Butler’, p. 83.   78. HMC, Ormonde, NS, III, pp. 342, 362, also pp. 364–5.   79. Toby Barnard, ‘Aungier, Francis, first earl of Longford (c.1632–1700)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/58097, accessed 3 Sept. 2009]).   80. Brown, Noble Society in Scotland, p. 75; Lawrence Stone, Crisis of the Aristocracy 1558–1641 (Oxford, 1965), p. 654.   81. Canny, Upstart Earl, pp. 88–9. Stone, ‘Marriage’, p. 198, suggests that the average age of brides rose. David Dickson has convincingly suggested that the average age for female marriage in the midseventeenth century was between 22 and 23, ‘No Scythians Here: Women and Marriage in Seventeenth-Century Ireland’ in Margaret MacCurtain and Mary O’Dowd (eds.), Women in Early Modern Ireland (Dublin, 1991), pp. 223–35.   82. Stone, ‘Marriage’, pp. 198–9.   83. Huntington Library, San Marino, Box HA Genealogy, Hastings L5A5.   84. Canny, Upstart Earl, p. 89.   85. HMC, Thirteenth Report, Appendix Part VI. The Manuscripts of Sir William FitzHerbert and others (London, 1893), p. 275.   86. BL, Add. MS 40,860, Annesley’s Diary, 9 May 1671–2 October 1675.   87. Julian C. Walton, ‘Power, Richard, first earl of Tyrone (1629/30–1690)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/22670, accessed 2 Sept. 2009]).   88. Digamias adikia, or, The first marriage of Katherine Fitzgerald (now Lady Decies) contracted in facie ecclesi asserted by Dudley Loftus . . . (London, 1677), p. 26.   89. Sponsa nondum uxor, or, The marriage between the Lady Katharine Fitz-Gerald and Edward Villiers, Esq. asserted by Robert Thompson . . .; being an answer to a treatise, intituled, Digamias adikia, &c.; published under the name of Dudley Loftus Dr. of Laws, and judge of the Prerogative Court in Ireland (London, 1677), p. 33.   90. Data derived from Lodge and GEC.   91. J. D. Davies, ‘Butler, Thomas, sixth earl of Ossory (1634–1680)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, Sept. 2004; online edn., Jan. 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/ article/4210, accessed 3 Sept. 2009]); O’Keeffe, ‘The Family and Marriage Strategies of James Butler’, pp. 59–64.   92. Very occasionally other members of the Irish peerage looked to Scotland for a spouse. Charles Coote, earl of Mountrath, took as his second wife Jane, daughter of Sir Robert Hannay of Scotland. Alice and Mary Moore, daughters of Henry, first earl of Drogheda, married as their first and second husbands Scottish lords.   93. David Edwards, ‘A Haven of Popery: English Catholic Migration to Ireland in the Age of Plantation’ in Alan Ford and John McCafferty (eds.), The Origins of Sectarianism in Early Modern Ireland (Cambridge, 2005), pp. 109, 115.   94. Grosart (ed.), Lismore Papers, second series, p. 186.   95. Michael Questier, Catholicism and Community in Early Modern England: Politics, Aristocratic Patronage and Religion, c.1550–1640 (Cambridge, 2006), p. 475.   96. BL, Stowe MS 180, f. 32.   97. Toby Barnard and Jane Fenlon (eds.), The Dukes of Ormonde, 1610–1745 (Woodbridge, Suffolk, 2000), p. 78; Aidan Clarke, ‘Sir Piers Crosby, 1590–1646: Wentworth’s “tawney ribbon” ’, Irish Historical Studies, (1988), 26, pp. 142–60.   98. Brown, Noble Society in Scotland, pp. 128–9; Stone, Crisis of the Aristocracy, pp. 614–15; Stone, ‘Marriage’, p. 193.   99. Gilbert (ed.), Irish Confederation, I, p. 2. 100. Sir John Temple, The Irish Rebellion . . . (London, 1679), pp. 27–8. Also see Gilbert (ed.), Irish Confederation, I, p. 2, and A Letter from a person of honour . . . written to the earl of Castlehaven (London, 1681), p. 31. 101. Johann P. Sommervlle (ed.), The Political Writings: James VI and I (Cambridge, 1994), ‘Basilicon Doron’, pp. 40–1. 102. Dagmar Freist, ‘ “Popery in perfection”: The Experience of Catholicism – Henrietta Maria between Private Practice and Public Discourse’ in Michael J. Braddick and David L. Smith (eds.), The

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Notes to pp. 187–95

Experience of Revolution in Stuart Britain and Ireland: Essays for John Morrill (Cambridge, 2011). Dagmar Freist, ‘Crossing Religious Borders: The Experience of Religious Difference and its Impact on Mixed Marriages in Eighteenth-Century Germany’ in Scott Dixon, ‘Living with Religious Diversity in Early-Modern Europe’ in C. Scott Dixon, Dagmar Freist and Mark Greengrass (eds.), Living with Religious Diversity in Early-Modern Europe (Farnham, Surrey, 2009), pp. 203–24. 103. Forrestal, Catholic Synods in Ireland, pp. 105, 171; Alan Ford, ‘Living Together, Living Apart: Sectarianism in Early Modern Ireland’ in Ford and McCafferty (eds.), The Origins of Sectarianism, pp. 17–19. 104. PRONI, D.3078/3, 1/5, p. 29. 105. Morrice (ed.), A Collection of the State Letters, pp. 184, 215. 106. GEC, III, p. 216; HMC, Report 13. Appendix 5 (London, 1892), pp. 236–7. 107. Clodagh Tait, Death, Burial and Commemoration in Ireland, 1550–1650 (London, 2002), p. 56. 108. Diarmuid Mac Iomhair, ‘The House of Louth in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries’, Journal of the County Louth Archaeological Society, 16 (1966), pp. 67–84. 109. Mary Hickson (ed.), Ireland in the Seventeenth Century (2 vols., London, 1884), I, p. 380. 110. Henry Leslie, archdeacon of Down, A sermon preached at the funeral of the most honourable Rose, Lady Marchioness of Antrim at Carrickfergus, the 4th of July 1695 (Dublin, 1695). 111. Ibid., p. 29. 112. John A. Murphy, ‘Inchiguin’s Changes of Religion’, Journal of Cork Historical and Archaeological Society, 72 (1967), pp. 58–68; John Ainsworth (ed.), Inchiquin Manuscripts (IMC, Dublin, 1961), p. 5. 113. George Hill, MacDonnells of Antrim (Belfast, 1873), p. 361. 114. Stone, ‘Marriage’, p. 196. The English peerage married ‘rather more than 50 per cent within itself ’. 115. Quoted in Nicholas Canny, Making Ireland British, 1580–1650 (Oxford, 2001), pp. 436–8; For England see Stone, Crisis of the Aristocracy, pp. 628–9. 116. GEC, VII, p. 298. 117. Data derived from Lodge and GEC. 118. Brown, Noble Society in Scotland, p. 132. 119. Victor Treadwell, Buckingham and Ireland, 1616–1628: A Study in Anglo-Irish Politics (Dublin, 1998), p. 111. 120. For the later period see Francis G. James, ‘The Aristocracy of Ireland’s Ancien Régime’, Eire-Ireland, 26 (1991), pp. 29–37. 121. Jackson, Intermarriage in Ireland, p. 30. 122. CSPI, 1666–1669, p. 267. 123. HMC, Ormonde, NS, VII, pp. 409, 412 (quote), 414. 124. Stone, ‘Marriage’, p. 194. 125. Colm O Lochlainn, Irish Chiefs and Leaders (Dublin, 1960), p. 136. I am grateful to Micheál and Oisin Ó Siochrú for providing a translation of this poem; Katharine Simms, ‘Native Sources of Gaelic Settlement: The House Poems’ in Patrick Duffy, David Edwards and Elizabeth Fitzpatrick (eds.), Gaelic Ireland: Land, Lordship and Settlement c. 1250–c. 1650 (Dublin, 2001), p. 246. 126. Data derived from Lodge and GEC. 127. Grammont, Memoirs, p. 125. 128. Malcolmson, The Pursuit of the Heiress, p. 24. 129. M. Beckett, Sir George Rawdon, a Sketch of his Life and Times (Belfast, 1935), p. 95. 130. Malcolmson, The Pursuit of the Heiress, pp. 4–6, 48. 131. Stone, ‘Marriage’, pp. 182–206. On the basis of some 230 examples, it appears that between the second quarter of the sixteenth and the third quarter of the seventeenth centuries, portions given with daughters of the aristocracy increased approximately 10 times. Between 1600 and 1700 prices increased by about 50 per cent, and portions by about 300 per cent. We must therefore conclude that by the late seventeenth century parents were devoting a substantially higher proportion of their incomes to marrying off their daughters than were their great-grandfathers in the early sixteenth century. 132. Grosart (ed.), Lismore Papers, first series, III, pp. 24–5, and IV, pp. 39, 60–1. 133. CSPD, 1628–1629, p. 507. 134. BL, Add. Ms 46,932, f. 75. 135. O’Keeffe, ‘The Family and Marriage Strategies of James Butler’, pp. 69, 101. 136. HMC, Ormonde, NS, III, pp. 445, 450. 137. Malcolmson, The Pursuit of the Heiress, p. 48. 138. Talon (ed.), Court of Claims, pp. 79–80. 139. TNA, PROB 1004/1/2/1. 140. CSPI, 1660–1662, p. 410.

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Notes to pp. 195–204

519

141. Peter Roebuck, ‘The Making of an Ulster Great Estate: The Chichesters, Barons of Belfast and Viscounts of Carrickfergus, 1599–1648’, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, 79, Section C (1979), p. 20; PRONI T. 712/5 Donegall Estate Papers. 142. No record of their marriage settlement is extant. John F. Ainsworth and Edward MacLysaght (eds.), ‘Survey of Documents in Private Keeping’, Analecta Hibernica, 20 (1958), p. 72; Edward MacLysaght (eds.), ‘Survey of Documents in Private Keeping’, Analecta Hibernica, 15 (1944), p. 340. 143. John Ainsworth, ‘Survey of Documents in Private Keeping’, Analecta Hibernica, 25 (1967), pp. 163, 166. 144. Little, ‘The Earl of Cork’ and ‘The Geraldine Ambitions’; Canny, Upstart Earl, p. 44. 145. Eustace Budgell, Memoirs of the lives and characters of the illustrious family of the Boyles: particularly of the late eminently learned Charles, earl of Orrery (London, 1737), pp. 24–5. 146. Dorothea Townshend, The Life and Letters of the Great Earl of Cork (London, 1904), pp. 478–9. 147. F. Elrington Ball, ‘Some Notes on the Irish Judiciary in the Reign of Charles II. 1660–1685’, Journal of the Cork Historical and Archaeological Society, 7 (1901), pp. 26–2, 90–104, 138–49, 215–27; 8 (1902), pp. 179–85. 148. Morrice (ed.), A Collection of the State Letters, p. 50. 149. Ibid., p. 41; Ivan O’Brien, The O’Briens of Thomond. The O’Briens in Irish History (Chichester, 1986), pp. 93–4. 150. John Hanly (ed.), The Letters of Saint Oliver Plunkett 1625–1681, Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland (Dublin, 1979), p 194; CSPI, 1663–1665, pp. 669–71. 151. CSPI, 1663–1665, p. 657. 152. BL, Add. MS 40,860, Annesley’s diary entry for 9 September 1672. 153. Mark Girouard, ‘Curraghmore, co. Waterford, Eire’, Country Life (1963), pp. 257–8. 154. Budgell, Memoirs, p. 138. Thomas Farrington, ‘Robert Boyle’, Journal of the Cork Historical and Archaeological Society, 22 (1916), p. 177; Stone, ‘Marriage’, pp. 182–3. 155. NLI, unpublished calendar of the Lismore Papers, pp. 689–90, Lord Goring to earl of Cork, 9 July 1633. 156. M. Perceval-Maxwell, The Scottish Migration to Ulster in the Reign of James I (London, 1973), p. 60. 157. George Hill (ed.), The Montgomery Manuscripts (1603–1706). Compiled from the family papers by William Montgomery of Rosemount . . . (Belfast, 1869), pp. 399–403. 158. Leslie, A sermon, p. 29. 159. CSPI, 1633–1647, pp. 603 (quote), 604, 613. 160. T. K. Lowry (ed.), Hamilton Manuscripts: containing some account of territories of Upper Clandeboye, Great Ardes, Dufferin in the county of Down, by Sir William Hamilton, afterward Viscount Clandeboye (Belfast, 1867), p. 84. 161. CSPI, 1660–1662, p. 324; CSPI, 1663–1665, pp. 92, 184, 478–9; quote at p. 92. 162. Lowry (ed.) Hamilton Manuscripts, pp. 48–59. 163. Bernadette Cunningham, ‘Clanricard Letters: Letters and Papers, 1605–1673, Preserved in the National Library of Ireland Manuscript 3111’, Journal of the Galway Archaeological and Historical Society, 48 (1996), p. 193. 164. Hector McDonnell and Jane Ohlmeyer (eds.), ‘Meditations by Katherine Manners, duchess of Buckingham, 1646’, Analecta Hibernica (2009), p. 71. 165. HMC, Ormonde, NS, VII, pp. 260–1. 166. A pastoral upon the death of Her Grace the Dutchess of Ormond (London, 1684), p. 3. 167. Grammont, Memoirs, p. 159. 168. CSPI, 1663–1665, p. 10. 169. O’Keeffe, ‘The Family and Marriage Strategies of James Butler’, pp. 72–5, 91. 170. Ibid., pp. 94–5. 171. HMC, Ormonde, NS, VI, p. 391. 172. Ibid., NS, V, p. 479. 173. CSPI, 1631–1633, p. 313; CSPI, 1633–1647, p. 106. 174. Sarah Hutton, ‘Jones, Katherine, Viscountess Ranelagh (1615–1691)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, Sept. 2004; online edn., Jan. 2008 http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/ article/66365, accessed 5 Sept. 2009]. 175. NLI, unpublished calendar of the Lismore Papers, pp. 740–1, 1,120. 176. Frances Verney (ed.), Memoirs of the Verney Family (2 vols., London, 1892), I, p. 206. 177. Bodl., Carte MS 47, f. 104. 178. The way to peace. A funeral sermon on Job 22.21. Preached upon the decease of the right honourable Elizabeth, Countess of Ranalagh. By Daniel Burgess (London, 1695). 179. Edward MacLysaght (ed.), Calendar of the Orrery Papers (IMC, Dublin, 1941), pp. 249–50.

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Notes to pp. 204–14

180. John Stevenson, Two Centuries of Life in Down, 1600–1800 (Belfast, 1920), pp. 96–7. 181. Berwick (ed.), The Rawdon Papers, p. 251. 182. ‘The Life of James Spottiswoode, Bishop of Clogher, my great-grandfather’ in The Spottiswoode Miscellany: A Collection of Original Papers and Tracts, Illustrative of the Civil and Ecclesiastical History of Scotland, vol. 1 (Edinburgh, Spottiswoode Society, 1844), pp. 96–164, p. 103, and CSPI, 1625–1632, pp. 18, 256, 291–2. 183. CSPI, 1615–1625, p. 354 (quote); CSPI, 1625–1632, pp. 256, 291. 184. Eleanor Burgess, ‘Butlers in Pepys’, Butler Society Journal, 3 (1988–9), pp. 209–16; CSPD, 1639–40 (London, 1877), pp. 297, 365; Grammont, Memoirs, p. 115. 185. Bloudy nevves from Ireland, or the barbarous crueltie by the papists used in that kingdome . . . (London, 1641), final page. 186. Carpenter, Verse in English, pp. 423–7. 187. The Diary of Samuel Pepys, eds. Robert Latham and William Matthews (11 vols., 4th edn., Los Angeles, 1979), VI, pp. 167–8. 188. Cressy, Birth, Marriage and Death, p. 73. 189. CSPD, 1623–25, p. 302. 190. O’Keeffe, ‘The Family and Marriage Strategies of James Butler’, p. 123. 191. NA, T/12767. 192. John D’Alton, Illustrations, Historical and Genealogical of King James’s Irish Army List (1689) (Limerick, 1997), pp. 59–60. 193. O’Keeffe, ‘The Family and Marriage Strategies of James Butler’, pp. 26–7. 194. J. D. Davies, ‘Butler, Thomas, sixth earl of Ossory (1634–1680)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, Sept. 2004; online edn., Jan. 2008 http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/4210, accessed 14 Sept. 2009]). 195. Charles Vallancey, Collectana de Rebus Hibernicus; or Tracts Relative to the History and Antiquities of Ireland (4 vols., Dublin, 1786), I, p. 105.

Chapter Seven: Power, Politics and Public Office   1. H. M. Scott (ed.), The European Nobilities in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. Western Europe . . . (2 vols., London, 2005), I, pp. 35–9, and Keith Brown, Noble Power in Scotland from the Reformation to the Revolution (Edinburgh, 2011), chapter 6.   2. Maurice Lee, Jr, Great Britain’s Solomon: James VI and I in His Three Kingdoms (Urbana, IL, 1990), p. 69.   3. Christopher Brooks, Law, Politics and Society in Early Modern England (Oxford, 2008).   4. Ibid., p. 130; Debora Shuger, ‘Irishmen, Aristocrats, and Other White Barbarians’, Renaissance Quarterly, 50 (1997), pp. 494–525.   5. For further details see Ciaran Brady, The Chief Governors: The Rise and Fall of Reform Government in Tudor Ireland, 1536–1588 (Cambridge, 1994), p. xi.   6. CSPI, 1625–1632, p. 58.   7. Lee, Great Britain’s Solomon, pp. 204–5.   8. Brown, Noble Power, p. 180.   9. Scott (ed.), The European Nobilities, I, pp. 49–52. 10. David Edwards, ‘Butler, Thomas, tenth earl of Ormond and third earl of Ossory (1531–1614)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, Sept. 2004; online edn., Jan. 2008 [http://www. oxforddnb.com/view/article/4209, accessed 16 Feb. 2010]). 11. David Edwards, ‘The Poisoned Chalice: The Ormond Inheritance, Sectarian Division and the Emergence of James Butler, 1614–1642’ in Toby Barnard and Jane Fenlon (eds.), The Dukes of Ormonde, 1610–1745 (Woodbridge, Suffolk, 2000), pp. 59–61. 12. Antti Matikkala, The Orders of Knighthood and the Formation of the British Honours System, 1660– 1760 (Woodbridge, Suffolk, 2008), pp. 139–40. 13. Keith M. Brown, Noble Society in Scotland: Wealth, Family and Culture, from Reformation to Revolution (Edinburgh, 2000), pp. 65–9. 14. CSPI, 1603–1606, pp. 130, 207; CSPD, 1633–1634, p. 370; Calendar of Treasury Books, 1660–1667 (London, 1904), p. 409; Calendar of Treasury Books, 1676–1679 (London, 1911), p. 115. 15. Karin J. MacHardy, ‘The Rise of Absolutism and Noble Rebellion in Early Modern Habsburg Austria, 1570 to 1620’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 34 (1992), p. 430; John Adamson (ed.), The Princely Courts of Europe, 1500–1750 (London, 2000); and Ronald Asch, Nobilities in Transition 1550–1700: Courtiers and Rebels in Britain and Europe (London, 2003), chapter 5.

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16. Keith Brown, ‘The Scottish Aristocracy, Anglicization and the Court, 1603–38’, Historical Journal, 36 (1993), pp. 552–5. 17. Victor Treadwell, Buckingham and Ireland, 1616–1628: A Study in Anglo-Irish Politics (Dublin, 1998), p. 60. 18. Kevin Sharpe, ‘Crown, Parliament and Locality: Government and Communication in Early Stuart England’, English Historical Review, 101 (1986), pp. 329–30; for an excellent case study see Victor Treadwell, Buckingham and Ireland 1616–1628: A Study in Anglo-Irish Politics (Dublin, 1998). 19. ‘The Life of James Spottiswoode, Bishop of Clogher, my great-grandfather’ in The Spottiswoode Miscellany: A Collection of Original Papers and Tracts, Illustrative of the Civil and Ecclesiastical History of Scotland, vol. 1 (Edinburgh, Spottiswoode Society, 1844), pp. 128–9, 137; Raymond Gillespie, ‘The Trials of Bishop Spottiswood 1620–40’, Clogher Record, 12 (1987), pp. 320–33. 20. Thomas Carte, History of the life of James, first duke of Ormond (2nd edn., 6 vols., Oxford, 1851), VI, p. 219; Clarendon, History of the Rebellion, I, p. 202; William Knowler (ed.), The earl of Strafforde’s letters and despatches with an essay towards his life by Sir George Radcliffe (2 vols., London, 1739), I, p. 333. Caroline Hibbard, ‘The Role of a Queen Consort: The Household and Court of Henrietta Maria, 1625–1642’ in Ronald Asch and Adolf Birke (eds.), Princes, Patronage and the Nobility: The Court at the Beginning of the Modern Age (Oxford, 1991), pp. 393–414. 21. Bernadette Cunningham, ‘Clanricard Letters: Letters and Papers, 1605–1673, Preserved in the National Library of Ireland Manuscript 3111’, Journal of the Galway Archaeological and Historical Society, 48 (1996), pp. 179–80. 22. Clarke, Old English, pp. 96–9; quotes p. 97; ‘A Discourse’, p. 527. 23. Patrick Little, ‘ “Blood and Friendship”: The Earl of Essex’s Protection of the Earl of Clanricarde’s Interests, 1641–6’, English Historical Review, 112 (1997), pp. 927–41. Clarendon, History of the Rebellion, I, p. 197. 24. Little, ‘ “Blood and Friendship”’, pp. 927–41; Clarendon, History of the Rebellion, I, p. 197. 25. Carte, Ormond, VI, pp. 261, 269, 289; Patrick Little, ‘Family and Faction: The Irish Nobility and the English Court, 1632–42’ (unpublished MLitt thesis, Trinity College Dublin, 1992), pp. 60–5, 120–2, 140. 26. HMC, Ormonde, NS, V, pp. 340–1. 27. Hibbard, ‘The Role of a Queen Consort’, p. 404. 28. Jane Ohlmeyer, Civil War and Restoration in the Three Stuart Kingdoms: The Political Career of Randal MacDonnell First Marquis of Antrim (1609–83) (Cambridge, 1993; paperback reprint, Dublin, 2001), pp. 49–55. 29. Roger Lockyer, Buckingham: The Life and Political Career of George Villiers, first Duke of Buckingham 1592–1628 (London, 1981), pp. 26, 56–8, 60, 119–20, 212–16, 286, 412–13, 419, 460–2. 30. Knowler (ed.), Letters, II, pp. 131–2. 31. Ibid., p. 100. 32. Ibid., p. 120. 33. CSPI, 1660–1662, p. 36; CSPI, 1663–1665, p. 64; CSPI, 1669–1670, pp. 159–60, 180, 427–8, 440, 463, 509, 548, 551–2. 34. John McCavitt, Sir Arthur Chichester, Lord Deputy of Ireland 1605–16 (Belfast, 1998), pp. 58–60. 35. Grosart (ed.), Lismore Papers, first series, pp. 166–8, and second series, pp. 67–72. 36. Hibbard, ‘The Role of a Queen Consort’, pp. 407–11. 37. Patrick Little, ‘The Earl of Cork and the Fall of the Earl of Strafford’, Historical Journal, 39 (1996), pp. 626–7; Patrick Little, ‘Family and Faction: The Irish Nobility and the English Court, 1632–42’ (unpublished MLitt thesis, Trinity College Dublin, 1992), pp. 28, 30, 43, 48, 57, 209, 212, 214, 219. 38. Grosart (ed.), Lismore Papers, first series, V, pp. 56–8, 92–3, 97. 39. Ibid., pp. 61, 63. 40. Toby Barnard, ‘Boyle, Richard, first earl of Burlington and second earl of Cork (1612–1698)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, Sept. 2004; online edn., Jan. 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb. com/view/article/3135, accessed 17 May 2009]); Toby Barnard and Jane Clark (eds.), Lord Burlington: Architecture, Art and Life (London, 1995). 41. Brown, ‘The Scottish Aristocracy’, pp. 543–76, and ‘The Origins of a British Aristocracy’, pp. 222–49. 42. Little, ‘Family and Faction’, pp. 221–2. 43. Glyn Redworth, ‘Beyond Faith and Fatherland: The Appeal of the Catholics of Ireland, c.1623’, Archivium Hibernicum, 52 (1998), p. 14. 44. Dougal Shaw, ‘Thomas Wentworth and Monarchical Ritual in Early Modern Ireland’, Historical Journal, 49 (2006), pp. 331–55, especially pp. 353–4.

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45. Lords Anglesey, Chichester, Docwra, Londonderry, Longford and Ranelagh also served as treasurers or deputy treasurers or treasurers-at-war. 46. Toby Barnard, A New Anatomy of Ireland: Protestants in Ireland, 1649–1770 (New Haven, CT, 2003), chapter 6. 47. Just as clients and kinsmen lobbied well-placed lords to secure official positions, others did everything possible to prevent their appointment to ‘troublesome’ office, PRONI, D.3078/3, 1/5, pp. 73–4. 48. William MacIlwaine, ‘Notice of Hitherto Unpublished Portion of the “Montgomery Manuscripts” ’, Ulster Journal of Archaeology, first series, 9 (1861–2), p. 162. 49. McCavitt, Sir Arthur Chichester, pp. 58–9, 66, 76–8. 50. In England ‘the Privy Council combined the advisory and executive roles crucial to the effectiveness of personal monarchy; it helped formulate and carry out the king’s wishes and orders’, Sharpe, ‘Crown, Parliament and Locality’, pp. 337–8. 51. McCavitt, Sir Arthur Chichester, pp. 82, 90. 52. Treadwell, Buckingham, p. 56. 53. Victor Treadwell (ed.), The Irish Commission of 1622: An investigation of the Irish Administration 1615–22 and its Consequences 1623–24 (IMC, Dublin, 2006). 54. James L. J. Hughes (ed.), Patentee Officers in Ireland 1173–1826 (IMC, Dublin, 1960), provides a useful listing of the major legal and administrative offices. 55. Lords Abercorn, Aungier, Barrymore, Baltinglass, Blayney, Brabazon, Castlehaven, Clanricarde, Cork, Digby, Esmond, Hamilton, Lambert, Loftus, Londonderry, Montgomery, Powerscourt, Sarsfield, Valentia and Wilmot; Margaret Curtis Layton (ed.), The Council Book for the Province of Munster c.1599–1649 (IMC, Dublin, 2008), pp. 241–2. 56. Ibid., pp. 246–57, 460–2. 57. Ibid., p. 240. 58. CSPI, 1606–1608, p. 485. 59. CSPI, 1615–1625, p. 193. 60. CSPI, 1625–1632, pp. 194, 197. 61. David Edwards, ‘Two Fools and a Martial Law Commissioner: Cultural Conflict at the Limerick Assize of 1606’ in David Edwards (ed.), Regions and Rulers in Ireland, 1100–1650: Essays for Kenneth Nicholls (Dublin, 2004), pp. 237–65, and David Edwards, Padraig Lenihan and Clodagh Tait (eds.), Age of Atrocity: Violence and Political Conflict in Early Modern Ireland (Dublin, 2007), pp. 69, 74, 105–6, 120, 127, 207–8. 62. CSPI, 1669–1670, pp. 419–20. 63. CSPI, 1625–1632, pp. 250–5. 64. David Edwards, The Ormond Lordship in County Kilkenny, 1515–1642: The Rise and Fall of Butler Feudal Power (Dublin, 2003), pp. 56, 265, 273–5. 65. Peter Roebuck, ‘The Making of an Ulster Great Estate: The Chichesters, Barons of Belfast and Viscounts of Carrickfergus’ in Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, 79, section C (1979), p. 13. 66. John McGurk, Sir Henry Docwra, 1564–1631 (Dublin, 2006), pp. 269, 245. 67. Dorothea Townsend, The Life and Letters of the Great Earl of Cork (London, 1904), pp. 203, 185; CSPI, 1625–1632, pp. 610–11. 68. HMC, Ormonde, NS, VI, p. 486. Also see pp. xi, 427, 438, and Carte, Ormond, IV, pp. 402–3. 69. John Gibney, ‘Some remarks on those who were friends and enemyes to the duke of Ormonde and to the Acts of Settlement of Ireland, c.1692’, Analecta Hibernica, 42 (2011), p. 33. 70. Calendar of Treasury Books, 1676–9, pp. 178, 224. 71. David Dickson, Old World Colony: Cork and South Munster 1630–1830 (Cork, 2005), p. 15. 72. Mervyn Edward Wingfield, first baron Powerscourt, Muniments of the Ancient Family of Wingfield (privately printed, London, 1894; reprinted, Durham, NC, 1987). 73. CSPI, 1603–1606, pp 184, 559. 74. CSPI, 1611–1614, pp. 480, 499. 75. Roger Manning, Swordsmen: The Martial Ethos in the Three Kingdoms (Oxford, 2003), p. 18. 76. Jane Ohlmeyer, ‘The Baronial Context of the Irish Civil Wars’ in John Adamson (ed.), The English Civil Wars (London, 2009), pp. 106–24; Asch, Nobilities in Transition, pp. 144–6. 77. Susan Dwyer Amussen, ‘Punishment, Discipline, and Power: The Social Meanings of Violence in Early Modern England’, Journal of British Studies, 34 (1995), pp. 1–34. 78. Glyn Redworth, ‘Beyond Faith and Fatherland: The Appeal of the Catholics of Ireland, c.1623’, Archivium Hibernicum, 52 (1998), pp. 9, 22. 79. Griffith (ed.), Irish Patent Rolls of James I, p. 3. 80. CSPI, 1625–1632, p. 64.

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  81. They were Richard, first earl of Westmeath, Nicholas, seventh Viscount Preston of Gormanston, Nicholas, first Viscount Netterville, Nicholas, tenth Baron Howth and Luke, ninth Baron Killeen, CSPI, 1647–1660, p. 100; CSPI, 1625–1632, p. 102.   82. CSPI, 1625–1632, p. 595.   83. Aidan Clarke, ‘Sir Piers Crosby, 1590–1646: Wentworth’s “Tawney Ribbon” ’, Irish Historical Studies, 26 (1988), pp. 142–60.   84. CSPI, 1625–1632, p. 102.   85. T. C. Barnard, ‘Lawyers and the Law in Later Seventeenth-Century Ireland’, Irish Historical Studies, 28 (1993), p. 256.   86. Gilbert (ed.), Contemporary History, I, p. 294.   87. Jon G. Crawford (ed.), A Star Chamber Court in Ireland: The Court of Castle Chamber, 1571–1641 (Dublin, 2005), pp. 28–58, p. 51 (quote); John McCavitt, ‘ “Good Planets in their Several Spheares”: The Establishment of the Assize Circuits in Early Seventeenth-Century Ireland’, Irish Jurist, 14 (1989), pp. 248–78, and Sir Arthur Chichester, pp. 97, 99, 103.   88. Lee, Jr, Great Britain’s Solomon, p. 226; R. Zaller, The Parliament of 1621 (Berkeley, 1971), p. 118.   89. Barnard, ‘Lawyers and the Law’, pp. 256–82.   90. Jane Ohlmeyer, ‘Records of the Irish Court of Chancery: A Preliminary Report for 1627–1634’, in Desmond Greer and Norma Dawson, (eds.), Mysteries and Solutions in Irish Legal History (Dublin, 2001), pp. 15–49; Mary O’Dowd, ‘Women and the Irish Chancery Court in the Late Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries’, Irish Historical Studies, 31 (1999), pp. 470–87.   91. Charles Hughes, Shakespeare’s Europe: Unpublished chapters of Fynes Moryson’s Itinerary Being a Survey of the Condition of Europe at the end of the sixteenth-century (London, 1903), p. 228.   92. Sadly, the records for most of these courts, especially the local ones, have not survived, while many of the records for the central courts were either destroyed when the IRA blew up PRO in Dublin in 1922 or are in poor condition due to fire, smoke and water damage, W. H. Crawford, ‘LandlordTenant Relations in Ulster, 1609–1820’, Irish Economic and Social History, 2 (1975), pp. 6–10; W. H. Crawford, ‘The Significance of Landed Estates in Ulster 1600–1820’, Irish Economic and Social History, 17 (1990), pp. 48–9; Dickson, Old World Colony, p. 15.   93. Crawford, ‘The Significance of Landed Estates in Ulster’, pp. 44–61.   94. CSPI, 1611–1614, pp. 67–8; CSPI, 1625–1632, p. 547.   95. Maighréad Ní Mhurchadha, Fingal, 1603–60: Contending Neighbours in North Dublin (Dublin, 2005), pp. 36, 142–6, and Raymond Gillespie, ‘A Manor Court in Seventeenth-Century Ireland’, Irish Economic and Social History, 25 (1998), pp. 81–7.   96. They included Lords Aungier, Brittas, Broghill, Clanricarde, Kinalmeaky, Loftus of Ely, Mountnorris, Ormond and Upper Ossory.   97. H. A. C. Sturgess (ed.), Register of Admission to the Honourable Society of Middle Temple from the Fifteenth Century to the Year 1944 (3 vols., London, 1949), vol. 1, 1501–1781, and The Records of the Honorable Society of Lincoln’s Inn, vol. 1, Admissions from ad 1420 to ad 1799 (London, 1896), p. 206. Also see Colum Kenny, King’s Inns and the Kingdom of Ireland: The Irish ‘Inn of Court’ 1541–1800 (Dublin, 1992), pp. 87–8, 102, 108, 142, 276, 282.   98. Crawford (ed.), A Star Chamber Court in Ireland, pp. 29, 99–102; W. N. Osborough, ‘Loftus, Adam, first Viscount Loftus of Ely (1568–1643)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/16935, accessed 7 May 2009]). See for examples HMC, Report on Manuscripts in Various Collections, vol. III (London, 1904), pp. 156–212, and HMC, Ninth Report. Part II. Appendix (London, 1884), pp. 292–316.   99. HMC, Report 9. Part II. Appendix (London, 1884), p. 298. 100. Joseph Foster (ed.), The Register of Admissions to Gray’s Inn, 1521–1889 (London, 1889), p. 137. Also see Kenny, King’s Inns, pp. 221, 276, 283, 288. 101. W. Fitzgerald (ed.), Some Funeral Entries of Ireland (London, 1909?), pp. 159–60. 102. H. Wood, A Guide to the Records deposited in the Public Record Office of Ireland (Dublin, 1919), p. 42. 103. They were Jerome Alexander, Edward Ascough and John Pollexon. 104. CSPI, 1633–1647, pp. 26–7, 31. 105. Crawford (ed.), A Star Chamber Court in Ireland, p. 73. 106. Comment. Rinucc., II, p. 489. 107. W. N. Osborough, ‘Barry, James, first Baron Barry of Santry (1603–1673)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/1561, accessed 7 May 2009]). 108. At the turn of the century the lord chancellor received an annual payment of £440 4s, the master of rolls, £192 4s 5d, a master of chancery, £26 23s 4d, and Sir Dominic Sarsfield, as chief justice of Munster, £133 6s 8d; CSPI 1603–1606, pp. 430–1.

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Notes to pp. 228–33

109. Crawford (ed.), A Star Chamber Court in Ireland, pp. 115–17. 110. Barnard, ‘Lawyers and the Law’, p. 272. 111. CSPI, 1625–1632, p. 490. 112. Crawford (ed.), A Star Chamber Court in Ireland, p. 349. 113. Bernadette Cunningham, ‘Political and Social Change in the Lordships of Clanricard and Thomond, 1596–1641’ (unpublished MA thesis, National University of Ireland, University College Galway, 1979), p. 167. 114. CSPI, 1608–1610, p. 91; CSPI, 1615–1625, p. 524; CSPI, 1625–1632, pp. 549, 626; CSPI, 1647–1660, pp. 53, 126; Acts of the Privy Council of England, July 1628–April 1629 (London, 1958), pp 164, 290–1. 115. CSPI, 1625–1632, p. 478. 116. Crawford (ed.), A Star Chamber Court in Ireland, p. 390; Knowler (ed.), Letters, I, p. 245. 117. CSPI, 1603–1606, p. 452. 118. Knowler (ed.), Letters, I, p. 348. 119. NLI, unpublished calendar of the Lismore Papers, p. 187. 120. Monsignor John Hanly (ed.), The Letters of Saint Oliver Plunkett 1625–1681, Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland (Dublin, 1979), p. 127. 121. The Information of Hubert Bourk, Gent, touching the popish plot in Ireland, carried on by the conspiracies of the Earl of Tyrone . . . delivered first by this informant before the Lord Lieutenant and council in Ireland in March 1678, and to His Majesty and both Houses of Parliament in November 1680 . . . (London, 1680), p. 5. 122. Ibid., pp. 5, 6–11, 13, 20–7. 123. Julian C. Walton, ‘Power, Richard, first earl of Tyrone (1629/30–1690)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/22670, accessed 19 May 2009]). 124. CSPI, 1615–1625, p. 121. 125. Quoted in Cunningham, ‘Political and Social Change in the Lordships of Clanricard and Thomond, 1596–1641’, p. 167. 126. CSPI, 1647–1660, pp. 245–8, 340–3. 127. CSPI, 1633–1647, pp. 28, 29, 36. 128. Ibid., pp. 275–6. 129. Ohlmeyer, Civil War and Restoration, p. 289. 130. Gilbert (ed.), Irish Confederation, I, pp. 36–8 (quote p. 36). 131. Hamish Scott, ‘ “Acts of time and power”: The Consolidation of Aristocracy in Seventeenth-Century Europe, c.1580–1720’, Bulletin of the German Historical Institute, 30 (2008), pp. 18–19; MacHardy, ‘The Rise of Absolutism’, pp. 407–38, 416, and War, Religion and Court Patronage in Habsburg Austria: The Social and Cultural Dimensions of Political Interaction, 1521–1622 (London, 2003), pp. 183–207; R. J. W. Evans, The Making of the Habsburg Monarchy 1550–1700 (Oxford, 1979), pp. 195–216.

Chapter Eight: Early Stuart Parliaments   1. This chapter draws on Jane Ohlmeyer, ‘Parliament and Representation in Early Modern Ireland’ in Maija Jansson (ed.), Parliaments, Peoples, and Powers (1603–1800) (Basingstoke, 2006), pp. 113–32, and Jane Ohlmeyer, ‘The Irish Peers, Political Power and Parliament, 1640–41’ in Ciaran Brady and Jane Ohlmeyer (eds.), British Interventions in Early Modern Ireland (Cambridge, 2004), pp. 161–86.   2. Kevin Sharpe, ‘Crown, Parliament and Locality: Government and Communication in Early Stuart England’, English Historical Review, 101 (1986), pp. 339–50.   3. The Earl of Castlehaven’s Review . . . (London, 1684), p. 40.   4. An act of 1542 restricted the county franchise to 40-shilling freeholders and ensured that neither body genuinely represented the interests of the electorate; Tadhg Ó hAnnracháin, ‘Imagining Political Representation in Seventeenth-Century Ireland’ in Robert Armstrong and Tadhg Ó hAnnracháin (eds.), Community in Early Modern Ireland (Dublin, 2006).   5. William Brereton, Travels in Holland, the United Provinces, England, Scotland and Ireland, 1634–1635, ed. and publ. by Edward Hawkins, printed for the Chetham Society, vol. 1 (Manchester 1844.); republished by CELT: Corpus of Electronic Texts: a project of University College, Cork College Road, Cork, Ireland – http://www.ucc.ie/celt (2007); consulted 16 June 2009, p. 380.   6. Brian Jackson (ed.), ‘A Document on the Parliament of 1613 from St. Isidore’s College, Rome’, Analecta Hibernica, 33 (1986), p. 50.

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  7. Sir John Davies, Historical Tracts (London, 1786), p. 309.   8. Quoted in Aidan Clarke, ‘Colonial Constitutional Attitudes in Ireland, 1640–1660’, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, 90, Section C, 11 (1990), p. 359.   9. Historians have long recognized the importance of studying Irish parliamentary history, despite the incomplete nature of the record. There are no diaries, few division lists, and the printed journals of the Irish Commons only began in 1613 and those for the Lords in 1634, Journal of the House of Commons . . . of Ireland (28 vols., Dublin, 1753–91) and Journals of the Irish House of Lords of the kingdom of Ireland (8 vols., Dublin, 1779–1800), I (1634–98). Even then there are glaring omissions. Lord Mountmorres noted that the journals of the Commons were ‘defective’ until 1764 and that the proceedings for the years between 1641 and 1647 were only recovered during the later seventeenth century, The history of the principal transactions of the Irish parliament (1634–66) (2 vols., London, 1792; reprinted Shannon, 1971), II, p. 71. The statutes are extant, Statutes at large passed in the parliaments held in Ireland (1300–1800) (20 vols., Dublin, 1786–1801); also see Richard Bolton’s earlier compilation (from 3 Edward II to 11 James I), published in Dublin 1621, and A collection of all the statutes now in use in the kingdom of Ireland . . . (Dublin, 1678). 10. John McCafferty, ‘ “To follow the late precedents of England”: The Irish Impeachment Proceedings of 1641’ in D. S. Greer and N. M. Dawson (eds.), Mysteries and Solutions in Irish Legal History (Dublin, 2001). 11. Pre-1603 the parliament met in Dublin but also in Drogheda, Kilkenny, Cashel, Limerick and Trim. 12. For a full discussion of the later Stuart parliaments, see, chapter 12 below. 13. John McCavitt, Sir Arthur Chichester: Lord Deputy of Ireland 1605–16 (Belfast, 1998), chapter 11. 14. Hugh Kearney, Strafford in Ireland 1633–41. A Study in Absolutism (Cambridge reprint, 1989), chapter 7. 15. Michael Perceval-Maxwell, The Outbreak of the Irish Rebellion (Dublin, 1994), chapter 3: Bríd McGrath, ‘The Irish Elections of 1640–41’ in Ciaran Brady and Jane Ohlmeyer (eds.), British Interventions in Early Modern Ireland (Cambridge, 2004), pp. 186–206. 16. Coleman Dennehy, ‘Parliament in Ireland, 1661–6’ (unpublished MLitt thesis, University College Dublin, 2002) and O’Donoghue, ‘Parliament in Ireland under Charles II’ (unpublished MA thesis, University College Dublin, 1970). 17. On Poynings’ Law see D. B. Quinn, ‘The Early Interpretation of Poynings’ Law, 1494–1534’, Irish Historical Studies, 2 (1941); T. W. Moody and R. D. Edwards, ‘The History of Poynings’ Law, Part I, 1494–1615’, Irish Historical Studies, 8 (1941); Aidan Clarke, ‘The History of Poynings’ Law, 1615– 1641’, Irish Historical Studies, 18 (1972); Micheál Ó Siochrú, Confederate Ireland 1642–1649 (Dublin, 1999), and ‘Catholic Confederates and the Constitutional Relationship between Ireland and England, 1641–1649’ in Brady and Ohlmeyer (eds.), British Interventions, pp. 207–29; Charles Ivar MacGrath, ‘Government, Parliament and the Constitution: The Reinterpretation of Poynings’ Law, 1692–1714’, Irish Historical Studies, 35 (2006), pp. 160–172; James Kelly, Poynings’ Law and the Making of Law in Ireland, 1660–1800 (Dublin, 2007). 18. Constantia Maxwell, Irish History from Contemporary Sources (1509–1610) (London, 1923), pp. 101–2. 19. Michael Perceval-Maxwell, ‘Ireland and the Monarchy in the Early Stuart Multiple Kingdom’, Historical Journal, 34 (1991), p. 285. 20. C. H. Williams (ed.), English Historical Documents, c.1485–1558 (London, 1967), p. 474. I am grateful to David Menarry for bringing this reference to my attention. 21. Also, as Brendan Bradshaw has reminded us, ‘in taking the title of king, Henry [VIII] had contracted an obligation to the whole of Ireland as his kingdom, and to all its inhabitants as his subjects. He was pledged, in effect, to the political unification of Ireland under the jurisdiction of the Crown’; ‘The Beginnings of Modern Ireland’ in Brian Farrell (ed.), The Irish Parliamentary Tradition (Dublin and New York, 1973), p. 76. 22. CSPD, 1627–1628, p. 540. 23. The bulk of these lords were of New English and Protestant provenance (the Annesleys, Aungiers, Boyles, Brabazons, Chichesters, Conways, Cootes, Digbys, Joneses, Lamberts, Loftuses and Montgomerys) but a significant minority were from established stock (Butlers, O’Briens, Sarsfields and Taaffes). 24. The Old English have been meticulously researched by Aidan Clarke, The Old English in Ireland 1625–42 (New York, 1966), and ‘Colonial Identity in Early Seventeenth-Century Ireland’ in T.W. Moody (ed.), Nationality and the Pursuit of National Independence: Historical Studies XI (Belfast, l978). 25. For the figures see Bríd McGrath, ‘The Membership of the Irish House of Commons, 1613–15’ (unpublished MLitt thesis, Trinity College Dublin, 1986).

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26. M. C. Griffith (ed.), Irish Patent Rolls of James I: Facsimile of the Irish Record Commission’s Calendar Prepared Prior to 1830 (IMC, Dublin, 1966), p. 250. 27. R. Dudley Edwards, ‘Letter-book of Sir Arthur Chichester 1612–1614’, Analecta Hibernica, 8 (1938), p. 94. 28. McCavitt, Sir Arthur Chichester, pp. 181–2. 29. Griffith (ed.), Irish Patent Rolls of James I, pp. 397–8. 30. CSPI, 1611–1614, pp. 361–3, 439–40, 443. 31. Eithne Donnelly, ‘The Roches, Lords of Fermoy: The History of a Norman Irish Family’, Journal of the Cork Historical and Archaeological Society, second series, 41 (1936), p. 44. 32. Edwards, ‘Letter-book of Sir Arthur Chichester 1612–1614’, p. 100. 33. John McCavitt, ‘An Unspeakable Parliamentary Fracas: The Irish House of Commons, 1613’, Analecta Hibernica, 37 (1998), p. 234. 34. Griffith (ed.), Irish Patent Rolls of James I, pp. 398–9; McCavitt, ‘An Unspeakable Parliamentary Fracas’, and Sir Arthur Chichester, pp. 182–9; Victor Treadwell, ‘The House of Lords in the Irish Parliament of 1613–1615’, English Historical Review, 80 (1965); and Maurice Lee, Jr, Great Britain’s Solomon: James VI and I in His Three Kingdoms (Urbana, IL, 1990), pp. 220–3. 35. M. K. Walsh, ‘Destruction by Peace’: Hugh O’Neill after Kinsale (Monaghan, 1986), p. 333. 36. McCavitt, Sir Arthur Chichester, pp. 184, 187–8, 190–2; Grosart (ed.), Lismore Papers, second series, I, pp. 174–6, 205–10. 37. Victor Treadwell, Buckingham and Ireland, 1616–1628: A Study in Anglo-Irish Politics (Dublin, 1998). 38. Margaret Curtis Layton (ed.), The Council Book for the Province of Munster c.1599–1649 (IMC, Dublin, 2008), p. 453. 39. Lords Athenry, Cahir, De Courcy, Delvin, Dunboyne, Fermoy, Gormanston, Louth, Mountgarret, Slane and Trimleston appear to have been active. 40. Treadwell, ‘The House of Lords in the Irish Parliament of 1613–1615’, pp. 106–7; CSPI, 1611–1614, p. 332. Bourke of Castle Connell could not be called ‘by reason of the controversy between the uncle and the nephew’, CSPI, 1611–1614, pp. 346; also pp. 163, 332. 41. Treadwell, Buckingham and Ireland. 42. CSPI, 1615–1625, p. 475. 43. Aidan Clarke, The Graces 1625–41 (Dundalk, 1968). 44. For some Catholics, who wanted full religious toleration, they did not go far enough; Glyn Redworth, ‘Beyond Faith and Fatherland: The Appeal of the Catholics of Ireland, c.1623’, Archivium Hibernicum, 52 (1998), p. 52, pp. 3–23. 45. CSPI, 1625–32 (London, 1900), pp. 589–90. 46. SCL, Strafford MS 14 (19), Strafford’s ‘Humble opinion concerning a Parliament [in Ireland]’, annotated by John Coke, 12 April 1634, point no. 24. 47 W. Knowler (ed.), The Letters and Despatches . . . (2 vols., London, 1739), II, p. 408; CSPI, 1633–1647, pp. 237–8. 48. SCL, Strafford MS, 14 (117) for Baltimore. Also see 14 (126) and 14 (169) for Chaworth. 49. Knowler (ed.), Letters, I, p. 246, also p. 240. Also CSPI, 1633–1647, pp. 55, 59, 82, 93. 50. Journals of the Irish House of Lords of the kingdom of Ireland (8 vols., Dublin, 1779–1800), I (1634–98), I, p. 152. As a result 36 proxies were then dished out to eight Protestant lords who could be relied upon to support the government. Protestant ‘leaders’, who held proxies, in 1634 were Loftus of Ely, Baltinglass, Castle Stuart, Conway, Ormond, Moore of Drogheda, Esmond and Clandeboye. 51. Clarke, Old English, pp. 76, 84–9 (quote); CSPD, 1634–1635, p. 514. 52. William P. Kelly, ‘The Early Career of James Butler, twelfth earl, and first duke of Ormond (1610–1688), 1610–1643’ (unpublished PhD thesis, Cambridge, 1994), especially chapters 2 and 3. 53. For Mountnorris and Loftus of Ely see Brendan Kane, The Politics and Culture of Honour in Britain and Ireland, 1541–1641 (Cambridge, 2010), pp. 221–37. Jon G. Crawford (ed.), A Star Chamber Court in Ireland: The Court of Castle Chamber, 1571–1641 (Dublin, 2005), pp. 370–4, 577–82. 54. CSPI, 1633–1647 (London, 1901), p. 159. 55. To the Parliament of the Common-wealths of England, Scotland, and Ireland. The humble petition of Edward Earle of Meath in the dominion of Ireland (London, 1654). 56. Journals of the Irish House of Lords, I, p. 164. Dougal Shaw, ‘Thomas Wentworth and Monarchical Ritual in Early Modern Ireland’, Historical Journal, 49 (2006), pp. 331–55, especially, pp. 353–4. Conrad Russell, ‘The British Background to the Irish Rebellion of 1641’ reprinted in Unrevolutionary England, 1603–1642 (London, 1990), pp. 263–80, and Perceval-Maxwell, ‘Ireland and the Monarchy in the Early Stuart Multiple Kingdom’, pp. 279–95.

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57. Brendan Kane, ‘Scandal, Wentworth’s Deputyship and the Breakdown of Stuart Honour Politics’ in Brian Mac Cuarta (ed.), Reshaping Ireland 1550–1700: Colonization and its Consequences (Dublin, 2011), pp. 147–62. 58. Aidan Clarke, ‘A Discourse Between Two Councillors of State, the One of England, and the Other of Ireland (1642)’, Analecta Hibernica, 26 (1970), pp. 161–75. 59. Kane, The Politics and Culture of Honour, pp. 221–37, offers a detailed examination of all three. 60. The sentence of the Councell of vvarre . . . [London, 1641], pp. 18, 11–12, 15. Also see A True Copie of the Sentence of Warre pronounced against Sir Francis Annesley . . . (London, 1641). 61. Ohlmeyer, ‘The Irish Peers, Political Power and Parliament’; Bríd McGrath, ‘Parliament Men and the Confederate Association’ in Micheál Ó Siochrú (ed.), Kingdoms in Crisis: Ireland in the 1640s (Dublin, 2001), pp. 90–105; Aidan Clarke, ‘The Policies of the “Old English” in Parliament, 1640–41’ in J.L. McCracken (ed.) Historical Studies V (London, 1965). 62. Perceval-Maxwell, The Outbreak of the Irish Rebellion, pp. 137–9. 63. The house mandated on 11 February 1641 that no lord might be excused ‘without any just cause’ and fined delinquents accordingly, Journals of the Irish House of Lords, I, p. 149. Bríd McGrath has shown that Wentworth actively encouraged some of these absences to enhance the government’s ability to manage the Lords; see chapter 9 below. 64. Grosart (ed.), Lismore Papers, second series, IV, p. 106. 65. Ibid., first series, V, pp. 120, 131 (1639 proxy to Ormond), pp. 164–5. On 11 November the earl, along with his eldest son, Dungarvan, and Lord Herbert of Castle Island, who sat as MPs in the English Commons, witnessed Wentworth being charged with high treason. Cork noted wryly in his diary that Wentworth’s ‘dejection showes the uncertenty whereunto the greateste men are subject unto’. 66. They included Clandeboye, Esmond, Lecale and Thomond (though Thomond and Esmond re­­­ appeared for the fourth session). 67. Journals of the Irish House of Lords, I, p. 274. Also see Paul Christianson, ‘The Obliterated Portions of the House of Lords Journals Dealing with the Attainder of Strafford, 1641’, English Historical Review, 95 (1980), pp. 339–53. 68. Upper Ossory, Trimelston, Dunboyne, Antrim, Fingal, Thomond, Baltinglass, Clanmalier, Montgomery, Muskerry, Sarsfield of Kilmallock, Magennis of Iveagh acceded to their titles after 1634. 69. The term ‘activist’ has been used here to describe anyone who attended the Lords regularly, participated in debates, sat on committees (especially the important Committee of Privileges and Grievances), or served as members of delegations to England. 70. Bríd McGrath, ‘A Biographical Dictionary of the Membership of the Irish House of Commons 1640–1641’ (unpublished PhD thesis, Trinity College Dublin, 1997). Thus the sons of Mayo, Moore and Fingal sat as MPs; as did the brothers of Baltinglass, Digby of Geashill and Maguire. Kerry, Gormanston, Slane, Netterville, Fingal, Moore of Drogheda, Baltinglass, Trimelston, Slane, Sarsfield of Kilmallock either had a father-in-law, son-in-law or brother-in-law who sat in the Commons, while friends, clients or tenants of Antrim, Dunsany, Howth, Kerry, Lambert, Maguire, Muskerry, Netterville, Ormond, Sarsfield of Kilmallock, Slane served as MPs. 71. Journals of the Irish House of Lords, I, pp. 102, 106–7. 72. Knowler (ed.), Letters, II, p. 402. 73. Journals of the Irish House of Lords, I, p. 138. The proxy reforms of 1626 in the English House of Lords were the result of the concerted effort of the opposition peers; Jess Stoddart Flemion, ‘The Nature of Opposition in the House of Lords in the Early Seventeenth Century: A Revaluation’ in Clyve Jones and David Lewis Jones (eds.), Peers, Politics and Power: The House of Lords, 1603–1911 (London, 1986), p. 8. 74. Journals of the Irish House of Lords, I, p. 142, also p. 147. 75. Ibid., pp. 152–3, 157, and CSPI, 1633–1647, pp. 261–2. 76. CSPI, 1633–1647, pp. 261–3. With the exception of the spiritual lords these petitions enjoyed the overwhelming support of the peers, Journals of the Irish House of Lords, I, p. 150. 77. Clarke, ‘The Policies of the “Old English” in Parliament’, p. 93. Also see Aidan Clarke, ‘Patrick Darcy and the Constitutional Relationship between Ireland and Britain’ in Jane Ohlmeyer (ed.), Kingdom or Colony: Political Thought in Seventeenth-Century Ireland (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 38–46. 78. CSPI, 1633–1647, p. 259. This had been in the pipeline since the previous November, John McCafferty, ‘ “To follow the late precedents of England”: The Irish Impeachment Proceedings of 1641’ in D. S. Greer and N. M. Dawson (eds.), Mysteries and Solutions in Irish Legal History (Dublin, 2001), pp. 51–72. 79. John Rushworth (ed.), The tryal of Thomas, earl of Strafford (London, 1680), and Maija Jansson, Proceedings of the Long Parliament, III (Rochester, NY, 2002).

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Notes to pp. 243–5

80. Knowler (ed.), Letters, I, pp. 479, 508, and II, pp. 2, 6, 131, 152; Clarendon, History of the Rebellion, I, pp. 293, 295. 81. They included Dillon of Costello-Gallen, Kildare, Loftus of Ely, Meath, Mountnorris, Netterville, Roche of Fermoy, Valentia and Westmeath; Perceval-Maxwell, The Outbreak of the Irish Rebellion, pp. 95–6, 101; HMC, Report 4. Part 1. Report and Appendix (London, 1874), pp. 44, 51, 58, 61, 68, 101, 102; Rushworth (ed.), The tryal of Thomas, earl of Strafford, pp. 16, 18; Journals of the [English] HL, IV, 1628–42, pp. 151, 168; CSPI, 1647–1660, pp. 253–4. 82. Sidney Lee, ‘Annesley, Francis, second Viscount Valentia (bap. 1586, d. 1660)’, rev. Sean Kelsey, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/563, accessed 19 May 2009]). 83. A Speech made before the Lords in The Upper House of Parliament in Ireland, by Captian Audley Mervin . . . (London, 1641). Also see Captaine Audley Mervin’s speech . . . (London, 1641); Irelands complaint against Sir George Ratcliffe . . . (London, 1641), and Sixteene queres propounded by the Parliament of Ireland . . . [London, 1641]. Interestingly, a copy of Mervyn’s speech to the Irish House of Lords, 4 March 1640/1, is extant in the Bristol archive, TNA, PRO 31/8/198, transcripts of the Digby MSS 1605–1695, p. 565; together with lists of the February grievances from the Irish House of Lords, pp. 537, 543. 84. Rushworth (ed.), The tryal of Thomas, earl of Strafford, pp. 14, 113, 159; Journals of the [English] HL, IV, 1628–42, p. 188. 85. Rushworth (ed.), The tryal of Thomas, earl of Strafford, p. 113; Sheila Lambert, ‘The Opening of the Long Parliament’, Historical Journal, 28 (1984), pp. 275–6, 279, 281, suggests that, despite John Pym’s prominence as spokesman in the impeachment proceedings, ‘the commoners were very much junior partners’ (p. 276). 86. Patrick Little, ‘The Geraldine Ambitions of the first Earl of Cork’, Irish Historical Studies, 23 (2002), pp. 151–68. 87. They included Lords Docwra, Fitzwilliam, Kilmallock, Muskerry, Roscommon and Valentia; Grosart (ed.), Lismore Papers, first series, V, pp. 9, 17, 171, 184, 210–11, 232–3. 88. Little, ‘The Earl of Cork’, p. 624. 89. Ties of debt associated him with Peregrine Bannister (MP for Clonakilty) and Patrick Barnewall of Kilbrew (MP for Trim). He was related to Joshua Boyle (MP for Ardee), and family marriages linked him to a further 12 MPs including Viscount Chichester’s second son, John (MP for Dungannon), Simon Digby (MP for Philipstown) and Sir William Parsons, master of the Court of Wards and MP for Wicklow County; McGrath, ‘A Biographical Dictionary’, pp. 51, 55, 75, 82, 106, 120, 135, 145, 166, 209, 211, 233–4, 237, 245, 257, 267, 275, 285, 292. 90. Sir Richard Blake, MP for County Galway in 1640; Sir Valentine Blake, MP for Galway in 1640; Geoffrey Browne, MP for Athenry; Patrick Darcy, MP for [Tyrone]1640; Roebuck Lynch, MP for Galway; and Richard Martin, MP for Augher in 1640; McGrath, ‘A Biographical Dictionary’, pp. 69, 70, 81, 126, 202, 209. Also see Jane Ohlmeyer, ‘Irish Recusant Lawyers during the Reign of Charles I’ and McGrath, ‘Parliament Men and the Confederate Association’ in Ó Siochrú (ed.), Kingdoms in Crisis, pp. 63–89 and 90–105. 91. Bourke was later described by the Protestant council in Dublin as ‘a rigid papist, a man suspected for a fomenter of the rebellion’. This is doubtful, but he certainly was involved in the controversial ‘Antrim plot’ and he served as one of Clanricarde’s envoys to the king and Parliament in the early months of the rebellion; Patrick Little, ‘ “Blood and Friendship”: The Earl of Essex’s Protection of the Earl of Clanricarde’s Interests, 1641–6’, English Historical Review, 112 (1997), p. 934, and Jane Ohlmeyer, ‘The “Antrim Plot” of 1641 – A Myth?’, Historical Journal, 35 (1992), pp. 905–19, and ‘The “Antrim Plot” of 1641: A Rejoinder?’, Historical Journal, 27 (1994), pp. 431–7. 92. While Ormond attended Parliament regularly from October 1640, he was largely absent from the first session thanks to his military command and his wife’s difficult pregnancy. 93. McCafferty, ‘ “To follow the late precedents of England”, pp. 56, 60, 68. 94. Kelly, ‘The Early Career of James Butler’, pp. 143, 146–60. They eventually agreed on a compromise whereby Lowther and Bramhall were committed, and Bolton was given bail; Journals of the Irish House of Lords, I, pp. 166, 167, 170, 175, 176, 177, also pp. 309–10. 95. McGrath, ‘A Biographical Dictionary’, pp. 63, 93, 126, 146, 150, 211, and Kelly, ‘The Early Career of James Butler’, pp. 93–6. 96. David Edwards, The Ormond Lordship in County Kilkenny, 1515–1642: The Rise and Fall of Butler Feudal Power (Dublin, 2003), pp. 302–3. 97. James Graves, ‘Anonymous Account of the Early Life and Marriage of James, first Duke of Ormond’, Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries, 7 (1862–3), pp. 289–90.

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  98. HMC, Report on the Manuscripts of the Earl of Egmont, vol. 1, part I (London, 1905), pp. 130, 140; Knowler (ed.), Letters, I, pp. 97, 352.   99. Knowler (ed.), Letters, II, pp. 257, 360. 100. Perceval-Maxwell, The Outbreak of the Irish Rebellion, pp. 123–4; Gilbert (ed.), Irish Confederation, I, p. 219. 101. By the end of April one of the lords justices noted how ‘All the Lords of the Pale came to press them, and with one voice spake against plantations in general, which is now the main work of the papists’, CSPI, 1633–1647, p. 279. 102. Lambert had gained parliamentary experience in the English House of Commons (he had sat as the MP for Bossiney) during the later 1620s and had witnessed the various impeachment proceedings there. 103. Knowler (ed.), Letters, I, p. 334; Grosart (ed.), The Lismore Papers, second series, IV, p. 106. 104. Journals of the Irish House of Lords, I, pp. 169, 179. Patrick Darcy and Richard Martin acted for Lambert, providing an interesting possible link with Clanricarde. 105. Grosart (ed.), Lismore Papers, second series, IV, p. 208. 106. CSPI, 1633–1647, p. 302. 107. Ibid., pp. 315–16. 108. Ibid., p. 330; HMC, Ormonde, NS, II, p. 19. In February 1641, Charles had tried to placate the leading English dissident peers by making them privy councillors; Conrad Russell, The Fall of the British Monarchies, 1637–42 (Oxford, 1991), pp. 263–4. 109. CSPI, 1633–1647, pp. 317–20, 326. 110. [Arthur Annesley, earl of Anglesey,] A letter from a person of honour in the countrey written to the Earl of Castlehaven: being observations and reflections upon His Lordships memoires concerning the wars of Ireland (London, 1681). Ormond responded with A letter from His Grace James Duke of Ormond, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, in answer to the Right Honourable Arthur Earl of Anglesey Lord Privy-Seal . . . (London, 1682), p. 30. 111. CSPI, 1633–1647, p. 269; Grosart (ed.), Lismore Papers, first series, V, p. 184. 112. Journals of the Irish House of Lords, I, p. 150. 113. Clarke, Old English, p. 151. 114. Cork’s son-in-law, Goring, and eldest son, Dungarvan, were involved in the former; Little, ‘The Earl of Cork’, pp. 621–9; Russell, Unrevolutionary England, chapter 16, and Ohlmeyer, ‘The “Antrim Plot” of 1641 – A Myth?’, pp. 905–19. 115. Journals of the Irish House of Lords, I, pp. 146, 154, 156, 158, 168, 174; CSPI, 1633–1647, p. 268; Kelly, ‘The Early Career of James Butler’, pp. 148–55. 116. CSPI, 1633–1647, pp. 256, 288, 298. 117. Ibid., p. 285. 118. Mary Hickson (ed.), Ireland in the Seventeenth Century (2 vols., London, 1884), I, p. 333. 119. Ibid., p. 340. 120. CSPI, 1633–1647, p. 339. 121. John Temple, The Irish Rebellion . . . (London, 1679), pp. 135–6. 122. Lambert, ‘The Opening of the Long Parliament’, pp. 265–87. 123. Quoted in Aidan Clarke, The Old English in Ireland, 1625–42 (New York, 1966), p. 181. 124. They also insisted that the journals of both houses be examined to ensure that nothing there appears ‘to the blemish, dishonour or prejudice of his majesties Roman Catholick Subjects’, The additionall propositions of His Maiestie, sent by the Earl of Ormond, and other His Majesties Commissioners in Ireland, under the Great Seal of Ireland, unto the rebels and Roman Catholiques there; for a conclusion of peace, if they will accept thereof (London, 1645). 125. Yet the need to clear their names became a matter of honour, and in 1686 and 1687 Catholic lords petitioned successfully for the repeal of ‘the outlawries of their ancestors for the rebellion of 1641’, CSPD, Jan. 1686–May 1687, p. 122; CSPD, June 1687–Feb. 1689, pp. 9, 11, 13.

Chapter Nine: Civil War   1. This section draws on Jane Ohlmeyer, ‘The Baronial Context of the Civil War in Ireland’ in John Adamson (ed.), The Civil Wars (London, 2008), pp. 106–24. Also see Keith Brown, Noble Power in Scotland from the Reformation to the Revolution (Edinburgh, 2011), chapter 5.   2. For further details see Ciaran Brady, ‘The Captains’ Games: Army and Society in Elizabethan Ireland’, in Thomas Bartlett and Keith Jeffery (eds.), A Military History of Ireland (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 144–7.

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Notes to pp. 251–8

  3. Allan I. Macinnes, ‘Crown, Clans and Fine: The ‘Civilising’ of Scottish Gaeldom, 1587–1638’, Northern Scotland, 13 (1993), p. 33.   4. David Sweetman, The Medieval Castles in Ireland (Cork, 1999), pp. 192–3; D. M. Waterman, ‘Some Irish Seventeenth-Century Houses and their Architectural Ancestry’ in E. M. Jope (ed.), Studies in Building History: Essays in Recognition of the Work of B. H. St. O’Neill (London, 1961), pp. 251–74; David Newman Johnson, ‘Portumna Castle: A Little-known Early Survey and Some Observations’ in John Bradley (ed.), Settlement and Society in Medieval Ireland: Studies Presented to F. X. Martin (Kilkenny, 1988), pp. 477–500.   5. David Dickson, Old World Colony: Cork and South Munster 1630–1830 (Cork, 2005), pp. 48–50.   6. CSPI, 1625–1632, pp. 81, 398; Jane Ohlmeyer, Civil War and Restoration in the Three Stuart Kingdoms: The Career of Randal MacDonnell, Marquis of Antrim (Dublin, 2001), pp. 32, 47–8, 84, 94.   7. SNA, GD 406/1/1154.   8. Rolf Loeber and Geoffrey Parker, ‘The Military Revolution in Seventeenth-Century Ireland’ in Jane Ohlmeyer (ed.), Ireland from Independence to Occupation, 1641–1660 (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 66–88; Pádraig Lenihan, Confederate Catholics at War, 1642–49 (Cork, 2001); ‘Conclusion: Ireland’s Military Revolution(s)’ in Pádraig Lenihan (ed.), Conquest and Resistance: War in Seventeenth-Century Ireland (Leiden, 2001), pp. 345–7, and Pádraig Lenihan, ‘Confederate Military Strategy, 1643–7’ in Micheál Ó Siochrú (ed.), Kingdoms in Crisis: Ireland in the 1640s (Dublin, 2001), pp. 158–75.   9. Christopher Storrs and H. M. Scott, ‘The Military Revolution and the European Nobility, c.1600–1800’, War in History, 3 (1996), pp. 1–43, 3 (quote). 10. Exceeding welcome news from Ireland being a copie of a letter sent from Dundalke to Mr. Dudley Norton . . . (London, 1642), p. 1. 11. TCD, MS 840, f. 13. 12. Gilbert (ed.), Irish Confederation, I, pp. 64–6. 13. A true relation of divers great defeats given against the rebells of Ireland (London, 1642). A number of the pamphlets published during the 1640s also drew attention to rebellions and baronial revolts of the sixteenth century. For example, see Humble Instructions for the fetling [sic] of Garrisons in Ireland whereby That Countrey may be sooner reduced, if the War be prosecuted with effect . . . (London, 1646). 14. For an excellent evaluation of the military texts dating from the 1640s and the Restoration, including those by Bellings and Castlehaven, see Deana Rankin, Between Spenser and Swift: English Writing in Seventeenth-Century Ireland (Cambridge, 2005). 15. Raymond Gillespie, ‘The Social Thought of Richard Bellings’ in Ó Siochrú (ed.), Kingdoms in Crisis, pp. 212–38. Bellings’s history is reprinted in Gilbert (ed.), Irish Confederation. 16. [James Touchet,] earl of Castlehaven, The Earl of Castlehaven’s review, or, his Memoirs of his engagement and carriage in the Irish Wars (London, 1684). 17. Gilbert (ed.), Contemporary History, I, pp. 84, 145–6, 172. 18. Ibid., pp. 207–8. 19. W. Knowler (ed.), The earl of Strafforde’s letters and despatches with an essay towards his life by Sir George Radcliffe . . . (2 vols., London, 1739), II, p. 319. 20. Ibid., p. 300. 21. Grosart (ed.), Lismore Papers, second series, IV, p. 48. 22. Ibid., first series, V, p. 103. 23. Ibid., p. 78. 24. Ibid., pp. 12, 50–1, 134. 25. Kevin Forkan, ‘Scottish-Protestant Ulster and the Crisis of the Three Kingdoms 1637–1652’ (unpublished PhD thesis, National University of Ireland, University College Galway, 2003). 26. Grosart (ed.), Lismore Papers, first series, V, p. 175; Sir John Temple, The Irish Rebellion . . . (London, 1679), p. 47; the infantry commanders were Lords Blayney, Castle Stewart, Docwra, Esmond, Folliott, Lambert, Viscounts Baltinglass and Ranelagh, the earl of Clanricarde, and the cavalry commanders were the Lords Cromwell, Dillon, Grandison, Moore, Ormond and Wilmot. 27. Bloody nevves from Norvvich. . . . Likewise here is added the last bloody newes from Ireland. Consisting of a bloody tragedy acted upon the body of the Lord Coffeld a Protestant. . . . (London, 1641). 28. TCD, MS 836, ff. 163–4, and Mary Hickson (ed.), Ireland in the Seventeenth Century (2 vols., London, 1884), I, pp. 203–6 and 298–302. 29. HMC, Ormonde, NS, II, pp. 1–3. 30. Temple, The Irish Rebellion, p. 39; according to Maguire’s confession, ‘all the Lords and Gentlemen in the Kingdom that were Papists were engaged in this plot’. 31. HMC, Ormonde, NS, II, p. 4; Bodl., Carte MS 2, f. 175 and f. 197. 32. Temple, The Irish Rebellion, pp. 97–8, 103; Gilbert (ed.), Irish Confederation, I, p. 21.

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531

33. Contemporaries later debated the wisdom of this decision. Castlehaven argued that it proved disastrous and only served to irritate ‘the whole nation’; Castlehaven, The Earl of Castlehaven’s review, p. 34. Sir John Temple maintained that national security depended upon it, The Irish Rebellion, p. 244. 34. Gilbert (ed.), Irish Confederation, I, pp. 20, 24, 26, 28, 31. 35. Castlehaven, The Earl of Castlehaven’s review, p. 35; Temple, The Irish Rebellion, p. 139; HMC, Ormonde, NS, II, p. 25. 36. Castlehaven, The Earl of Castlehaven’s review, p. 40; also Temple, The Irish Rebellion, pp. 244–50. 37. Temple, The Irish Rebellion, pp. 274–9. 38. CSPD, 1641–1643, p. 204. 39. HMC, Ormonde, NS, II, p. 42. 40. In November the lords justices requested military commands for Lords Baltinglass, Blayney, Docwra, Folliott and Lambert; HMC, Ormonde, NS, II, p. 11. 41. BL, Add. MS 46,926, f. 34; MS, A Discourse (London, 1642), pp. 4–6. 42. Gilbert (ed.), Contemporary History, II, p. 55. 43. HMC, Ormonde, OS, II, p. 303. 44. Increasingly the most effective Protestant commanders hailed from relatively humble backgrounds. For others, such as Mark Trevor or the Coote brothers, civil war provided a route to ennoblement. For the Protestant war effort see Robert Armstrong, Protestant War: The ‘British’ of Ireland and the Wars of the Three Kingdoms (Manchester, 2005), and Kevin Forkan, ‘Scottish-Protestant Ulster and the Crisis of the Three Kingdoms 1637–1652’ (unpublished PhD thesis, National University of Ireland, University College Galway, 2003); HMC, Ormonde, NS, II, p. 155. 45. A continuation of the tryumphant and courgious [sic] proceedings of the protestant army in Ireland. . . . (London, 1642), p. 1. 46. Grosart (ed.), Lismore Papers, second series, IV, pp. 267–8. 47. TCD, MS 813, ff. 330v, 331v. 48. The last ioyfull newes from Ireland . . . (London, 1642), p. 3. 49. The English and Scottish protestants happy tryumph over the rebels in Ireland . . . (London, 1642), p. 7. 50. Grosart (ed.), Lismore Papers, second series, IV, pp. 267–8; TCD, MS 840, f. 27. 51. An exact relation, of a battell fought by the Lord Moore, against the rebels in Ireland; with the number of them that were slain on both sides (London, 1641), pp. 5–6. The viscount’s younger brother, Francis, became captain of a cavalry troop and, as observers noted, conducted himself with great honour and bravery. 52. Gilbert (ed.), Contemporary History, I, p. 31. Kevin Forkan, ‘Inventing a Protestant Icon: The Strange Death of Sir Charles Coote, 1642’ in David Edwards, Padraig Lenihan and Clodagh Tait (eds.), Age of Atrocity: Violence in Political Conflict in Early Modern Ireland (Dublin, 2007), pp. 204–18. 53. The latest and truest nevves from Ireland, or, A true relation of the happy victory obtained against the rebels before Droheda (London, 1642), p. 5. 54. May the 14. 1642. A true relation of the chiefe passages in Ireland, from the 25th of April to this present (London, 1642), p. 3. 55. Gilbert (ed.), Contemporary History, I, p. 31. 56. Gilbert (ed.), Irish Confederation, I, pp. 64–6. 57. Thomas Carte, History of the life of James, first duke of Ormond (2nd edn., 6 vols., Oxford, 1851), V, pp. 261, 269. Also see Patrick Little, ‘ “Blood and Friendship”: The Earl of Essex’s Protection of the Earl of Clanricarde’s Interests, 1641–6’, English Historical Review, 112 (1997), pp. 927–41. 58. John Smyth, 11th earl of Clanricarde, The Memoirs and Letters of Ulick, Marquis of Clanricarde, and Earl of Saint Albans (London, 1758), p. 38. 59. Aidan Clarke, The Old English in Ireland, 1625–42 (New York, 1966), pp. 181, 183, 191. 60. Gilbert (ed.), Irish Confederation, I, pp. 36–8 (quote p. 36). 61. TCD, MS 816, ff. 4–7, 23, and MS 816, ff. 44–51v. 62. Clanricarde, Memoirs and Letters, pp. 258, also 171–2. 63. HMC, Ormonde, NS, II, p. 163. 64. Eustace Budgell, Memoirs of the lives and characters of the illustrious family of the Boyles: particularly of the late eminently learned Charles, earl of Orrery . . . (London, 1737), p. 38. 65. Ibid., p. 39. 66. BL, Add. MS 25,277, f. 58; Gilbert (ed.), Irish Confederation, I, pp. 67–9. Thomas Fitzpatrick, ‘Waterford during the Civil War’, Journal of the Waterford and South-East of Ireland Archaeological Society, 15 (1912), p. 142.

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Notes to pp. 260–5

  67. The others were Lords Cahir, Castle Connell, Dunboyne, Fermoy, Ikerrin, Louth, Magennis of Iveagh, Maguire, Netterville, Slane, Trimleston and Upper Ossory, together with Elizabeth, dowager countess of Kildare. This list has been compiled from R. C. Simington and John MacLellan, ‘Oireachtas Library List of outlaws, 1641–1647’, Analecta Hibernica, 23 (1966), pp. 319–67; Gilbert (ed.), Irish Confederation, III, pp. 340–86, and CSPD, June 1687–Feb. 1689, p. 9. In June 1687 the outlawries of a number (Fermoy, Mountgarret, Magennis of Iveagh, Dunboyne, Trimleston, Louth, Castle Connell, Cahir and Maguire of Enniskillen) were reversed.   68. Gilbert (ed.), Irish Confederation, I, pp. 35, 39, 41; Carte, Ormond, V, pp. 280–1. According to Castlehaven, Coote’s forces ‘frightened the nobility and gentry round about, who seeing, the harmless country people, without respect to age, or sex, thus barbarously murdered’; Castlehaven, The Earl of Castlehaven’s Review. . . . p. 36.   69. Gilbert (ed.), Irish Confederation, I, p. 244; also HMC, Ormonde, NS, II, p. 52.   70. Clarendon, Rebellion, IV, pp. 419–21.   71. Journals of the Irish House of Lords of the kingdom of Ireland (8 vols., Dublin, 1779–1800), I, pp. 189, 200.   72. TCD, MS 810, ff. 318r–318v.   73. TCD, MS 813, f. 325.   74. Joseph Cope, ‘The Experience of Survival during the 1641 Irish Rebellion’, Historical Journal, 46 (2003), pp. 295–316.   75. TCD, MS 812, f. 200.   76. TCD, MS 821, ff. 202, 202v.   77. TCD, MS 822 ff. 128r.   78. TCD, MS 815, f. 71.   79. Ibid., ff. 64, 66v.   80. William Palmer, ‘Gender, Violence, and Rebellion in Tudor and Early Stuart Ireland’, Sixteenth Century Journal, 23 (1992), pp. 699–712.   81. Naomi McAreavey, ‘ “Paper bullets”: Gendering the 1641 Rebellion in the Writings of Lady Elizabeth Dowdall and Lettice Fitzgerald, Baroness of Offaly’ in Thomas Herron and Michael Potterton (eds.), Ireland in the Renaissance, c.1540–1660 (Dublin, 2007), pp. 311–24.   82. Gilbert (ed.), Contemporary History, I, p. 28.   83. C. W. Fitzgerald, The Earls of Kildare and their Ancestors 1057 to 1773 (Dublin, 1858), pp. 229–31.   84. Frederick Fitzgerald, ‘Lettice, Baroness of Offaly and the Siege of her Castle of Geashill, 1642’, Journal of the Kildare Archaeological Society, 3 (1902), pp. 418–24, p. 423 (for the quote).   85. TCD, MS 834, f. 74v.   86. For a detailed account of why Westmeath did not support the insurgents, see Gilbert (ed.), Contemporary History, I, pp. 35–6.   87. TCD, MS 840, ff. 12–12v.   88. TCD, MS 817, ff. 65–6.   89. TCD, MS 835, ff. 22–3.   90. TCD, MS 817, f. 9v.   91. Ibid., ff. 6–6v.   92. Cope, ‘The Experience of Survival during the 1641 Irish Rebellion’, pp. 295–316.   93. TCD, MS 812, f. 213.   94. TCD, MS 813, ff. 285r–286v.   95. Ibid., ff. 360r–360v.   96. TCD, MS 838, f. 22.   97. A complete listing of these instances can be found in Joseph Cope, ‘ “Ireland Must Be Looked After”: Problems of Survival and Relief during the 1641 Irish Rebellion’ (unpublished PhD dissertation, Pennsylvania State University, 2001), pp. 115–16, 383–7, and Joseph Cope, England and the 1641 Irish Rebellion (Woodbridge, Suffolk, 2009).   98. TCD, MS 812, ff. 197–8.   99. William Smyth, Map-making, Landscapes and Memory: A Geography of Colonial and Early Modern Ireland c.1530–1750 (Cork, 2006), p. 115. 100. Gilbert (ed.), Contemporary History, I, p. 15. 101. Quoted in Clarke, The Old English, p. 196. 102. Gilbert (ed.), Irish Confederation, I, pp. 67–9. 103. Comment. Rinucc., I, p. 471. 104. A certaine and true relation of a great and glorious victory obtained by the Protestant party in Ireland . . . (London, 1642), p. 4.

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Notes to pp. 265–9

533

105. Fitzpatrick, ‘Waterford during the Civil War’, pp. 140–1; Gilbert (ed.), Irish Confederation, V, p. 25. 106. Grosart (ed.), Lismore Papers, second series, V, p. 99. 107. A letter of the Earle of Corke, to the state at Dublin; and sent over from thence by the governour, to his lady in London (London, 1642), pp. 1–5; Grosart (ed.), Lismore Papers, second series, V, p. 89. 108. Grosart (ed.), Lismore Papers, second series, V, pp. 99–103, and first series, V, pp. 201–8. 109. BL, Egerton MS 80, f. 33. 110. A certificate From the Lord Moor and Sir Henry Titchborne (London, 1642). 111. A copie of a letter sent by Mr. Speaker, to all the corporations in England . . . (London, 1642). 112. David Dickson, Old World Colony: Cork and South Munster 1630–1830 (Cork, 2005), p. 31, quoting Smith, Cork, II, p. 125. 113. Grosart (ed.), Lismore Papers, first series, V, pp. 227–31. 114. Fitzpatrick, ‘Waterford during the Civil War’, pp. 138–9. 115. Gilbert (ed.), Irish Confederation, II, p. 29; Grosart (ed.), Lismore Papers, second series, V, pp. 24–5. 116. BL, Egerton MS 80, ff. 22r–22v. 117. A late and true relation from Ireland: of the warlike and bloody proceedings of the rebellious papists in that kingdome, from Novemb. 1. to this present, 1641 (London, 1641), p. 2. 118. Gilbert (ed.), Irish Confederation, II, p. 29; A true relation of certaine nevvs from the vvest of Ireland (London, 1642), p. 3; Grosart (ed.), Lismore Papers, second series, V, p. 93. 119. A iournall of the most memorable passages in Ireland. Especially that victorious battell at Munster, beginning the 25. of August 1642 . . . (London, 1642), pp. 1, 3–5, 7, 9–10; Grosart (ed.), Lismore Papers, first series, V, p. 214. 120. Grosart (ed.), Lismore Papers, second series, V, pp. 215–16; NLI, MS 6,900. 121. Carte, Ormond, V, p. 272. 122. A certaine and true relation of a great and glorious victory obtained by the Protestant party in Ireland, under the conduct of the Lord Inchequin (London, 1642), p. 7. 123. A great and glorious victory obtained by the Lord Inchequin, Lord President of Munster, over the Irish rebels . . . ([London], 1647), p. 5. 124. Donough O’Brien, History of the O’Briens (London, 1949), Ivar O’Brien, Murrough the Burner: A Life of Murrough, Sixth Baron and First Earl of Inchiquin, 1614–74 (Whitegate, Co. Clare, 1991), and John A. Murphy, ‘Inchiquin’s Changes of Religion’, Journal of Cork Historical and Archaeological Society, 72 (1967), pp. 58–68. 125. Patrick Little, Lord Broghill and the Cromwellian Union with Ireland and Scotland (Woodbridge, Suffolk, 2004). 126. Toby Barnard, ‘Boyle, Roger, first earl of Orrery (1621–1679)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, Sept. 2004; online edn., May 2006 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/ article/3138, accessed 19 March 2009]). 127. Patrick Little, ‘O’Brien, Murrough, first earl of Inchiquin (c.1614–1674)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/20463, accessed 19 March 2009]). The anonymous author of the Aphorismical Discovery of Treasonable Faction described Lord Inchiquin as a ‘poore waveringe panther [who] with soe many jumpes and leapinge from Kinge to Parliament, from Parliament to Kinge, and now the 4th or 5th of his unconstant whillinges to Ormond, (that poysonfull aconite)’, Gilbert (ed.), Contemporary History, I, p. 182. 128. BL, Add. MS 20,100, ff. 3–4v, 14–15; Grosart (ed.), Lismore Papers, second series, IV, pp. 241–2. 129. TCD, MS 829, ff. 437–8. 130. Gilbert (ed.), Irish Confederation, I, pp. 136–7. 131. Ivar O’Brien, The O’Briens in Irish History 1500–1865 (Chichester, 1986), p. 72. 132. Gilbert (ed.), Irish Confederation, I, p. 54. 133. Carte, Ormond, V, pp. 285, 374–5, 376–80. 134. Clanricard, Memoirs and Letters, pp. 171, 308. 135. Ibid., pp. 313–14. 136. Carte, Ormond, V, p. 314; Clanricard, Memoirs and Letters, p. 250. 137. Majesty and the kingdome of Ireland, are examined and printed according to order of Parliament ([London], 1647). In 1648 he then offered his support for the royalist coalition and declared ‘on the word and honour of a peer’ to fight for Catholicism and the rights, powers and prerogatives of the king, A Declaration of the Resolutions of His Majesties Forces, published by the Marquisse of Clanrickard against the Parliament of England (London, 1648), p. 3. 138. Clarendon, Rebellion, V, pp. 219–20. 139. Clanricarde, Memoirs and Letters, p. 20. 140. Ibid., p. 73.

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Notes to pp. 269–74

141. Gilbert (ed.), Contemporary History, I, p. 37. 142. TCD, MS 830, ff. 265–6; Clanricarde, Memoirs and Letters, p. 267. 143. Hickson (ed.), Ireland in the Seventeenth Century, I, p. 394; Clanricard, Memoirs and Letters, pp. 72–3. 144. Carte, Ormond, V, pp. 328, 333. 145. Gilbert (ed.), Contemporary History, I, pp. 33–4. 146. Charlene McCoy, ‘War and Revolution: County Fermanagh and its Borders, c.1640–c.1666’ (unpublished PhD thesis, Trinity College Dublin, 2007), pp. 133–4, 155–6, 160–5, 173, 207–9, 260–4, 275–81, and Inga Volmer, ‘A Comparative Study of Massacres during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, 1641–1653’ (unpublished PhD thesis, Cambridge, 2007), especially chapter 3. 147. Gilbert (ed.), Contemporary History, I, pp. 33–4. 148. Thomas Fitzpatrick, ‘The Wars of 1641 in County Down: The Deposition of High Sheriff Peter Hill (1645)’, Ulster Journal of Archaeology, second series, 12 (1906), pp. 65, 67. 149. Ibid., pp. 58–64, p. 63. 150. TCD, MS 837, ff. 4, 11. 151. Ohlmeyer, Civil War and Restoration, chapters 4–6, and Hector McDonnell and Jane Ohlmeyer (eds.), ‘New Light on the Marquis of Antrim and the “Wars of the Three Kingdoms” ’, Analecta Hibernica (2009), pp. 67–82. 152. Gilbert (ed.), Contemporary History, II, p. xxxviii. 153. Jerrold I. Casway, ‘O’Neill, Owen Roe (c.1583–1649)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, Sept. 2004; online edn., Jan. 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/20783, accessed 23 March 2009]). 154. John Ainsworth, ‘Survey of Documents in Private Keeping’, Analecta Hibernica, 25 (1967), p. 158. 155. Gilbert (ed.), Contemporary History, I, p. 46. 156. Pádraig Lenihan, ‘Preston, Thomas, first Viscount Tara (b. in or after 1585, d. 1655)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/22731, accessed 23 March 2009]). 157. Quoted in Pádraig Lenihan, ‘Barry, Gerat (d. 1646)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/1559, accessed 23 March 2009]). 158. Gilbert (ed.), History of the Irish Confederation, I, p. 66; Grosart (ed.), Lismore Papers, second series, IV, p. 259; HMC, Ormonde, NS, II, p. 51; David Edwards, The Ormond Lordship in County Kilkenny, 1515–1642: The Rise and Fall of Butler Feudal Power (Dublin, 2003), pp. 308–11. 159. Journals of the Irish House of Lords, I, pp. 205, 211, 216, 217, 219, 221–3, 226–7. 160. Barry Robertson is currently working on a comparative study entitled ‘Royalists at War: The King’s Party in Scotland and Ireland, 1638–1651’. For an overview of the recent work on English royalism see Jason McElligott and David L. Smith (eds.), Royalists and Royalism during the English Civil Wars (Cambridge, 2007); Jason McElligott and David L. Smith (eds.), Royalists and Royalism during the Interregnum (forthcoming); and for Scottish royalists see K. M. Brown, ‘Courtiers and Cavaliers: Service, Anglicisation and Loyalty amongst the Royalist Nobility’ in John Morrill (ed.), The Scottish National Covenant in its British context 1638–51 (Edinburgh, 1990), pp. 155–92. 161. [Arthur Annesley, earl of Anglesey,] A Letter from a person of honour . . . written to the earl of Castlehaven (London, 1681), p. 65, named Lords Blayney, Broghill, Chichester, Claneboye, Conway, Cork, Esmond, Inchiquin, Kildare, Montgomery, Moore of Drogheda, Ranelagh, Thomond and Valentia. 162. CSPI, 1633–1647, p. 395. 163. HMC, Report on the Manuscripts of the late Reginald Rawdon Hastings Esq. of The Manor House, Ashby-de-la-Zouche, volume II, edited by Francis Bickley (London, 1930), II, p. 351; Carte, Ormond, I, p. 533. 164. M. Perceval-Maxwell, ‘Annesley, Arthur, first earl of Anglesey (1614–1686)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, Sept. 2004; online edn., Jan. 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/ article/562, accessed 22 March 2009]); Peter Gaunt (ed.), The Correspondence of Henry Cromwell 1655–1659: British Library Lansdowne Manuscripts (Camden 5th series, vol. 31, Cambridge, 2007), pp. 452–6, 462, 467, 476, 479, 497. 165. Bodl., Carte MS 15, f. 367; CSPI, 1633–1647, pp. 521–4. 166. R. M. Armstrong, ‘Montgomery, Hugh, first earl of Mount-Alexander (b. in or before 1626, d. 1663)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/ article/19068, accessed 19 March 2009]). 167. Dionysius Massari, ‘My Irish Campaign’, Catholic Bulletin, 6–10 (1916–20), 7:4 (1917), p. 246. 168. HMC, Ormonde, OS, II, p. 89. 169. Gilbert (ed.), Irish Confederation, I, p. 111.

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Notes to pp. 274–82

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170. Gilbert (ed.), Contemporary History, I, p. 37. 171. Little is known of William, Viscount Sarsfield of Kilmallock, but the earl of Cork claimed that he supported the Protestant forces in Munster; Grosart (ed.), Lismore Papers, second series, V, pp. 98–9. 172. Clanricard, Memoirs and Letters, p. 75. 173. Confederate General Assemblies: 1st (Oct–Nov 1642), 2nd (May–June 1643), 3rd (Nov 1643), 4th (June–July 1644), 5th (May–Sept 1645), 6th (Feb–Mar 1646), 7th (Jan–April 1647), 8th (Nov–Dec 1647) and 9th (Sept 1648–Jan 1649). 174. Gilbert (ed.), Irish Confederation, I. p. 111. 175. Clanricard, Memoirs and Letters, pp. 296–8; [Anglesey,] A Letter from a person of honour, p. 53 176. Gilbert (ed.), Contemporary History, I, p. 77. 177. Donal Cregan, ‘The Confederation of Kilkenny’ in Brian Farrell (ed.), The Irish Parliamentary Tradition (Dublin, 1973), pp. 102–14. 178. Gilbert (ed.), Irish Confederation, II, pp. 74–5. 179. Aoife Duignan, “All in a confused opposition to each other’: Politics and War in Connacht, 1641–9’ (unpublished PhD thesis, University College Dublin, 2006). 180. TCD, MS 831, ff. 170–3v. 181. A second famous and renowned victorie obtained against the Lord Musgrave . . . (London, 1642), p. 3. 182. Clanricard, Memoirs and Letters, p. 75. 183. Gilbert (ed.), Contemporary History, I, pp. 172–3. 184. Gilbert (ed.), Irish Confederation, I, p. 68. 185. Ibid., I, p. 257, Clanricard, Memoirs and Letters, p. 75; Clarke, The Old English, pp. 33, 36, 41–3, 68, 71, 73, 75, 89, 188; Gilbert (ed.), Contemporary History, I, p. 52. 186. Ibid.; Gilbert (ed.), Irish Confederation, I, p. 268; HMC, Ormonde, NS, II, p. 4; CSPI, 1633–1647, p. 310; Bodl., Carte MS 2, f. 201; Temple, The Irish Rebellion, p. 127. 187. Gilbert (ed.), Contemporary History, I, p. 145. 188. Fully analyzed in Micheál Ó Siochrú, Confederate Ireland 1642–1649: A Constitutional and Political Analysis (Dublin, 1999), and Tadhg Ó hAnnracháin, Catholic Reformation in Ireland: The Mission of Rinuccini 1645–1649 (Oxford, 2002). 189. Gilbert (ed.), Contemporary History, I, pp. 222–3. 190. The definitive account of Ormond’s career remains to be written. In addition to Carte, Ormond, see J. C. Beckett, The Cavalier Duke: A life of James Butler, 1st Duke of Ormond, 1610–1688 (Belfast, 1990); William P. Kelly, ‘The Early Career of James Butler, Twelfth Earl, and First Duke of Ormond (1610–1688), 1610–1643’ (unpublished PhD thesis, Cambridge, 1994), and T. C. Barnard and Jane Fenlon (eds.), The Dukes of Ormond, 1610–1745 (London, 2000). 191. Gilbert (ed.), Contemporary History, I, p. 143. 192. Ibid., III, pp. 93–5.

Chapter Ten: Survival   1. HMC, Report 5. Appendix (London, 1876), pp. 47, 54.   2. HMC, Report 6, Appendix (London, 1877), p. 167, and HMC, Report 5. Appendix, p. 104.   3. CSPD, 1650, pp. 250, 268.   4. Seamus Pender (ed.), A Census of Ireland circa 1659, with Supplementary Material from the Poll Money Ordinances (1660–1661) (IMC, Dublin, 1939), p. 248; Charles McNeill (ed.), ‘Report on Recent Acquisitions in the Bodleian Library, Oxford’, Analecta Hibernica, 1 (1930), pp. 26–7.   5. The Last and best newes from Ireland: declaring first the warlike and cruell proceeding of the rebels who are all papists and Jesuits of that kingdome (London, 1641), [p. 6].   6. HMC, Report 6, Appendix, p. 206; HMC, Report 7, Appendix (London, 1879), p. 50.   7. CSPD, 1651–1652, p. 313; CSPD, 1654, pp. 182, 595–6; CSPD, 1655, p. 62.   8. CSPD, 1653–1654, pp. 75, 92–3, 186–7; CSPD, 1654, p. 444; CSPD, 1655, pp. 349, 380, 608; CSPD, 1655–1656, pp. 66, 120, 575.   9. J. J. Cronin, ‘The Irish Royalist Elite of Charles II in Exile, c.1649–1660’ (unpublished PhD thesis, European University Institute, Florence, 2007); McNeill (ed.), ‘Report on Recent Acquisitions in the Bodleian Library, Oxford’, p. 27, and HMC, Ormonde, NS, I, for the movements of royalists in exile; CSPD, 1650, p. 558. 10. Clarendon, Rebellion, V, pp. 223–4, 227, 240, 249, 257, 321, 363; VI, pp. 79, 139–40; Toby Barnard, ‘Butler, James, first duke of Ormond (1610–1688)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, Sept. 2004; online edn., Jan. 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/4191, accessed 24 March 2009]).

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11. Carte, Ormond, IV, 418; Clarendon, Rebellion, V, p. 232. 12. Clarendon, Rebellion, VI, pp. 54–8. 13. Thomas, later earl of Ossory, and Richard, later earl of Arran, joined him at intervals. Ossory had moved to France in 1648 and spent time at Monsieur de Camp’s academy in Paris. During the 1650s he moved between England (he spent time in the Tower of London), Ireland and the Netherlands, marrying in 1659 Amelia, daughter of Lodewyk van Nassau, heer van Beverweerd, an illegitimate son of the stadholder Maurice of Nassau; J. D. Davies, ‘Butler, Thomas, sixth earl of Ossory (1634–1680)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford Sept. 2004; online edn., Jan. 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/4210, accessed 24 March 2009]). 14. HMC, Ormonde, NS, IV, p. 144. 15. Igor Pérez Tostado, Irish Influence at the Court of Spain in the Seventeenth Century (Dublin, 2008); Jane Ohlmeyer, ‘Seventeenth-Century Ireland and Scotland and their Wider Worlds’ in Thomas O’Connor and Mary Ann Lyons (eds.), Irish Communities in Early Modern Europe (Dublin, 2006), pp. 457–83; Eamon O Ciosain, ‘Regrouping in Exile: Irish Communities in Western France in the Seventeenth Century’ in Robert Armstrong and Tadhg Ó hAnnracháin (eds.), Community in Early Modern Ireland (Dublin, 2007), pp. 133–53; and Steve Murdoch, ‘Irish Soldiers in 17th-Century Scandinavia’ in Thomas O’Connor and Mary Ann Lyons (eds.), The Ulster Earls and Baroque Europe (Dublin, 2010), pp. 88–109; Patrick Little, ‘The New English in Europe, 1625–60’ in Robert Armstrong and Tadhg Ó hAnnracháin (eds.), Community in Early Modern Ireland (Dublin, 2007), pp. 154–66, and Ole Peter Grell, ‘Godly Charity or Political Aid? Irish Protestants and International Calvinism, 1641–1645’, Historical Journal, 39 (1996), pp. 743–53. 16. John Thurloe, A collection of the state papers of John Thurloe, Esq; secretary, first, to the Council of State, and afterwards to the two Protectors, Oliver and Richard Cromwell (7 vols., London, 1742), I, p. 562. 17. Patrick Little, ‘O’Brien, Murrough, first earl of Inchiquin (c.1614–1674)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/20463, accessed 24 March 2009]). 18. [James Touchet, earl of Castlehaven,] The Earl of Castlehaven’s Review . . . (London, 1684), p. 172. 19. Sean Kelsey, ‘Touchet, James, third earl of Castlehaven (bap. 1612, d. 1684)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, Sept. 2004; online edn., Oct. 2007 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/ article/27577, accessed 24 March 2009]). 20. Clarendon, Rebellion, VI, pp. 44–7. 21. Mary Hickson (ed.), Ireland in the Seventeenth Century (2 vols., London, 1884), II, pp. 192, fol. 204 (for the quote). 22. TCD, MS 829, f. 440 and f. 443. 23. TCD, MS 812, ff. 331r–332. 24. Ibid., ff. 327–328v. 25. Eithne Donnelly, ‘The Roches, Lords of Fermoy: The History of a Norman Irish Family’, Journal of the Cork Historical and Archaeological Society, second series, 41 (1936), pp. 20–8, 78–84; continued 42, pp. 40–52. 26. Jason McHugh, ‘Catholic Clerical Responses to the Restoration: The Case of Nicholas French’ in Coleman A. Dennehy (ed.), Restoration Ireland: Always Settling and Never Settled (Aldershot, Hampshire, and Burlington, VT, 2008), p. 112. 27. Bodl., Carte MS 28, f. 366. 28. CSPI, 1663–1665, pp. 214–17; Bodl., Carte MS 44, ff. 328–31 and ff. 376–7; George Hill, MacDonnells of Antrim (Belfast, 1873), p. 336. 29. PRONI, T.473/1, p. 49. 30. Robert Dunlop (ed.), Ireland under the Commonwealth: being a Selection of Documents relating to the Government of Ireland, 1651–9 (2 vols., Manchester, 1913), I, pp. 124–5. 31. Dunlop (ed.), Commonwealth, I, pp. 124–5. 32. Hill, MacDonnells, p. 278; CSPI, 1663–1665, p. 215; MacLysaght, ‘Commonwealth State Accounts’, pp. 245, 317, 318; King’s Inns, Prendergast Papers 2, p. 679; BL, Egerton MS 212, ff. 8v, 66. At the Restoration Antrim claimed that his pension was £500, later reduced to £300 under Henry Cromwell, see CSPI, 1660–1662, p. 542. 33. BL, Add. MS 19,833, f. 27v. 34. Clarendon, Rebellion, V, p. 272, and Jane Ohlmeyer, ‘Burke, Ulick, marquess of Clanricarde (1604–1658)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, Sept. 2004; online edn., Jan. 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/3996, accessed 2 April 2009]). 35. Peter Gaunt (ed.), The Correspondence of Henry Cromwell 1655–1659: British Library Lansdowne Manuscripts (Camden 5th series, vol. 31, Cambridge, 2007), p. 380. 36. Dunlop (ed.), Commonwealth, I, pp. 197–204, 224–8.

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Notes to pp. 286–91

537

37. John Cunningham, ‘Transplantation to Connacht, 1641–1680: Theory and Practice’ (unpublished PhD thesis, National University of Ireland, University College, Galway, 2009), pp. 51–4, 143–7. 38. John F. Ainsworth and Edward MacLysaght (eds.), ‘Survey of Documents in Private Keeping’, Analecta Hibernica, 20 (1958), p. 148. 39. CSPI, 1647–1660, pp. 608–11; University of Bangor, Mostyn Papers, 5,422. 40. Gaunt (ed.), The Correspondence of Henry Cromwell, pp. 195, 197. 41. CSPI, 1647–1660, p. 630. 42. Pádraig Lenihan, ‘Netterville, John, second Viscount Netterville of Dowth (d. 1659)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/19908, accessed 15 April 2009]; Yet Netterville, who had accompanied his wife to England, never appears to have returned home and died in London where he was buried alongside his wife on 3 September 1659. 43. James Graves, ‘Anonymous Account of the Early Life and Marriage of James, first duke of Ormond’, Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries, 7 (1862–3), pp. 283–4. 44. Lords Athenry, Castlehaven, Clanmalier, Clanricarde, Enniskillen, Fermoy, Fingal, Gormanston, Inchiquin, Iveagh, Louth, Mayo (and his son Sir Theobald Bourke), Montgomery of the Ards, Mountgarret, Muskerry, Netterville, Ormond, Roscommon, Slane, Taaffe, Trimleston and Westmeath, together with the brothers of Lords Taaffe and Dillon of Costello-Gallen, C. H. Firth and R. S. Rait (eds.), Acts and Ordinances of the Interregnum, 1642–1660 (London, 1911), II, pp. 598–603. 45. Cunningham, ‘Transplantation to Connacht’, pp. 40–2. 46. McNeill (ed.), ‘Report on Recent Acquisitions in the Bodleian Library, Oxford’, pp. 20–1. 47. Cunningham, ‘Transplantation to Connacht’, pp. 344–5, also pp. 212–19 48. Ibid., pp. 244–51. 49. R. C. Simington (ed.), The Transplantation to Connaught 1654–58 (IMC, Shannon, 1970). The figures in square brackets are taken from the list of transplanted Irish, 1655–9, given in HMC, Ormonde, OS, II, p. 114. 50. In fact, Kingsland owned this land prior to the war and managed to retain it during the 1650s. I am grateful to Dr John Cunningham for pointing this out. 51. This includes 1,761 acres awarded to his mother, Mary. 52. `Wherin his father and grandfather included’, Simington (ed.) Transplantation. 53. This does not include 7,000 Irish acres in Galway awarded to Alexander MacDonnell, later third earl of Antrim. 54. In addition, Antrim’s brother Alexander was granted a further 7,000 acres in County Galway; Simington (ed.), The Transplantation to Connaught, pp. 172, 206, 214, 123, 175; NLI, MS 839, [f. 20]. 55. NLI, MS 11,961, p. 208. Significantly, Antrim’s name is not mentioned in the list of transplanted Irish Catholics 1655–9, HMC, Ormonde, OS, II, p. 114; J. O’Hart (ed.), Irish landed gentry when Cromwell came to Ireland (Dublin, 1887), pp. 247, 328, 359. 56. Simington (ed.), Transplantation to Connaught, pp. 172, 206, 214; PRONI, D.597/1, p. 8; Pender (ed.), Census, 1659, p. 8; Jane Ohlmeyer, Civil War and Restoration in the Three Stuart Kingdoms: The Career of Randal MacDonnell, Marquis of Antrim (Dublin, 2001), pp. 241–57. 57. Cunningham, ‘Transplantation to Connacht’, pp. 259–60. 58. Ibid., p. 106; J. P. Prendergast, The Cromwellian Settlement of Ireland (3rd edn., Dublin, 1922), p. 186. 59. Pender (ed.), Census, 1659, pp. 170, 386. 60. John Prendergast, ‘The Butlers, Lords Ikerrin, before the Court of Transplantation at Athlone, ad 1656, and at the Second Court of Claims’, Butler Society Journal, 3 (1987), pp. 72–6. 61. The adventurers who received their debentures in the barony of Dunluce were John Brockhoven, John Clotworthy, Samuel Cooper, Charles Doe, James Edwards, John Fischer, John Gray, John Harves, John Lucas, John Mosyer, Nathaniel Overton, William Peckett, William Robins, Maurice Thompson, Thomas Tipping and John Wood, CSPI, 1660–1662, pp. 648–9; K. S. Bottigheimer, English Money and Irish Land: The ‘Adventurers’ in the Cromwellian Settlement of Ireland (Oxford, 1971), pp. 200–13; CSPI, Adventurers 1642–1659, p. 354. Also see Marsh’s Library, MS Z.2.1.5, p. 57. 62. Bottigheimer, English Money and Irish Land, p. 201. 63. Thus in the survey of his lands in County Londonderry, Antrim was listed as ‘the proprietor’ of three parishes in the barony of Coleraine; R. C. Simington (ed.), The Civil Survey, a.d. 1654–1656 (IMC, 10 vols., Dublin, 1931–61), III, pp. 155–7; Hill, MacDonnells, pp. 451–66. 64. This figure varied between 65,000 and 72,688 acres (the latter included 23,224 acres in Glenarm), CSPI, 1663–1665, pp. 338–40; CSPI, 1660–1662, pp. 649–60. 65. This appears to have been the case throughout Ireland. See, for example, Monica Brennan, ‘The Changing Composition of Kilkenny Landowners 1641–1700’ in William Nolan and Kevin Whelan

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Notes to pp. 291–5

(eds.), Kilkenny: History and Society. Interdisciplinary Essays on the History of an Irish County (Dublin, 1990), p. 175. 66. For an English parallel see Ian Gentles, ‘The Purchasers of Northamptonshire Crown Lands 1649–1660’, Midland History, 3 (1976), pp. 207–11. 67. PRONI, D.2977/Book 8; CSPI, 1663–1665, pp. 338–40; Hill, MacDonnells, pp. 466–7. The accuracy of Antrim’s calculations is supported by the fact that this was precisely the case in County Kilkenny; see Brennan, ‘The Changing Composition’, pp. 176–80. 68. Bodl., Clarendon MS 80, f. 206. 69. Ibid. f. 205. 70. CSPI, 1663–1665, pp. 338–40; Hill, MacDonnells, p. 451. 71. Hill, MacDonnells, p. 340; Bodl., Carte MSS 44, ff. 332–332v; Bodl., Clarendon MS 80, f. 206. 72. E. MacLysaght (ed.), ‘Commonwealth State Accounts, 1650–56’, Analecta Hibernica, 15 (1944), p. 245; Dunlop, Commonwealth, I, p. 175; King’s Inns, Prendergast Papers 3, p. 674. 73. Hill, MacDonnells, p. 278; MacLysaght (ed.), ‘Commonwealth State Accounts, 1650–56’, p. 247. 74. Hill, MacDonnells, p. 286; Bodl., Carte MS 42, f. 404. 75. PRONI, D.2977/3A: Kilconway Barony. Only this example appears to have survived among the Antrim papers; undoubtedly there were others. 76. Bodl., Carte MS 49, f. 238; CSPI, 1669–1670, p. 421; CSPI, Adventurers 1642–1659, pp. 6, 7, 64, 119, 165, 175; Hill, MacDonnells, pp. 451, 466–7. 77. Pender (ed.), Census, 1659, pp. ix, 3–21, 139–40; R. C. Simington, ‘A “census” of Ireland, c.1659’, Analecta Hibernica, 12 (1943), pp. 177–8. 78. T. C. Barnard, ‘New Opportunities for British Settlement: Ireland, 1650–1700’ in Nicholas Canny (ed.), The Oxford History of the British Empire, vol. 1 (Oxford, 1998), p. 311. 79. William Smyth, Map-making, Landscapes and Memory: A Geography of Colonial and Early Modern Ireland c.1530–1750 (Cork, 2006), pp. 213–21. 80. Pender (ed.), Census, 1659, pp. 365, 483. 81. Cunningham, ‘Transplantation to Connacht’, pp. 120–2; Articles of Agreement, Made concluded and agreed on, at Dublin . . . the eighteenth day of June 1647. By . . . Ormonde . . . And Arthur Annesly . . . (Dublin, 1647). 82. Even the Venetian ambassador thought it of sufficient interest to note it, CSPV, 1657–1659, pp. 210–11. 83. CSPD, 1653–1654, p. 96. 84. Carte, Ormond, III, 630; NLI, Ormonde MS 5,491, ff. 15, 59. 85. Dunlop, Commonwealth, II, 313; Gaunt (ed.), The Correspondence of Henry Cromwell, pp. 157, 179. 86. HMC, Ormonde, NS, I, p. 266; also HMC, Ormonde, NS, I, p. 326. 87. BL, Add. 46,932, Egmont Papers, f. 153b. 88. For example, in June 1640 Ormond borrowed £1,000 on bond from Lowther, BL, Add. MS 46,924, f. 63, MS 46,933 ff. 47–8 and MS 46,936B, f. 107. 89. NLI, MS 2,484 and MS 5,491. 90. HMC, Ormonde, NS, I, p. 325. 91. Eleanor O’Keeffe, ‘The Family and Marriage Strategies of James Butler, 1st Duke of Ormonde, 1658–1688’ (unpublished PhD thesis, Cambridge, 2000), p. 24; Bodl., Carte MS 213, f. 244. 92. Huntington Library, San Marino, HA 14350. 93. For Cork see Huntington Library, San Marino, HA 14351, 14352; Dunlop, Commonwealth, I, 116. For Conway, see Huntington, HA 14350, 14351, 14353, 14355. 94. Toby Barnard, ‘Boyle, Richard, first earl of Burlington and second earl of Cork (1612–1698)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, Sept. 2004; online edn., Jan. 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb. com/view/article/3135, accessed 15 April 2009]). 95. Toby Barnard, ‘Boyle, Roger, first earl of Orrery (1621–1679)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, Sept. 2004; online edn., May 2006 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/3138, accessed 7 May 2009]); Patrick Little, Lord Broghill and the Cromwellian Union with Ireland and Scotland (Woodbridge, Suffolk, 2004), and ‘An Irish Governor of Scotland: Lord Broghill, 1655–6’ in A. MacKillop and Steve Murdoch (eds.), Military Governors and Imperial Frontiers c.1600–1800 (Leiden, 2003), pp. 79–97. He also worked to save the estates of Cork and Ranelagh as a web of financial obligation reinforced kinship bonds. Kildare was imprisoned for debt in 1650 and 1655 (CSPD, 1655, pp. 349, 380); also looked after Lady Barrymore and sought her dead husband’s arrears. 96. Pender (ed.), Census, 1659, pp. 237, 623. 97. CSPI, 1669–1670, pp. 95–6 and pp. 389–90.

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Notes to pp. 296–311

539

  98. CSPI, 1647–1660, pp. 543, 594, 668–70; H. C. O’Sullivan, ‘Land Ownership Changes in the County of Louth in the Seventeenth Century’ (unpublished PhD thesis, TCD, 1991), pp. 96–100.   99. CSPI, 1647–1660, pp. 543, 580–91, 597–9, 614–15, 648, 673 (quote), 796; Cunningham, ‘Transplantation to Connacht’, pp. 59, 121–8; David Menary, ‘Rebellion, Transplantation and Composition: The Ulster-Scots Landed Elite and the Commonwealth’ in William P. Kelly and John R. Young (eds.), Scotland and the Ulster Plantations: Explorations in the British Settlements of Stuart Ireland (Dublin, 2009), pp. 137–59. 100. Joan Thirsk, ‘The Sales of Royalist Land during the Interregnum’, Economic History Review, New Series, 5 (1952), pp. 192, 195–6, 199, 203, and ‘The Restoration Land Settlement’, Journal of Modern History, 26 (1954), pp. 321, 323–4, 327–8; H. J. Habakkuk, ‘Landowners and Civil War’, Economic History Review, New Series, 18 (1965), pp. 139–40, 142, 143. 101. Pender (ed.), Census, 1659, pp. 8, 626. 102. Ibid., p. 94. 103. Raymond Gillespie, ‘Sir John Clotworthy’, DIB, II, pp. 601–2. 104. Counties Clare, Cork, Kerry, Limerick and Tipperary in Munster; Counties Galway, Mayo, Roscommon and Sligo in Connacht; and Counties Dublin and Kildare and King’s and Queen’s Counties in Leinster. 105. Aidan Clarke, ‘Charles Coote, first Earl of Mountrath’, DIB, pp. 828–30. 106. Little, Lord Broghill, chapters 4–5. 107. C. J. Woods, ‘Francis Aungier, first Earl of Longford’, DIB, I, pp. 198–9. 108. Little, Lord Broghill, chapter 6. 109. Aidan Clarke, Prelude to Restoration in Ireland: The End of the Commonwealth, 1659–1660 (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 31, 49, 110, 155, 164–5, 170. 110. Ibid., pp. 169–70, 179, 180. 111. Ibid., pp. 183, 186. 112. Ibid., pp. 177, 180, 199, 211, 217, 221, 226, 229. 113. Ibid., pp. 173, 177, 185, 186, 193, 199, 225, 226. 114. Ibid., pp. 235–6, 239, 273, 275–6. 115. Ibid., pp. 178, 207, 234. 116. Ibid., p. 230. 117. McNeill (ed.), ‘Report on Recent Acquisitions in the Bodleian Library, Oxford’, p. 132. 118. Clarke, Prelude to Restoration, pp. 295–9, 299, 304–5, 317–19. 119. Statutes at large passed in the parliaments held in Ireland (1300–1800) (20 vols., Dublin, 1786–1801), II, pp. 264–348.

Chapter Eleven: The Restoration Land Settlement   1. NHI, III, p. 428.   2. Kevin McKenny, ‘The Restoration Land Settlement in Ireland: A Statistical Interpretation’ in Coleman A. Dennehy (ed.), Restoration Ireland: Always Settling and Never Settled (Aldershot, Hampshire, and Burlington, VT, 2008), pp. 35–52.   3. McKenny, ‘The Restoration Land Settlement in Ireland’, pp. 48–9.   4. Based on figures given in the Books of Survey and Distribution.   5. Bodl., Carte MS 32, f. 719.   6. Cited in Anne Creighton, ‘The Catholic Interest in Irish Politics in the Reign of Charles II’ (unpublished PhD thesis, Queen’s University Belfast, 2000), p. 139.   7. CSPI, 1663–1665, p. 248.   8. Ibid., p. 77. In the case of Lord Bermingham of Athenry, his estate was regarded as being ‘too small to enable him to support his dignity’.   9. Richard Ollard, Clarendon’s Four Portraits (London, 1989), pp. 42–8, 134; CSPI, 1663–1665, p. 207; CSPI, 1669–1670, pp. 464–5. 10. The situation was similar in England. Interestingly, local studies of prominent English royalists reach similar conclusions; Joan Thirsk, ‘The Sales of Royalist Land During the Interregnum’, Economic History Review, New Series, 5 (1952), pp. 192, 195–6, 199, 203, and ‘The Restoration Land Settlement’, Journal of Modern History, 26 (1954), pp. 321, 323–4, 327–8; H. J. Habakkuk, ‘Landowners and Civil War’, Economic History Review, New Series, 18 (1965), pp. 139–40, 142, 143. 11. Statutes at large passed in the parliaments held in Ireland (1300–1800) (20 vols., Dublin, 1786–1801), II, pp. 251–2; III, pp. 34–6.

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540

Notes to pp. 311–18

12. John Gibney, ‘Some remarks on those who were friends and enemyes to the duke of Ormonde and to the Acts of Settlement of Ireland, c.1692’, Analecta Hibernica, 42 (2011), p. 35. 13. Eleanor O’Keeffe, ‘The Family and Marriage Strategies of James Butler, 1st Duke of Ormonde, 1658–1688’ (unpublished PhD thesis, Cambridge, 2000), pp. 158–62. 14. Rolf Loeber, ‘Irish Country Houses and Castles of the Late Caroline Period: An Unremembered Past Recaptured’, Quarterly Bulletin of the Irish Georgian Society, 14 (1973), pp. 32, 38, 46, and Rolf Loeber, A Biographical Dictionary of Architects in Ireland 1600–1720 (London, 1981), pp. 14, 78; Jane Fenlon, The Ormonde Picture Collection ([Dublin, 2001]), p. 27. 15. John Bradley, ‘From Frontier Town to Renaissance City: Kilkenny, 1500–1700’ in Peter Borsay and Lindsay Proudfoot (eds.), Provincial Towns in Early Modern England and Ireland: Change, Convergence and Divergence (Oxford, 2002), pp. 44–6; Loeber, ‘Irish Country Houses’, p. 43; Rolf Loeber, A Biographical Dictionary of Architects in Ireland 1600–1720 (London, 1981), pp. 14, 78; HMC, Ormonde, NS, V, p. 292; HMC, Ormonde, NS, VI, p. 279; Fenlon, The Ormonde Picture Collection, pp. 25–6. 16. Based on figures given in the Books of Survey and Distribution. 17. CSPI, 1666–1669, p. 545. 18. See particularly Nicholas French, The Unkinde Desertor of Loyall Men and Frue Frinds ([Paris], 1676), and Gilbert (ed.), Contemporary History. Also see William P. Kelly, ‘ “Most Illustrious Cavalier” or “Unkinde Desertor” ’? James Butler, first Duke of Ormond, 1610–1688’, History Ireland, 1 (1993), pp. 18–22, and Eamon Ó Ciardha, ‘The Unkinde Deserter and the Bright Duke’ in Toby Barnard and Jane Fenlon (eds.), The Dukes of Ormonde, 1610–1745 (Woodbridge, Suffolk, 2000), pp. 177–85. 19. French, The Unkinde Desertor, p. 194. 20. HMC, Ormonde, NS, III, pp. 288–9. 21. Lord Mountmorres, The History of the Principal Transactions of the Irish Parliament from the Year 1634 to 1666, introduction by Dermot Englefield (2 vols., Shannon, 1971), I, p. 271. 22. John C. Mac Erlean, S. J., The Poems of David Ó Bruadair (3 vols., London, 1910–17), I, pp. 18, 194–207. 23. Ibid., I, pp. 203, 205, 207. 24. Ibid., p. 31. 25. Ibid., p. 35. 26. Bodl., Carte MS 214, ff. 292–3. 27. Creighton, ‘The Catholic Interest’, pp. 13–14. 28. NLI, Ormond MS 2,483 (undated letters, J–M). 29. Jane Ohlmeyer, ‘MacCarthy, Donough, first earl of Clancarty (1594–1665)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, Sept. 2004; online edn., Jan. 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/ article/67053, accessed 20 Feb. 2009]). 30. Statutes, II, p. 313; CSPI, 1660–1662, p. 484, compare the wording in the act with Clancarthy’s petition; also see pp. 143, 474. 31. Statutes, III, pp. 124–5; CSPI, 1669–1670, pp. 492–3, 545. 32. David Dickson, Old World Colony: Cork and South Munster 1630–1830 (Cork, 2005), p. 47. 33. Statutes, II, pp. 286–7, III, p. 99. 34. CSPI, 1663–1665, pp. 17, 19, 43, 235, 251; Hill (ed.), Montgomery Manuscripts, p. 235. 35. Anne Creighton, ‘ “Grace and favour”: The Cabal Ministry and Irish Catholic Politics, 1667–73’, pp. 141–60 in Dennehy (ed.), Restoration Ireland, p. 142. 36. Statutes, II, p. 329; III, pp. 37–8. 37. Gibney, ‘Some Remarks’, p. 40. 38. Armagh, Cavan, Down and Tyrone in Ulster; Carlow, Kildare, Kilkenny, Meath, Westmeath, Wexford, Wicklow and Queen’s County in Leinster; and Clare, Cork, Kerry, Tipperary and Waterford in Munster. 39. CSPI, 1666–1669, p. 309; CSPI, 1669–1670, p. 306; CSPD, March–Oct. 1673, p. 471. 40. CSPI, 1663–1665, pp. 10, also 3, 30, 52, 72, 134, 657, 660, 669. 41. Statutes, III, p. 49. 42. Thomas Morris, A sermon preached at the funeral of the Right Honourable Roger Earl of Orrery, who dyed the 16th of October, at Castle-Martyr, and was buried at Youghall in Ireland the 18th of the same month, in the year 1679 (London, 1681), p. 38. 43. Dickson, Old World Colony, pp. 48–50. 44. Edward MacLysaght (ed.), Calendar of the Orrery Papers (IMC, Dublin, 1941), pp. 168–78. 45. Loeber, ‘Irish Country Houses’, pp. 16, 29–30; Loeber, A Biographical Dictionary, pp. 1–3, 6, 25, 27; CSPD, May–Sept. 1672, pp. 592, 628, 653; CSPD, Oct. 1672–Feb. 1673, p. 481. 46. CSPI, 1660–1662, p. 228.

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Notes to pp. 318–25

541

47. NLI, Orrery Papers, Folder 10, for petitions that illustrate the operation of Orrery’s patronage to his kinsmen. 48. In the case of Roscommon see CSPI, 1663–1665, pp. 351, 532–3, 623; CSPI, 1666–1669, pp. 86, 137–8; CSPD, Jan.–Nov. 1671, p. 546; CSPD, March–Oct. 1673, pp. 189, 379, 436. 49. CSPI, 1669–1670, p. 36; T. B. Howell (ed.), A complete collection of state trials (21 vols, London, 1816), VI, pp. 914–21; Gibney, ‘Some remarks’, pp. 42–3. 50. CSPI, 1669–1670, pp. 380, 441–2. 51. Statutes, III, p. 66. 52. CSPI, 1660–1662, p. 36; CSPI, 1663–1665, p. 64; CSPI, 1669–1670, pp. 159–60, 180, 427–8, 440, 463, 509, 548, 551–2. 53. J. G. Simms, ‘Mayo Landowners in the Seventeenth Century’, Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries, 95 (1965), pp. 237–47. 54. CSPI, 1663–1665, pp. 479–80. 55. CSPI, 1660–1662, pp. 227, 608; HMC, Report 8. Appendix 1 (London, 1881), p. 549. 56. CSPI, 1663–1665, pp. 409, 497, 498; Statutes, III, p. 122; Thomas Morrice (ed.), A Collection of the State Letters of . . . Roger Boyle, First Earl of Orrery . . . (London, 1742, later edn. 2 vols., Dublin, 1743), p. 140. 57. Joad Raymond, ‘Rushworth, John (c.1612–1690)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/24288, accessed 15 April 2009]). 58. John Cunningham, ‘Transplantation to Connacht, 1641–1680: Theory and Practice’ (unpublished PhD thesis, National University of Ireland, University College Galway, 2009), pp. 294–8. 59. CSPI, 1660–1662, p. 264; also see pp. 320, 410; CSPI, 1666–1669, pp. 481, 736–7; HMC, Report 8. Appendix 1 (London, 1881), p. 542; and Bodl., Carte MS 159, f. 111v. 60. CSPI, 1663–1665, p. 280. 61. H. C. O’Sullivan, John Bellew: A Seventeenth-Century Man of Many Parts (Dublin, 2000), quote at pp. 111–12; CSPI, 1660–1662, pp. 246, 343, 347, 412, 453, 533; CSPI, 1663–1665, pp. 297, 305; CSPI, 1666–1669, pp. 174, 226–7, 286–7, 343–4, 358, 479, 580–1; CSPI, 1669–1670, pp. 380, 586, 602. 62. CSPI, 1669–1670, p. 458. 63. NLI, MS 31,994, f. 7. 64. Statutes, II, 1634–62, pp. 333, 343. 65. O’Sullivan, John Bellew, pp. 81, 84, 86–8, 105, 108. 66. Bodl., Carte MS 33, f. 233. 67. O’Sullivan, John Bellew, p. 119, rent roll for Louth was £1,812; for Sligo £688; for Tipperary £469; and for Meath £218. 68. Monsignor John Hanly (ed.), The Letters of Saint Oliver Plunkett 1625–1681, Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland (Dublin, 1979), p. 73. 69. Cunningham, ‘Transplantation to Connacht’, pp. 303–4. 70. CSPI, 1660–1662, p. 476, CSPI, 1669–1670, p. 484, CSPD, March 1677–Feb. 1678, pp. 602–3; Bodl., Carte MS 159, f. 142v. 71. Geraldine Talon (ed.), Court of Claims: Submissions and Evidence, 1663 (IMC, Dublin, 2006), pp. 42, 79–81, 232–3, 243–4; Statutes, III, p. 86; CSPI, 1660–1662, pp. 631, 739; Bodl., Carte MS 154, f. 156; John F. Ainsworth and Edward MacLysaght (eds.), ‘Survey of Documents in Private Keeping’, Analecta Hibernica, 20 (1958), p. 151. 72. CSPI, 1663–1665, pp. 41, 53. 73. Ibid., p. 189; CSPI, 1669–1670, pp. 450–1, 491–2. 74. Talon (ed.), Court of Claims, p. 14; BL, Egerton MS 2,618, ff. 106–7; CSPI, 1663–1665, pp. 194, 257. 75. CSPI, 1669–1670, pp. 508–9, 553, 673, 688; Statutes, III, pp. 45–7. 76. Based on figures given in the Books of Survey and Distribution. 77. CSPI, 1666–1669, p. 492. 78. Statutes, II, p. 328 and III, pp. 64–5. 79. Talon (ed.), Court of Claims, p. 86; CSPI, 1660–1662, pp. 361–2, 380, 499, 507, 510, 568, 695; CSPI, 1669–1670, pp. 419–20, 451; Statutes, II, pp. 316, 343; III, p. 124. 80. CSPI, 1669–1670, pp. 162, 582–3, 684–5. 81. CSPD, Jan.–Dec. 1682, pp. 620–1. 82. Based on figures given in the Books of Survey and Distribution. 83. Statutes, III, p. 89. 84. Bodl., Clarendon MS 80, f. 205. 85. Murder will out is partly printed, and discussed, in Hill, MacDonnells, pp. 317–21. A fragment is also in CSPI, 1669–1670, pp. 470–1, and a handwritten copy in Bodl., Rawlinson C.841, ff. 27–32. The pamphlet was reprinted in Edinburgh in 1689 and London in 1698.

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Notes to pp. 325–30

  86. Murder will out, p. 5.   87. Bodl., Carte MS 118, f. 18, and MS 143, f. 205.   88. HMC, Ormonde, NS, III, p. 82.   89. Robert Latham and William Matthews (eds.), The Diary of Samuel Pepys (11 vols., Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1983), V, p. 57.   90. Count of Comminges to Louis XIV, 23 June/3 July 1664 (BN, Fonds Français 10,712, f. 200v); count of Comminges to M. de Lionne, 24 October/3 November 1664 (ibid., f. 233).   91. Hill, MacDonnells, pp. 467–8; Bodl., Carte MS 118, f. 18, MS 44, f. 392, MS 143, f. 216; HMC, Ormonde, NS, III, pp. 96–7, 102; CSPI, 1663–1665, pp. 279–80.   92. Jane Ohlmeyer, Civil War and Restoration in the Three Stuart Kingdoms: The Career of Randal MacDonnell, Marquis of Antrim (Dublin, 2001), chapter 10.   93. CSPI, 1663–1665, p. 207; CSPI, 1669–1670, pp. 456, 463.   94. CSPI, 1663–1665, p. 207. Also see CSPI, 1669–1670, p. 456.   95. Bodl., Carte MS 33, f. 15, and MS 46, ff. 76–81.   96. Bodl., Carte MS 32, f. 732; PRONI, D.2977/Book 8; Donal Cregan, ‘An Irish Cavalier: Daniel O’Neill in Exile and Restoration 1651–1664’ in Studia Hibernica, 5 (1965), pp. 43, 63–70; P. Power, ‘A Waterford Tomb and its Ulster Tenant’, Ulster Journal of Archaeology, 1st series, 2 (1895), pp. 42–6.   97. After 1665 Antrim paid St Albans £777 13s 10d in quit rents, NA, Lodge MS 11, f. 19; CSPI, 1663–1665, pp. 29–30, 687–8; CSPI, 1666–1669, pp. 59, 67–8; CSPI, 1669–1670, pp. 250, 588; Bodl., Carte MS 33, f. 259.   98. CSPI, 1663–1665, p. 407.   99. Ibid., pp. 207–9; CSPI, 1669–1670, pp. 464–5; Hill, MacDonnells, pp. 467–8. 100. CSPI, 1669–1670, p. 452. 101. CSPI, 1663–1665, pp. 207–9, 342; CSPI, 1660–1662, pp. 70–1, 697; Statutes, III, p. 102. 102. HMC, Ormonde, NS, III, p. 106. 103. Gibney, ‘Some remarks’, p. 41. 104. Bodl., Carte MS 44, f. 625. 105. Talon (ed.), Court of Claims, pp. 166–7, 242; Hill, MacDonnells, pp. 467–8; CSPI., 1663–1665, pp. 144, 216–20; Karl Bottigheimer, ‘The Restoration Land Settlement: A Structural View’, Irish Historical Studies, 18 (1972), p. 20; Statutes, III, p. 118; CSPI, 1660–1662, pp. 26–7, 243–4, 329, 454, 559, 682; CSPI, 1663–1665, pp. 481–2; CSPI, 1666–1669, pp. 659–60; CSPI, 1669–1670, pp. 614, 686. 106. Bodl., Carte MS 49, f. 60. 107. Talon (ed.), Court of Claims, pp. 7–8, 104; Statutes, III, pp. 88–9; HMC, Ormonde, NS, III, pp. 28, 182, 394; CSPI, 1663–1665, p. 70; CSPI, 1669–1670, p. 657. 108. NLI, Fingal Papers, MS 8020 (2). 109. Ibid.; CSPI, 1660–1662, pp. 505, 512. 110. Statutes, III, p. 75; CSPI, 1660–1662, pp. 48, 96; CSPI, 1663–1665, p. 143; CSPI, 1666–1669, p. 334. 111. CSPI, 1663–1665, p. 143. 112. CSPI, 1666–1669, pp. 542–3. 113. Lawrence Stone, Crisis of the Aristocracy 1558–1641 (Oxford, 1965), pp. 112, 116, 761, 780. 114. CSPI, 1666–1669, p. 334. 115. Ibid., pp. 638, 658. 116. CSPD, May 1684–Feb. 1685, pp. 260–1. 117. Talon (ed.), Court of Claims, pp. 39–40, 267–8. Statutes, III, p. 61. His siblings were, however, declared innocent. CSPI, 1660–1662, p. 244; HMC, Report 8. Appendix 1 (London, 1881), p. 513; CSPI, 1663–1665, pp. 55, 98–9. 118. Bodl., Carte MS 49, ff. 167–167v. 119. CSPI, 1663–1665, pp. 48, 55; CSPI, 1660–1662, p. 402. Netterville was Daniel O’Neill’s nephew, and a relative of Sir Robert, Colonel Richard, Peter, Gilbert and Thomas Talbot, whose mother was Alison Netterville. 120. CSPI, 1666–1669, pp. 231, 658–9; CSPI, 1669–1670, pp. 460, 489; BL, Stowe MS 844, f. 139; Talon (ed.), Court of Claims, pp. 39–40, 267–8. 121. CSPD, May 1684 to Feb. 1685, pp. 260–1. 122. CSPD, Oct. 1683 to April 1684, p. 278. 123. Talon (ed.), Court of Claims, pp. 260–1; CSPI, 1660–1662, pp. 220, 410, 675; CSPI, 1669–1670, pp. 458–9. 124. H. C. O’Sullivan, ‘Land Ownership Changes in the County of Louth in the Seventeenth Century’ (unpublished PhD thesis, Trinity College Dublin, 1991), pp. 186–94.

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Notes to pp. 330–7

543

125. CSPI, 1663–1665, p. 446; CSPD, Jan. to Nov. 1671, p. 441. 126. CSPD, Nov. 1673–Feb. 1675, pp. 280–1; John F. Ainsworth and Edward MacLysaght (eds.), ‘Survey of Documents in Private Keeping’, Analecta Hibernica 20 (1958), pp. 149, 154, 157–8. 127. HMC, Ormonde, OS, I, p. 103. 128. Cunningham, ‘Transplantation to Connacht’, pp. 312–13. 129. Bottigheimer, ‘The Restoration Land Settlement’, p. 11; Statutes, III, pp. 83–4; CSPI, 1660–1662, p. 58; CSPI, 1669–1670, pp. 465, 677. 130. BL, Stowe MS 845, f. 3. 131. CSPD, May 1684–Feb. 1685, p. 82. 132. HMC, Report 11. Appendix 5 (London, 1887), p. 14. 133. Ibid. 134. CSPD, Oct. 1683 to April 1684, p. 275. 135. O’Sullivan, John Bellew, p. 130. 136. Based on figures given in the Books of Survey and Distribution. 137. Statutes, III, p. 89. 138. Bodl., Carte MS 42, f. 356. The king also asked Orrery to watch over the interests of Iveagh’s sister, Mrs Warren, aunt and guardian of Lord Tara. Also see Talon (ed.), Court of Claims, pp. 76–7; CSPI, 1660–1662, pp. 348, 412; CSPI, 1663–1665, pp. 5–6, 488. 139. CSPI, 1663–1665, p. 500; HMC, Ormonde, NS, III, p. 179; CSPD, Jan.–Nov. 1671, pp. 313, 352. 140. CSPD, Jan.–Nov. 1671, pp. 313, 352. 141. CSPD, May–Sept. 1672, pp. 287–8; Cunningham, ‘Transplantation to Connacht’, pp. 322–3. 142. H. C. O’Sullivan, ‘The Trevors of Rosetrevor: A British Colonial Family in SeventeenthCentury Ireland’ (unpublished MLitt thesis, Trinity College Dublin, 1985), pp. 11, 77, 155, 160, 224–5. 143. HMC, Ormonde, NS, VII, p. 20. 144. Statutes, III, p. 48. 145. CSPI, 1663–1665, pp. 80 and 73. 146. CSPI, 1660–1662, pp. 531, 612, 614, 616, 628; 642–3, 647, 663 (for quote), 667; CSPI, 1663– 1665, pp. 48, 79, 179, 192, 676–7; CSPI, 1663–1665, pp. 8, 17–18, 30, 48–9, 51, 59, 133–4, 147, 170, 288. 147. CSPI, 1660–1662, pp. 641–2. 148. CSPI, 1666–1669, pp. 7, 16, 42–3, 220, 433. 149. Ivar O’Brien, The O’Briens of Thomond. The O’Briens in Irish History 1500–1865 (Chichester, 1986), pp. 96–7; CSPD, Nov. 1673–Feb. 1675, p. 443. 150. CSPI, 1666–1669, p. 87. 151. I am also deeply grateful to Hamish Scott for allowing me to read the relevant chapters in his forthcoming study of the aristocracy in Europe, c.1300–1750. 152. Eoin Kinsella, ‘ “Dividing the bear’s skin before she is taken”: Irish Catholics and Land in the Late Stuart Monarchy, 1683–91’ in Dennehy (ed.), Restoration Ireland, p. 175. 153. J. G. Simms, Jacobite Ireland, 1685–91 (Dublin reprint, 2000), pp. 81–3. 154. T. W. Moody and W. E. Vaughan (eds.), A New History of Ireland. IV. Eighteenth-Century Ireland, 1691–1800 (Oxford, 1986), pp. 3–4, 10–13.

Chapter Twelve: Political Life   1. BL, Add. MS 15,892, f. 198.   2. Charles II’s only Irish parliament had four sessions. The first met between 8 May and 31 July 1661; the second between 6 September 1661 and 22 March 1662; the third between 17 April 1662 and 16 April 1663; and the fourth between 26 October 1665 and 7 August 1666; Coleman Dennehy, ‘The Restoration Irish Parliament, 1661–6’ in Coleman A. Dennehy (ed.), Restoration Ireland: Always Settling and Never Settled (Aldershot, Hampshire, and Burlington, VT, 2008), pp. 53–68.   3. Francis G. James, The Lords of the Ascendancy: The Irish House of Lords and its Members 1600–1800 (Dublin, 1995), p. 35, and F. M. O’Donoghue, ‘Parliament in Ireland under Charles II’ (unpublished MA thesis, University College Dublin, 1970), p. 59.   4. Journals of the Irish House of Lords of the kingdom of Ireland (8 vols., Dublin, 1779–1800), I (1634–98), p. 236.

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Notes to pp. 337–43

  5. Ensuring that the lords participated in parliamentary politics proved problematic at times and they were not allowed to go to the country ‘whereby their duty of sitting in the house may be neglected’ and were fined if they failed to attend; Journals of the Irish House of Lords, I, pp. 248, 312.   6. Journals of the Irish House of Lords, I, p. 305; 41 lords were present when the vote in favour of the Act of Settlement was taken and passed on 30 May 1662.   7. John Gibney, ‘Some remarks on those who were friends and enemyes to the duke of Ormonde and to the Acts of Settlement of Ireland, c.1692’, Analecta Hibernica, 42 (2011), p. 32.   8. Journals of the Irish House of Lords, I, p. 273.   9. Ibid., pp. 345, 349, 411. 10. In June 1687 the outlawries of a number (Cahir, Castle Connell, Dunboyne, Fermoy, Louth, Magennis of Iveagh, Maguire of Enniskillen, Mountgarret and Trimleston) were reversed. 11. Eithne Donnelly, ‘The Roches, Lords of Fermoy: The History of a Norman Irish Family’, Journal of the Cork Historical and Archaeological Society, second series, 41 (1936), pp. 20–8, 78–84; continued p. 42, pp. 40–52. 12. Thomas Morrice (ed.), A Collection of the State Letters of . . . Roger Boyle, First Earl of Orrery . . . (London, 1742, later edn. 2 vols., Dublin, 1743), p. 235. 13. Toby Barnard, ‘Boyle, Roger, first earl of Orrery (1621–1679)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, Sept. 2004; online edn., May 2006 ([http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/ article/3138, accessed 18 Feb. 2009]); David Dickson, Old World Colony: Cork and South Munster 1630–1830 (Cork, 2005), pp. 48–9. 14. O’Donoghue, ‘Parliament in Ireland under Charles II’, p. 38. 15. James, The Lords of the Ascendancy, p. 35, and O’Donoghue, ‘Parliament in Ireland under Charles II’, p. 139. 16. Margaret Anne Creighton, ‘The Catholic Interest in Irish Politics in the Reign of Charles II’ (unpublished PhD thesis, Queen’s University Belfast, 2000), pp. 331–2: Athenry, Brittas, Carlingford, Castle Connell, Castlehaven, Clancarthy, Clanricarde, Costello-Gallen, Fingal, Galmoy, Gormanston, Inchiquin, Iveagh, Louth, Mountgarret, Slane and Tyrconnell 17. NLI, Orrery Papers, Folder 22, Annesley to Orrery, Drury Lane, 20 May 1662. 18. Journals of the Irish House of Lords, I, pp. 253, 309, 319, 336, 381, 439; Dennehy, ‘Parliament in Ireland, 1661–6’ (unpublished MLitt thesis, University College Dublin, 2002), p. 59. 19. Ibid., I, pp. 419–20. 20. Ibid., p. 437. 21. O’Donoghue, ‘Parliament in Ireland under Charles II’, p. 38. 22. Sitting as the highest judicial authority in Ireland, the peers heard endless petitions from dispossessed and disgruntled landowners and often favoured the ‘innocent papists’ and pre-war planters, much to the fury of the Protestant newcomers who had settled in Ireland during the 1650s; see appendix VI. 23. James, Lords of the Ascendancy, p. 36. 24. Journals of the Irish House of Lords, I, pp. 255, 257. 25. Ibid., p. 271. 26. Ibid., pp. 287, 289, 292–3. 27. Ibid., pp. 304, 316. 28. Bodl., Clarendon MS 74, ff. 408–9, quoted in Coleman Dennehy, ‘The Restoration Irish Parliament, 1661–6’, p. 56. 29. Kevin McKenny, ‘Charles II’s Irish Cavaliers: The 1649 Officers and the Restoration Land Settlement’, Irish Historical Studies, 28 (1993), pp. 409–25. 30. Named in the 1660 Declaration, but a clause of the 1662 Act of Settlement added 18 names to the original 36 nominees. 31. D. E. C. Yale, ‘Finch, Heneage, first earl of Nottingham (1621–1682)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/9433, accessed 24 Feb. 2009). 32. Thomas Carte, The life of James duke of Ormond (6 vols., Oxford, 1851), II, p. 240. 33. Geraldine Talon (ed.), Court of Claims: Submissions and Evidence, 1663 (IMC, Dublin, 2006), pp. x–xvi; L. J. Arnold, ‘The Irish Court of Claims of 1663’, Irish Historical Studies, 24 (1985), pp. 417–30; and Karl Bottigheimer, ‘The Restoration Land Settlement: A Structural View’, Irish Historical Studies, 18 (1972), pp. 1–21. 34. Bottigheimer, ‘The Restoration Land Settlement’, p. 18. 35. Creighton, ‘The Catholic Interest in Irish Politics’, pp. 139–40. 36. Anthony R. J. S. Adolph, ‘Jermyn, Henry, earl of St Albans (bap. 1605, d. 1684)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, Sept. 2004; online edn., Jan. 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/

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Notes to pp. 343–9

545

article/14780, accessed 5 March 2009]); Alan Marshall, ‘Bennet, Henry, first earl of Arlington (bap. 1618, d. 1685)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, Sep. 2004; online edn., Jan 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/2104, accessed 24 Feb. 2009]). 37. Ronald Hutton, Charles II: King of England, Scotland and Ireland (Oxford, 1989), p. 200. 38. Bodl., Carte MS 143, f. 172; also see Bottigheimer, ‘Restoration Land Settlement’, pp. 11–15. 39. CSPI, 1663–1665, p. 29; Bodl., Carte MS 143, ff. 172–4. 40. Bodl., Carte MS 32, f. 732. 41. Bodl., Carte, MS 47, f. 65. As soon as Tyrconnell heard of the verdict in Antrim’s favour he begged for similar treatment, as did Lady Clanricarde, HMC, Ormonde, NS, III, p. 82. 42. Buckminster, Tollemache MS 5,236. 43. HMC, Report on the Manuscripts of the Late Reginald Rawdon Hastings (6 vols., London, 1928–47), II, p. 368; L. J. Arnold, ‘The Irish Court of Claims of 1663’, Irish Historical Studies, 24 (1985), p. 427. 44. CSPI, 1663–1665, pp. 682–3; also pp. 684, 689; O’Donoghue, ‘Parliament in Ireland under Charles II’, pp. 205, 207. 45. Statutes at large passed in the parliaments held in Ireland (1300–1800) (20 vols., Dublin, 1786–1801), II, pp. 285–6; III, p. 81; CSPI, 1663–1665, pp. 132, 214–16, 222, 227–8, 231, 316, 356–7, 458–9, 490. Massareene died in October 1665 leaving his son-in-law to secure lands he was awarded in lieu of his acres in County Antrim, CSPI, 1666–1669, pp. 484–6. 46. Statutes, III, p. 89. 47. CSPI, 1666–1669, pp. 543–59 (quote p. 549). 48. CSPD, Jan. to Dec. 31 1682, pp. 620–1. 49. CSPI, 1669–1670, p. 306; John Prendergast, ‘The Butlers, Lords Ikerrin, before the Court of Transplantation at Athlone, ad 1656, and at the Second Court of Claims’, Butler Society Journal, 3 (1987), pp. 72–6; NLI, MS 8539, Undated [post 1665] petition of James, Viscount Ikerrin to the king; CSPI, 1660–1662, p. 94. 50. CSPI, 1663–1665, pp. 676–7. 51. Ibid., p. 677. 52. CSPI, 1666–1669, p. 43. 53. Ibid. 54. CSPI, 1663–1665, pp. 676–7; CSPI, 1666–1669, pp. 7, 15, 16, 433; Journals of the Irish House of Lords, I, p. 665. 55. Bodl., Carte MS 128, ff. 388–9. 56. Bodl., Carte MS 49, f. 257; ibid., MS 69, f. 149. 57. J. G. Simms, War and Politics in Ireland, 1649–1730, ed. D. W. Hayton and Gerard O’Brien (London, 1986), pp. 49–63. 58. William J. Smyth, Map-making, Landscapes and Memory: A Geography of Colonial and Early Modern Ireland c.1530–1750 (Cork, 2006), pp. 234–49, 358. 59. NA, RC 5/25/p.122. 60. Rolf Loeber, ‘Irish Country Houses and Castles of the Late Caroline Period: An Unremembered Past Recaptured’, Quarterly Bulletin of the Irish Georgian Society, 14 (1973), pp. 6–7. 61. Christopher Morash, A History of Irish Theatre 1601–2000 (Cambridge, 2002), p. 18; see also Patrick Tuite, ‘Theatrical Representation, Public Performance, and the Cultural Garrisoning of Colonial Ireland’ (unpublished PhD thesis, Wisconsin-Madison, 2000), pp. 236, 243. 62. D. Dickson, ‘Capital and Country, 1600–1800’ in A. Cosgrove, (ed.), Dublin through the Ages (Dublin, 1988), p. 71. 63. Smyth, Map-making, p. 358. 64. Nuala T. Burke, ‘An Early Modern Dublin Suburb: The Estate of Francis Aungier, Earl of Longford’, Irish Geography, 6:4 (1972), pp. 365–85. 65. NLI, Fingal Papers, 1702–3. 66. F. J. Holden, ‘Property Taxes in Old Dublin’, Dublin Historical Records, 13, pp. 133–7. 67. HMC, Ormonde, NS, VII, pp. 497–99, 510–15. 68. G. E. Aylmer, ‘The first Duke of Ormond as Patron and Administrator’ in Toby Barnard and Jane Fenlon (eds.), The Dukes of Ormonde, 1610–1745 (Woodbridge, Suffolk, 2000), p. 115. 69. Jane Ohlmeyer and Steven Zwicker, ‘Patronage and Restoration Politics: John Dryden and the House of Ormond’, Historical Journal, 49 (2006), pp. 677–706. 70. CSPD, Jan.–Nov. 1671, p. 67, and Orrery Papers (consulted on microfilm, originals in West Suffolk RO), NLI, P.7074, Folder 4; BL, Add. MS 15,892, f. 182. 71. He was at that point nominally Protestant and owed his position to the influence of his father-in-law, the earl of Anglesey.

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Notes to pp. 349–53

72. Aylmer, ‘The First Duke of Ormond as Patron’, pp. 125–8. 73. Richard Lawrence, The interest of Ireland in its trade and wealth stated in two parts : first part observes and discovers the causes of Irelands not more increasing in trade and wealth from the first conquest till now: second part proposeth expedients to remedy all its mercanture maladies . . . by which it is kept poor and low; both mix’d with some observations on the politicks of government relating to the incouragement of trade and increase of wealth: with some reflections on principles of religion as it relates to the premisses (Dublin, 1682), II, published in the civil list for 1676, pp. 156–60: lord lieutenant (£6,593 6s 8d), lord chancellor (£1,000), lord chief justice of king’s bench (£600) and of common pleas (£500), and master of the rolls (£157 9s 11d). 74. Thomas Morris, A sermon preached at the funeral of the Right Honourable Roger Earl of Orrery, who dyed the 16th of October, at Castle-Martyr, and was buried at Youghall in Ireland the 18th of the same month, in the year 1679 (London, 1681), p. 39. 75. Edward Berwick (ed.), The Rawdon Papers . . . (London, 1819), pp. 266–7. 76. T. C. Barnard, ‘Land and Limits of Loyalty: The Second Earl of Cork and First Earl of Burlington (1612–98)’ in Toby Barnard and Jane Clark (eds.), Lord Burlington: Architecture, Art and Life (London, 1995), p. 197. 77. HMC, Ormonde, NS, V, pp. 279–80, 506; Jane Fenlon, The Ormonde Picture Collection ([Dublin, 2001]), p. 29. 78. NLI, MS 5,493. 79. HMC, Ormonde, NS, III, pp. ix, xvi, 83. 80. Jane Fenlon, ‘Some Houses in England Owned by the Dukes of Ormonde and their Families’, Butler Society Journal, 3 (1987), pp. 58–60. 81. Anonymous, ‘Gerald Aungier of the East India Company. The Story of a Younger Son’, Notes and Queries, 146 (Jan–June 1924), pp. 205–8; HMC, Ormonde, NS, V, pp. 50–1. 82. CSPI, 1663–1665, p. 644. 83. CSPI, 1666–1669, p. 120. 84. Berwick (ed.), The Rawdon Papers, pp. 219–20. 85. CSPI, 1666–1669, p. 183. 86. Ibid., pp. 223, 231, 250, 289–93, 339. 87. The Diary of Samuel Pepys, ed. Robert Latham and William Matthews (11 vols., 4th edn., Los Angeles, 1979), VII, pp. 343, 350, 376. 88. Thomas Morrice (ed.), A Collection of the State Letters of . . . Roger Boyle, First Earl of Orrery . . . (London, 1742, later edn. 2 vols., Dublin, 1743), p. 197. 89. Patrick Kelly, ‘ “A Light to the Blind”: The Voice of the Dispossessed Elite in the Generation after the Defeat at Limerick’, Irish Historical Studies, 24 (1985), pp. 440–1. 90. TNA, PROB 11/527/100. 91. John D’Alton, Illustrations, Historical and Genealogical of King James’s Irish Army List (1689) (Limerick, 1997), pp. 503–4. 92. Breandán Ó Buachalla, ‘James Our True King: The Ideology of Irish Royalism in the Seventeenth Century’ in G. Boyce, Robert Eccleshall and Vincent Geoghegan (eds.), Political Thought in Ireland since the Seventeenth Century (London, 1993), pp. 1–35, and the magisterial Aisling Ghéar na Stíobhartaigh agus an t-aos léinn (Dublin, 1996); Joep Leersson, Mere Irish and Fíor-Ghael: Studies in the Idea of Irish Nationality, its Development and Literary Expression prior to the Nineteenth Century (Cork, 1996); Éamonn Ó Ciardha, ‘Gaelic Poetry and the Jacobite Tradition 1688–1719’, Celtic History Review, 2 (1996), pp. 17–22; ‘The Stuarts and Deliverance in Irish and Scots-Gaelic Literature’ in S. J. Connolly (ed.), Kingdoms United? Great Britain and Ireland since 1500 (Dublin, 1999), pp. 78–94; ‘The Unkinde Deserter and the Bright Duke: The Dukes of Ormond, in the Irish Royalist Tradition’ in Barnard and Fenlon (eds.), The Dukes of Ormond, and Ó Ciardha, Ireland and the Jacobite Cause, 1685–1766: ‘A Fatal attachment’ (Dublin, 2002). 93. James McGuire, ‘Why was Ormond Dismissed in 1669?’, Irish Historical Studies, 18 (1973), pp. 295–312; Gibney, ‘Some remarks’, pp. 45–7. 94. HMC, Ormonde, NS, IV, pp. 287, 292. 95. Ibid., p. 233. 96. Ibid., p. 26. 97. Ibid., pp. 168–9. 98. Ibid., p. 576, and VI, p. 38. 99. The Information of Hubert Bourk, Gent, touching the popish plot in Ireland, carried on by the conspiracies of the Earl of Tyrone . . . delivered first by this informant before the Lord Lieutenant and council in Ireland in March 1678, and to His Majesty and both Houses of Parliament in November 1680 . . . (London, 1680); John Gibney, Ireland and the Popish Plot (Dublin, 2009).

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Notes to pp. 353–7

547

100. HMC, Report 11. Appendix 2 (London, 1887), pp. 194, 219, 220. 101. HMC, Ormonde, NS, IV, p. 443. 102. Discussed further in Deana Rankin, Between Spenser and Swift: English Writing in SeventeenthCentury Ireland (Cambridge, 2005). 103. H. M. Scott (ed.), The European Nobilities in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries: Western Europe (2 vols., London, 1994), I, pp. 41–7. 104. D’Alton, Illustrations, pp. 97, 47. 105. Scott (ed.), The European Nobilities, I, p. 45. 106. CSPI, 1669–1670, p. 651 and also pp. 132–4. 107. HMC, Ormonde, OS, I, p. 244, 400; II, pp. 189, 191, 195, 202, 208, 229; Charles Dalton, Irish Army Lists of King Charles II, 1661–1685 (Dublin, 2000). 108. CSPI, 1660–1662, p. 50. 109. Piers Wauchope, ‘Dongan, Thomas, second earl of Limerick (1634–1715)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, (Oxford, Sept. 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/66561, accessed 7 Aug. 2010]). 110. HMC, Ormonde, NS, IV, p. 228. 111. Calendar of State Papers and manuscripts relating to . . . Venice, 1661–1664 (London, 1923–), pp. 127–9, 136–7, 188, 193. 112. CSPI, 1663–1665, pp. 86, 878. 113. Ivar O’Brien, The O’Briens of Thomond. The O’Briens in Irish History 1500–1865 (Chichester, 1986), pp. 102, 117; HMC, Ormonde, NS, V, p. 346. 114. The Diary of John Evelyn, ed. E. S. de Beer, (6 vols., Oxford, 1955), III, p. 605; IV, pp. 127, 208 (quotes). 115. HMC, Ormonde, NS, IV, p. 21. 116. Count Taaffe’s letters from the imperial camp to his brother the Earl of Carlingford here in London giving an account of the most considerable actions, both before, and at, the raising of the siege at Vienna, together with several remarkable passages afterward, in the victorious campagne against the Turks in Hungary: with an addition of two other letters from a young English nobleman, a voluntier in the imperial army (London, 1684). 117. John Forbes, Memoirs of the Earls of Granard, ed. George Arthur Hastings, earl of Granard (London, 1868), pp. 8, 10, 69, 72. 118. J. Miller, ‘The Earl of Tyrconnell and James II’s Irish policy, 1685–8’, Historical Journal, 20 (1977), pp. 803–23; James McGuire, ‘Richard Talbot, Earl of Tyrconnell (1603–91) and the Catholic Counter-Revolution’ in Ciaran Brady (ed.), Worsted in the Game: Losers in Irish History (Dublin, 1989), pp. 73–84; Lilian Tate, ‘Letter-book of Richard Talbot’, Analecta Hibernica, 4 (1932), pp. 99–138; J. I. McGuire, ‘The Church of Ireland and the “Glorious Revolution” of 1688’ in A. Cosgrove and D. MacCartney (eds.), Studies in Irish History presented to R. Dudley Edwards (Dublin, 1979), pp. 137–49. 119. CSPD, 1686–1687, pp. 51–3; HMC, Ormonde, OS, I, pp. 400, 412. 120. Patrick Melvin, ‘Sir Paul Rycault’s Memoranda and Letters from Ireland 1686–1687’, Analecta Hibernica, 27 (1972), p. 149. 121. Ibid., p. 157. 122. D’Alton, Illustrations, pp. 503–4. 123. Dickson, Old World Colony, p. 57; Simms, War and Politics in Ireland, pp. 65–81. 124. One duke (Ormond), 17 earls (including Clanricarde, Cork, Kildare and Thomond), 13 viscounts and 5 barons, GEC, III, Appendix D. The list is slightly misleading. The earl of Westmeath is listed as absent but did attend whereas the baron of Kingston did not attend. 125. D’Alton, Illustrations, p. 636. 126. Piers Wauchope, ‘MacCarthy, Justin, first Viscount Mountcashel (c. 1643–1694)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, (Oxford, Sept. 2004; online edn., May 2006 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/ view/article/17380, accessed 25 Nov. 2008] 127. D’Alton, Illustrations, p. 504. 128. Ibid., pp. 514, 545, 707. 129. Barnewall of Trimleston, Bourke of Brittas, Bourke of Castle Connell, Butler of Dunboyne, Butler of Galmoy, Dungan of Clane, Fleming of Slane, Hamilton of Strabane, Magennis of Iveagh, MacCarthy of Clancarthy, O’Brien of Clare, O’Dempsey of Clanmalier and Sarsfield of Kilmallock. 130. Ó Ciardha, Ireland and the Jacobite Cause.

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548

Notes to pp. 361–6

Chapter Thirteen: Income   1. CSPI, 1611–1614, pp. 501–2.   2. Hamish Scott, ‘ “Acts of time and power”: The Consolidation of Aristocracy in Seventeenth-Century Europe, c.1580–1720’, Bulletin of the German Historical Institute, 30 (2008), pp. 3–37.   3. CSPI, 1611–1614, pp. 55–7.   4. The additionall propositions of His Maiestie, sent by the Earl of Ormond, and other His Majesties Commissioners in Ireland, under the Great Seal of Ireland, unto the rebels and Roman Catholiques there; for a conclusion of peace, if they will accept thereof (London, 1645).   5. Aidan Clarke, ‘The Irish Economy, 1600–60’ in NHI, III, pp. 168–86; L. M. Cullen, An Economic History of Ireland since 1660 (London, 1972), pp. 7–25; Raymond Gillespie, The Transformation of the Irish Economy 1550–1700 (Dundalk, 1991), p. 9.   6. S. J. Connolly, Contested Island: Ireland 1460–1630 (Oxford, 2007), pp. 281, 404–5; Gillespie, The Transformation of the Irish Economy, p. 13.   7. Gillespie, The Transformation of the Irish Economy, p. 11.   8. Estate papers survive, at least in part, for the larger titled houses: Antrim, Cork, Ormond, Orrery and Thomond, see pp. 17–18 above.   9. Grosart (ed.), Lismore Papers, second series, IV, p. 259. 10. Peter Roebuck, ‘The Making of an Ulster Great Estate: The Chichesters, Barons of Belfast and Viscounts of Carrickfergus, 1599–1648’, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, 79, Section C (1979), p. 13. 11. CSPI, 1647–1660, p. 253; see chapter 4. 12. TCD, MS 834, ff. 74v–75v. 13. TCD, MS 809, ff. 313–313v. 14. TCD, MS 813, f. 398r. 15. CSPI, 1647–1660, p. 630. 16. Lawrence Stone, Crisis of the Aristocracy 1558–1641 (Oxford, 1965), pp. 761, 780; Lodge, IV, p. 214. 17. David Edwards, The Ormond Lordship in County Kilkenny, 1515–1642: The Rise and Fall of Butler Feudal Power (Dublin, 2003), pp. 100–2; Thomas Carte, The Life of James duke of Ormond (6 vols., Oxford, 1851), IV, pp. 393–4, 419. 18. Jane Ohlmeyer, Civil War and Restoration in the Three Stuart Kingdoms: The Career of Randal MacDonnell, Marquis of Antrim (Dublin, 2001), pp. 29–31, 61–5. 19. Jane Ohlmeyer, ‘Burke, Ulick, marquess of Clanricarde (1604–1658)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, Sept. 2004; online edn., Jan. 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/3996, accessed 8 Aug. 2010]); Clarendon, Rebellion, V, 219; Stone, Crisis, p. 761. 20. H. J. Habakkuk, ‘The Rise and Fall of English Landed Families, 1600–1800’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, fifth series, 29 (1979), p. 201. 21. A certaine relation of the earle of Ormonds proceedings in Ireland, shewing what prisoners he hath taken, and what townes he hath burnt and what store of pillage he hath sent, and brought home with him (London, 1642), p. 7. 22. HMC, Ormonde, NS, II, pp. 188, 204. 23. HMC, Report 5. Appendix (London, 1876), p. 42. 24. TCD, MS 815, ff. 87, 89. 25. CSPI, 1660–1662, p. 76. 26. Lodge, II, p. 37. 27. NLI, Inchiquin MS 1520/A/1538; Ivar O’Brien, The O’Briens of Thomond. The O’Briens in Irish History 1500–1865 (Chichester, 1986), p. 73. 28. Toby Barnard, ‘Boyle, Richard, first earl of Burlington and second earl of Cork (1612–1698)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, Sept. 2004; online edn., Jan. 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb. com/view/article/3135, accessed 18 June 2010]); Toby Barnard has suggested that by the mideighteenth century the average income for a peer in Ireland was roughly £3,000, less than that of their social equivalents in lowland Britain; T. C. Barnard, ‘Public Wealth and Private Uses of Wealth in Ireland, c. 1660–1760’ in Jacqueline Hill and Colm Lennon (eds.), Luxury and Austerity, Historical Studies 21 (Dublin, 1999), p. 69. 29. C. W. Fitzgerald, The Earls of Kildare and their Ancestors 1057 to 1773 (Dublin, 1858), p. 266. 30. CSPD, May 1684–Feb. 1685, p. 273. 31. Toby Barnard and Jane Fenlon (eds.), The Dukes of Ormonde, 1610–1745 (Woodbridge, Suffolk, 2000), pp. 22; Fitzgerald, Earls of Kildare, p. 266. 32. Keith M. Brown, Noble Society in Scotland: Wealth, Family and Culture, from Reformation to Revolution (Edinburgh, 2000), p. 32.

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Notes to pp. 366–74

549

33. Stone, Crisis, pp. 761–2. 34. HMC, Ormonde, NS, II (London, 1903), p. 125. 35. Brian Ó Dálaigh, ‘An Inventory of the Contents of Bunratty Castle and the Will of Henry, Fifth Earl of Thomond, 1639’, North Munster Antiquarian Journal, 36 (1995), pp. 141, 146, 161–3, and ‘A Comparative Study of the Wills of the First and Fourth Earls of Thomond’, North Munster Antiquarian Journal, 34 (1992), pp. 48–63. 36. Lodge, II, p. 37. 37. NA, RC 5/19/part 3/pp. 269, 271. 38. HMC, Ormonde, OS, I, p. 103. 39. Lodge, I, p. 244. 40. Statutes at large passed in the parliaments held in Ireland (1300–1800) (20 vols., Dublin, 1786–1801), II, pp. 2–4, 207–8, 349–50. 41. Gillespie, Colonial Ulster, p. 232. 42. The Present state of Ireland together with some remarques upon the antient state thereof: likewise a description of the chief towns: with a map of the kingdome (London, 1673), pp. 227–9; and Richard Lawrence, The interest of Ireland in its trade and wealth stated in two parts: first part observes and discovers the causes of Irelands not more increasing in trade and wealth from the first conquest till now: second part proposeth expedients to remedy all its mercanture maladies . . . by which it is kept poor and low; both mix’d with some observations on the politicks of government relating to the incouragement of trade and increase of wealth: with some reflections on principles of religion as it relates to the premisses (Dublin, 1682), II, pp. 164–8. 43. Raymond Gillespie, Colonial Ulster: The Settlement of East Ulster 1600–1641 (Cork, 1985), p. 232. 44. Catherine Jones, daughter of second Viscount Ranelagh and a granddaughter of the first earl of Cork, who married the first earl in 1661. 45.  CSPD, Jan. to Nov. 1671, p. 320. 46. The Present state of Ireland, pp. 227–9; and Lawrence, The interest of Ireland, II, pp. 164–8. 47. See table 21 above. 48. Subsidy as baron £5. 49. Subsidy as viscount £25. 50. Subsidy as baron £10. 51. Raymond Gillespie, ‘Meal and Money: The Harvest Crisis of 1621–4 and the Irish Economy’ in M. E. Crawford (ed.), Famine: The Irish Experience, 900–1900 (Edinburgh, 1989), p. 86; Bernadette Cunningham, ‘Clanricard Letters: Letters and Papers, 1605–1673, preserved in the National Library of Ireland Manuscript 3111’, Journal of the Galway Archaeological and Historical Society, 48 (1996), pp. 162–208. 52. NLI, MS 13,237(24). 53. W. Knowler (ed.), The earl of Strafforde’s letters and despatches with an essay towards his life by Sir George Radcliffe . . . (2 vols., London, 1739), II, pp. 339–40. For details of the harvest crises that plagued the 1630s, see Raymond Gillespie, ‘Harvest Crises in Early Seventeenth-Century Ireland’, Irish Economic and Social History, 11 (1984), pp. 5–18. Similar misfortunes struck those few nobles who enjoyed more varied sources of revenue. For example, Cork’s ironworks nearly collapsed during the 1620s for lack of a market for his iron. 54. CSPD, May–Sept. 1672, p. 159. 55. HMC, Ormonde, IV, p. 172. 56. Eleanor O’Keeffe, ‘The Family and Marriage Strategies of James Butler, 1st Duke of Ormonde, 1658–1688’ (unpublished PhD thesis, Cambridge, 2000), pp. 132–3. 57. David Dickson, ‘Property and Social Structure in Eighteenth-Century South Munster’ in L. M. Cullen and F. Furet (eds.), Ireland and France, Seventeenth–Twentieth Centuries (Paris, 1980), pp. 131–3; Gillespie, Colonial Ulster, pp. 77, 133; I. D. Whyte, Agriculture and Society in SeventeenthCentury Scotland (Edinburgh, 1979), chapter 8. 58. Brown, Noble Society in Scotland, pp. 50–7. 59. Gillespie, Colonial Ulster, pp. 116–17; Whyte, Agriculture and Society, pp. 5, 31–41, 70–9. 60. See, for example, PRONI, D.265/80. 61. CSPI, 1606–1608 (London, 1874), p. 65. 62. Dálaigh, ‘A Comparative Study of the Wills of the First and Fourth Earls of Thomond’, p. 51. 63. Bernadette Cunningham, ‘Political and Social Change in the Lordships of Clanricard and Thomond, 1596–1641’ (unpublished MA thesis, National University of Ireland, University College Galway, 1979), pp. 217, 219, 222; Nicholas Canny, Making Ireland British, 1580–1650 (Oxford, 2001), pp. 329–31, writes that Thomond and Clanricarde ‘appear to have emulated the earl of Cork’s estate management’.

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550

Notes to pp. 374–9

64. Terence O’Donnell, ‘Lord Trimleston’s Advice of his Son – A Fragment’, Riocht na Midhe, 3 (1964), pp. 152–4. 65. TCD, MS 813, f. 398r. 66. Brown, Noble Society in Scotland, p. 49. 67. TCD, MS 809, ff. 313–313v. 68. CSPI, 1608–1610, pp. 21, 92, 199; CSPI, 1647–1660, p. 666. 69. Maighréad Ní Mhurchadha, Fingal, 1603–60: Contending Neighbours in North Dublin (Dublin, 2005), p. 100; Grosart (ed.), Lismore Papers, first series, V, p. 55; Gilbert (ed.), Irish Confederation, I, p. 149. 70. In 1611 some 20,000 trees in Cork and Waterford were earmarked specifically for the king’s use, especially his navies; Mervyn Edward Wingfield, first baron Powerscourt, Muniments of the Ancient Family of Wingfield (privately printed, London, 1894; reprinted, Durham, NC, 1987), pp. 79–80. 71. TNA, PRO C2/ChasI/6/51. 72. Rolf Loeber, ‘Settlers’ Utilisation of the Natural Resources’ in Ken Hannigan and William Nolan (eds.), Wicklow. History and Society: Interdisciplinary Essays on the History of an Irish County (Dublin, 1994), pp. 274, 278, 287; Kenneth Nicholls, ‘Woodland Cover in pre-Modern Ireland’ in Patrick Duffy, David Edwards and Elizabeth Fitzpatrick (eds.), Gaelic Ireland: Land, Lordship and Settlement c. 1250–c.1650 (Dublin, 2001), pp. 198–205. 73. Colin Rynne, ‘The Social Archaeology of Plantation-Period Ironworks in Ireland: Immigrant Industrial Communities and Technology Transfer, c.1560–1640’ in James Lyttleton and Colin Rynne (eds.), Plantation Ireland: Settlement and Material Culture, c.1550–c.1700 (Dublin, 2009), pp. 248–64. 74. E. McCracken, ‘Charcoal-Burning Ironworks in Seventeenth and Eighteenth-Century Ireland’ in Ulster Journal of Archaeology, 20 (1957), pp. 124, 126; H. Kearney, ‘Richard Boyle, Ironmaster’, Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, 83 (1953), p. 157. 75. TCD, MS 809, ff. 313-v. 76. Canny, Making Ireland British, p. 350. These ventures left Coote deeply in debt, HMC, Ormonde, NS, II, p. 125. 77. Kearney, ‘Richard Boyle, Ironmaster’, pp. 156–62. 78. Grosart (ed.), Lismore Papers, first series, V, pp. 52, 53, 122, 145, 187, 206, 217 and 226–7 (quote). 79. Dickson, Old World Colony, p. 20. 80. BL, Egerton MS 80, f. 32; Grosart (ed.), Lismore Papers, second series, IV, p. 259. 81. Cork’s bi-annual rental for the first half of 1637 amounted to over £8,000 and in his diary he thanked the Lord for this ‘great bounty’ and implored God to ‘encrease them with his blessing, and with all happiness and prosperety as given us by his divyne hand’; Grosart (ed.), Lismore Papers, first series, IV, p. 128. 82. NLI, MS 6,899, MS 6,240 and MS 13,237 (24) and (25). 83. Grosart (ed.), Lismore Papers, second series, IV, p. 259. 84. Ibid., pp. 623, 661. 85. NLI, MS 6253. 86. BL, Egerton MS 80, ff. 15-15v. 87. NLI, MS 6,889, MS 6,240 and MS 6,900. 88. NLI, MS 6,240, MS 6,899 and MS 6,900. 89. Cited in Michael MacCarthy-Morrogh, ‘Credit and Remittance: Monetary Problems in Early Seventeenth-Century Munster’, Irish Economic and Social History, 14 (1987), p. 19. 90. TNA, C2/ChasI/H99/16 Horsey kt v earl Cork, 16? November 1628. 91. Grosart (ed.), Lismore Papers, first series, V, p. 1. 92. Ibid., pp. 141, 149, 156, 161, 166. 93. Ibid., IV, pp. 8, 9, 15, 43, 56–7; V, pp. 1, 3, 9, 17, 22, 26, 59, 66, 73, 96, 117, 129, 132, 138, 140, 166, 171, 181, 184, 211, 232–3; Dorothea Townshend, The Life and Letters of the Great Earl of Cork (London, 1904), pp. 482–4. For a list of debts owed to him by 84 people who listed addresses as Counties Cork, Dublin, Kerry, Mayo, Tipperary and Waterford in 1642, see NLI, MS 6,142. 94. Jane Ohlmeyer and Éamonn Ó Ciardha (eds.), The Irish Statute Staple Books, 1596–1687 (Dublin, 1998), ID reference on the CD-Rom 1810, 1853, 1919, 1938, 2115. Also see MacCarthy-Morrogh, The Munster Plantation, pp. 35–6, 79, 81, 146–8, 164, 166, 182–3, 248–52, 281. 95. See for examples Nicholas Canny, ‘What Really Happened in 1641’ in Jane Ohlmeyer (ed.), Ireland from Independence to Occupation, 1641–1660 (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 32–3, and ‘The 1641 Depositions as a Source for the Writing of Social History: County Cork as a Case Study’ in Patrick O’Flanagan and Cornelius G. Buttimer (eds.), Cork: History and Society (Dublin, 1993), especially

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pp. 251, 265–7. Raymond Gillespie, ‘The Murder of Arthur Champion and the 1641 Rising in Fermanagh’, Clogher Record 14 (1993), pp. 52–66. Arthur Champion appeared as a creditor in the staple volumes (Ohlmeyer and Ó Ciardha (eds.), Irish Statute Staple Books, ID reference on the CD-Rom 2747, 2098), as did his widow, Alice Allen (ibid., ID 2332, 2261).   96. Robert Allen, ‘The Price of Freehold Land and the Interest Rate in the 17th and 18th Centuries’, Economic History Review, second series, 41 (1988), p. 49. Admittedly, mortgage procedure in Ireland, ‘whereby the transaction amounted to a sale with the option of repurchase’, was more antiquated than in England; MacCarthy-Morrogh, ‘Credit and Remittance’, p. 7.   97. Ohlmeyer and Ó Ciardha (eds.), Irish Statute Staple Books, ID reference on the CD-Rom 1686, 1695, 1700, 1701, 1713, 1739, 1740, 1741, 1782, 1857, 1876, 1898, 1957 and 2021.   98. Brian C. Donovan and David Edwards (eds.), British Sources for Irish History 1485–1641: A Guide to Manuscripts in Local, Regional and Specialised Repositories in England, Scotland and Wales (IMC, Dublin, 1997), pp. 210–11.   99. Ohlmeyer and Ó Ciardha (eds.), Irish Statute Staple Books, ID reference on the CD-Rom 2681. 100. Ibid., ID 2510. Of Richard, Ormond later noted that he was ‘the weakest young man in body and mind that I know, living without a guardian, if he may be said to be so, who has a good discreet woman to his wife’; HMC, Ormond, IV, p. 234; V, p. 163. 101. Ohlmeyer and Ó Ciardha (eds.), Irish Statute Staple Books, ID reference on the CD-Rom 2663, 2664, 3999, 4007. 102. Geraldine Talon (ed.), Court of Claims: Submissions and Evidence, 1663 (IMC, Dublin, 2006), pp. 338–9. 103. Ibid., pp. 202–4. 104. For fascinating insights on this topic in an English context see Craig Muldrew, ‘Credit and the Courts: Debt Litigation in a Seventeenth- Century Urban Community’, Economic History Review, 46 (1993), pp. 23–38, and ‘The Culture of Reconciliation: Community and the Settlement of Economic Disputes in Early Modern England’, Historical Journal 39 (1996), pp. 915–42. 105. Canny, Making Ireland British, pp. 308–21. 106. Dickson, Old World Colony, pp. 18–20. 107. Paddy O’Sullivan, ‘The English East India Company at Dundaniel’, Bandon Historical Journal, IV (1988), pp. 3–14. 108. Canny, Making Ireland British, pp. 336–89. 109. Ibid., p. 231. 110. Ibid., pp. 373–7. 111. Gilbert (ed.), Irish Confederation, I, p. 149; David Sweetman, The Medieval Castles in Ireland (Cork, 1999), p. 151. 112. Gilbert (ed.), Irish Confederation, I, p. 149. 113. ‘Safe conduct for Richard Rowley and Jacquisse Lagasse and 16 Walloons whom they have brought over from beyond the seas to make ordnance, bar-iron and other things at the King’s ironworks in Ireland’, Charles McNeill, ‘Rawlinson Manuscripts (Class D)’, Analecta Hibernica, 2 (1931), p. 77; Rolf Loeber and Geoffrey Parker, ‘The Military Revolution in Seventeenth-Century Ireland’ in Jane Ohlmeyer (ed.), Ireland from Independence to Occupation, 1641–1660 (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 70–1. 114. Raymond Gillespie, ‘The Origins and Development of an Ulster Urban Network, 1600–41’, Irish Historical Studies, 24 (1984), pp. 15–16. See also Robert Hunter, ‘Ulster Plantation Towns 1609– 1641’ in David Harkness and Mary O’Dowd (eds.), The Town in Ireland (Belfast, 1991), pp. 55–80. 115. M. C. Griffith (ed.), Irish Patent Rolls of James I: Facsimile of the Irish Record Commission’s Calendar prepared prior to 1830 (IMC, Dublin, 1966), p. 276. 116. Lodge, I, p. 158. Also see Audrey Horning, ‘ “The root of all vice and bestiality”: Exploring the Cultural Role of the Alehouse in the Ulster Plantation’ in Lyttleton and Rynne (eds.), Plantation Ireland: Settlement and Material Culture, pp. 113–31. 117. Griffith (ed.), Irish Patent Rolls of James I, p. 307. 118. Dickson, Old World Colony, p. 22. 119. Discussed at length in Peter Borsay and Lindsay Proudfoot (eds.), Provincial Towns in Early Modern England and Ireland (Oxford, 2002), pp. 24–5. 120. Philip Robinson, ‘Urbanisation in North-West Ulster, 1609–1670’, Irish Geography, 15 (1982), pp. 35–50. 121. W. H. Crawford, ‘The Creation and Evolution of Small Towns in Ulster in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries’ in Borsay and Proudfoot (eds.), Provincial Towns, pp. 98–105. 122. Raymond Gillespie, ‘The Irish Economy at War, 1641–1652’ in Ohlmeyer (ed.), Ireland from Independence to Occupation, pp. 160–80.

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Notes to pp. 383–6

123. Carla Gardena Pestana, The English Atlantic in an Era of Revolution, 1640–1661 (Cambridge MA, 2004). 124. Nicholas Canny, ‘The Origins of Empire’ in Nicholas Canny (ed.), The Oxford History of the British Empire, vol. 1 (Oxford, 1998), I, pp. 22–3. 125. R. B. Grassby, ‘Social Status and Commercial Enterprise under Louis XIV’, Economic History Review, New Series, 13 (1960), pp. 19–38 and Stuart Woolf, ‘The Aristocracy in Transition: A Continental Comparison’, Economic History Review, New Series, 23 (1970), pp. 520–31. 126. Lawrence, The interest of Ireland, I, pp. 8–9. 127. Lodge, III, p. 202. 128. Lawrence, The interest of Ireland, I, dedication. 129. HMC, Ormonde, NS, VII, p. 27. 130. Lawrence, The interest of Ireland, II, pp. 188–9. 131. HMC, Ormonde, NS, III, pp. 346, 348. 132. Ní Mhurchadha, Fingal, 1603–60, pp. 102, 108. 133. Barnard and Fenlon (eds.), The Dukes of Ormonde, p. 37; Carmel McAsey, ‘Chapelizod, Co. Dublin’, Dublin Historical Record, 17 (1962), p. 42. 134. HMC, Ormonde, NS, III, p. 333. 135. Ibid., p. 329. 136. Huntington Library, San Marino, HA 14,989. 137. Ibid., HA 14,372. 138. CSPD, March 1676–Feb. 1677, pp. 572–3. 139. Huntington Library, San Marino, HA 14,363; Edward Berwick (ed.), The Rawdon Papers (London, 1819), Jean Agnew, Belfast Merchant Families in the Seventeenth Century (Dublin, 1996), pp. 18, 50, 111, 148–9, 164–5; CSPD, 1677–Feb. 1678, p. 228. 140. Berwick (ed.), The Rawdon Papers, pp. 265–6. 141. CSPI, 1666–1669, pp. 289–93. 142. David Dickson, Jan Parmentier and Jane Ohlmeyer (eds.), Irish and Scottish Mercantile Networks in Europe and Overseas in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (Ghent, 2007). 143. Louis M. Cullen, ‘Merchant Communities, the Navigation Acts and the Irish and Scottish Responses’ in L. M. Cullen and T. C. Smout (eds.), Comparative Aspects of Scottish and Irish Social History (Edinburgh, 1977), pp. 165–76. 144. BL, Add. MS 40,860 (Annesley’s diary, 1671–1675) and Add. MS 18,730 (Annesley’s diary, 1675–1684). 145. Jane Ohlmeyer, ‘ “The Dunkirk of Ireland”: Wexford Privateers during the 1640s’, Journal of the Wexford Historical Society, 12 (1988–9), pp. 30–41; idem, ‘Irish Privateers during the Civil War, 1642–50’, Mariner’s Mirror, 76 (1990), pp. 126–8. 146. Calendar of Treasury Books, 1660–67 (London, 1904), p. 469. 147. W. W. Webb, ‘O’Brien, William, second earl of Inchiquin (c. 1640–1692)’, rev. Harman Murtagh, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/ article/20469, accessed 4 Aug. 2009]). 148. CSPD, 1672–3, p. 206. 149. John Ainsworth (ed.), Inchiquin Manuscripts (IMC, Dublin, 1961), p. 517. 150. TNA, PROB 11/414/66. 151. James died shortly after his father and bequeathed all of his estate to his elder brother, William; Ainsworth (ed.), Inchiquin Manuscripts, p. 517. 152. Thomas M. Truxes, Irish-American Trade, 1660–1783 (Cambridge, 1988), p. 14. 153. Victor Treadwell, Buckingham and Ireland, 1616–1628: A Study in Anglo-Irish Politics (Dublin, 1998), p. 305; John D. Krugler, ‘Calvert, George, first Baron Baltimore (1579/80–1632)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, Sept. 2004; online edn., Jan. 2008 [http://www. oxforddnb.com/view/article/4420, accessed 12 Nov. 2008]); James Horn, ‘Tobacco Colonies: The Shaping of English Society in the Seventeenth-Century Chesapeake’ in Canny (ed.), Oxford History, I, pp. 178, 186; Francis J. Bremer, ‘Calvert, Cecil, second Baron Baltimore (1605–1675)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004; online edn., Jan. 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb. com/view/article/37257, accessed 12 Nov. 2008]; and John D. Krugler, ‘Calvert, Leonard (1610?– 1647)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, Sept. 2004; online edn., May 2006 [http:// www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/4424, accessed 12 Nov 2008]). Baltimore’s daughter Grace married Sir Robert Talbot, Hanly (ed.), Letters, p. 26. 154. Piers Wauchope, ‘Dongan, Thomas, second earl of Limerick (1634–1715)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, Sept. 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/66561, accessed 7 Aug. 2010]).

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155. Robert C. Ritchie, ‘Coote, Richard, first earl of Bellamont (1636–1701)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, Sept. 2004; online edn., Jan. 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/ article/6247, accessed 8 Aug. 2010). 156. P. J. Marshall, ‘The English in Asia’ in Canny (ed.), Oxford History, I, pp. 264–85. 157. Holden Furber, Rival Empires of Trade in the Orient, 1500–1800 (Oxford, 1976), pp. 92–3. 158. Charles Fawcett, The English Factories in India (4 vols., Oxford, 1936–55), I, p. 173; see also pp. vii–viii, 134–5 and III, p. 57. 159. Anonymous, ‘Gerald Aungier of the East India Company: The Story of a Younger Son’, Notes and Queries, 96 (1924), pp. 147–51, 165–8. 185–7, 204–8; HMC, Ormonde, NS, V, pp. 51, 133, 165. In 1679 Lord Longford expected to receive £4,000 from his brother’s will. 160. CSPI, 1611–1614, pp. 501–2.

Chapter Fourteen: Expenditure   1. Keith M. Brown, Noble Society in Scotland: Wealth, Family and Culture, from Reformation to Revolution (Edinburgh, 2000), p. 71.   2. Lawrence Stone, The Crisis of the Aristocracy 1558–1641 (Oxford, 1965).   3. See, for examples, Charles Jago, ‘The Influence of Debt on the Relations between the Crown and Aristocracy in Seventeenth-century Castile’, Economic History Review, second series, 26 (1973), pp. 218–36, at p. 227 and idem, ‘The “crisis of the aristocracy” in Seventeenth-Century Castile’, Past and Present, 84 (1979), pp. 60–90; S. J. Woolf, ‘Economic Problems of the Nobility in the Early Modern Period: The Example of Piedmont’, Economic History Review, second series, 17 (1964), pp. 267–83; Keith Brown, ‘Noble Indebtedness in Scotland between Reformation and the Revolution’, Historical Research, 62 (1989), p. 260, and ‘Aristocratic Finances and the Origins of the Scottish Revolution’, English Historical Review, 104 (1989), p. 48. By 1641 about 57 out of 121 English peers were nearly one and a half million pounds in debt; see Stone, Crisis, pp. 538–43.   4. Diarmuid Mac Iomhair, ‘The House of Louth in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries’, Journal of the County Louth Archaeological Society, 16 (1966), p. 77.   5. Jane Ohlmeyer, Civil War and Restoration in the Three Stuart Kingdoms: The Career of Randal MacDonnell, Marquis of Antrim (Dublin, 2001), pp. 61–9.   6. Clarendon, Rebellion, V, pp. 219 and 223.   7. Thomas Carte, The life of James duke of Ormond (6 vols., Oxford, 1851), IV, pp. 393–4, 419, V, p. 358 (quote). Also see David Edwards, The Ormond Lordship in County Kilkenny, 1515–1642: The Rise and Fall of Butler Feudal Power (Dublin, 2003), pp. 136–8.   8. List of debts of the countess of Kildare, including £1,700 to goldsmiths (1623); Brian C. Donovan and David Edwards (eds.), British Sources for Irish History 1485–1641: A Guide to Manuscripts in Local, Regional and Specialised Repositories in England, Scotland and Wales (IMC, Dublin, 1997), p. 107.   9. Peter Roebuck, ‘The Making of an Ulster Great Estate: The Chichesters, Barons of Belfast and Viscounts of Carrickfergus, 1599–1648’, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, 79, Section C (1979), p. 19. 10. Stone, Crisis, p. 780; CSPI, 1633–1647, p. 245. 11. Raymond Gillespie, Colonial Ulster: The Settlement of East Ulster 1600–1641 (Cork, 1985), pp. 138, 195, 201; CSPI, 1647–1660, p. 670. 12. SNA, GD 406/1/1171 and SCL, Strafford MS 18, f. 168. 13. Jane Ohlmeyer, ‘Fitzgerald, George, sixteenth earl of Kildare (bap. 1612, d. 1660)’, (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, Sep. 2004; online edn., Jan. 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/ article/9550, accessed 17 Aug. 2009]). 14. Stone, Crisis, pp. 543, 779–80. 15. David J. Menarry, ‘Debt and the Scottish Landed Élite in the 1650s’ in Liam Kennedy, Liam and Robert John Morris (eds.), Ireland and Scotland: Order and Disorder, 1600–2000 (Edinburgh, 2005), pp. 23–33, 248–50. 16. CSPI, 1663–1665, pp. 478–9. Also see CSPI, 1647–1660, pp. 597–9; CSPD, Jan.–Nov. 1671, p. 214. 17. George Hill (ed.), The Montgomery Manuscripts (1603–1706). Compiled from the family papers by William Montgomery of Rosemount . . . (Belfast, 1869), p. 204. 18. Quoted in John Stevenson, Two Centuries of Life in Down, 1600–1800 (Belfast, 1920), p. 103. In 1675 he sold part of his estate for £13,640 and in 1679 the remainder for a further £9,780. A few staple deeds relating to some of these transactions have survived. For example, an indenture of defeazance lists the lands that Hugh, earl of Mount Alexander, offered as security to Robert Colvill on a bond of £3,000 and dated 27 November 1675 (NA, D.15,248). Also see NA, D.15,245. Mount

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Notes to pp. 391–6

Alexander apparently defaulted on his repayment and the bond was registered into Chancery on 5 February 1676 (Jane Ohlmeyer and Éamonn Ó Ciardha (eds.), The Irish Statute Staple Books, 1596–1687 (Dublin, 1998), ID reference on the CD-Rom 3210). In 1673 Mount Alexander also borrowed money from Colvill, NA, C.3471 note 32. 19. Stuart Gillespie, ‘Dillon, Wentworth, fourth earl of Roscommon (1637–1685)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, Sept. 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/7667, accessed 10 Aug. 2010]). 20. CSPI, 1647–1660, p. 380. 21. HMC, Report 13. Appendix 1 (London, 1891), p. 444. 22. NA, prerogative will book 4/206/1, ff. 272–273v; CSPI, 1660–1662, p. 157. 23. Richard, second earl of Ranelagh, updated ‘his accounts . . . to the best of his remembrance’ every three months throughout his life, so that when he died his executors could settle his debts quickly, TNA, PROB 11/527/100. 24. CSPI, 1663–1665, pp. 478–9. 25. Alexandra Shepard, ‘Manhood, Credit and Patriarchy in Early Modern England c.1580–1640’, Past and Present, 167 (2000), pp. 85–6; Linda Pollock ‘Honor, Gender, and Reconciliation in Elite Culture, 1570–1700’, Journal of British Studies, 46 (2007), pp. 3–29, p. 8. 26. NLI, Ormond deed D.4063. 27. Three registers covering the years 1596–1637 and 1664–78, recording the entry of bonds on the Dublin staple, are extant and are housed in the Dublin Corporation Archive. What became of the registers covering the years 1637–64 remains a mystery. 28. Ohlmeyer and Ó Ciardha (eds.), The Irish Statute Staple Books. 29. Alexander described himself as a ‘doctor of theology’ and Robert as an ‘esquire’. 30. For details of other unsecured transactions involving Alexander see NA, C.3471 note 1 (involving Hercules Longford) and notes 14 and 36 (involving Arthur Hill). 31. A few staple deeds relating to some of these transactions have survived. For example, an indenture of defeazance lists the lands that Hugh, earl of Mount Alexander, offered as security to Robert Colvill on a bond of £3,000 and dated 27 November 1675 (NA, D.15,248). Also see NA, D.15,245. Mount Alexander apparently defaulted on his repayment and the bond was registered into Chancery on 5 February 1676 (ID 3210). In 1673 Mount Alexander also borrowed money from Colvill, NA, C.3471 note 32. 32. Stuart Woolf, ‘The Aristocracy in Transition: A Continental Comparison’, Economic History Review, New Series, 23 (1970), pp. 520–31. 33. Ian Ward, ‘Settlements, Mortgages and Aristocratic Estates, 1649–1660’, Journal of Legal History, 12 (1991), pp. 20–35. Charles McNeill (ed.), ‘Report on Recent Acquisitions in the Bodleian Library, Oxford’, Analecta Hibernica, 1 (1930), pp. 1–178. 34. Ohlmeyer and Ó Ciardha (eds.), The Irish Statute Staple Books, ID reference on the CD-Rom 1430 and 1432; George Hill, MacDonnells of Antrim (Belfast, 1873), pp. 435–6; and Ohlmeyer, Civil War, pp. 46, 56, 275. 35. Hill, MacDonnells, pp. 435–6. 36. Clarendon, Rebellion, III, pp. 509, 522. 37. He gambled – ‘the opium of the idle’ – and according to one account lost £2,000 at ninepins at Tunbridge Wells, CSPD, 1635, p. 385. 38. Ohlmeyer, Civil War, pp. 62–3. 39. Hill, MacDonnells, p. 474. 40. Quoted in Ohlmeyer, Civil War, p. 67. 41. Ohlmeyer and Ó Ciardha (eds.), The Irish Statute Staple Books, ID reference on the CD-Rom 2907 and Ohlmeyer, Civil War, pp. 56, 275. 42. SNA, GD 406/1/1356. 43. Quoted in Toby Barnard, A New Anatomy of Ireland: Protestants in Ireland, 1649–1770 (New Haven, CT, 2003), p. 260. 44. Ohlmeyer, Civil War, pp. 274–6. 45. Bernadette Cunningham, ‘Clanricard Letters: Letters and Papers, 1605–1673, Preserved in the National Library of Ireland Manuscript 3111’, Journal of the Galway Archaeological and Historical Society, 48 (1996), pp. 162–208. 46. Ibid., p. 167; Hanneke Ronnes, ‘Continental Traces at Carrick-on-Suir and Contemporary Irish Castles: A Preliminary Study of Date-and-Initial Stones’ in Thomas Herron and Michael Potterton (eds.), Ireland in the Renaissance, c.1540–1660 (Dublin, 2007), pp. 260–1. 47. David Sweetman, The Medieval Castles in Ireland (Cork, 1999), pp. 192–3; D. M. Waterman, ‘Some Irish Seventeenth-Century Houses and their Architectural Ancestry’ in E. M. Jope (ed.), Studies in Building History: Essays in Recognition of the Work of B. H. St. O’Neill (London, 1961), pp. 251–74;

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Notes to pp. 396–400

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David Newman Johnson, ‘Portumna Castle: A Little-known Early Survey and Some Observations’ in John Bradley (ed.), Settlement and Society in Medieval Ireland: Studies Presented to F. X. Martin (Kilkenny, 1988), pp. 477–500. 48. Jane Fenlon (ed.), Clanricard’s Castle, Portumna (Dublin, 1999). 49. Bernadette Cunningham, ‘Political and Social Change in the Lordships of Clanricard and Thomond, 1596–1641’ (unpublished MA thesis, National University of Ireland, University College Galway, 1979), pp. 226, 231–2, 236–9. 50. To the Parlament of the Common-Wealth of England, Scotland and Ireland. The humble petition of Thomas Brewer, gentl: and William Pawlin, Elizabeth Quested, widdow, and Ann Beswick, daughter of Ann Beswick, widdow, creditors of Ulick Earl of St. Albans, and Clanricard, on the behalf of themselves, and other the creditors of the said Earl (London, 1654); NLI, MS 3,111 ff. 146–146v. By 1666 this had been reduced to £7,000, CSPI, 1669–1670, p. 582. 51. John Lowe (ed.), Letter-Book of the Earl of Clanricarde 1643–1647 (IMC, Dublin, 1983), pp. 29, 40, 39. 52. Ibid., p. 378. 53. Ibid., pp. 39–40; TNA, SP 63/345/59. I am grateful to Tom Connors for bringing this reference to my attention. 54. CSPI, 1660–1662, pp. 361–2, 499, 507, and CSPI, 1669–1670, pp. 248, 581–3. 55. CSPD, Sept. 1680–Dec. 1681, pp. 674–5; CSPD, Jan.–June 1683, p. 283. 56. Quoted in GEC, III, p. 233. 57. CSPD, Jan.–June 1683, pp. 29 (quote), 113, 283. 58. David Edwards, ‘The Poisoned Chalice: The Ormond Inheritance, Sectarian Division and the Emergence of James Butler, 1614–1642’ in Toby Barnard and Jane Fenlon (eds.), The Dukes of Ormonde, 1610–1745 (Woodbridge, Suffolk, 2000), pp. 62–3. 59. Carte, Ormond, IV, 394. 60. Literally hundreds of bonds and promissory notes have survived amongst the Ormond deeds in the NLI. Also see a list of his debts in July 1641 in HMC Egmont, I, pp. 140, 325, and BL, Add. MS 46,932, f. 108 and 46,928, f. 14. See Ohlmeyer and Ó Ciardha (eds.), The Irish Statute Staple Books, ID reference on the CD-Rom 2729, 2831 and 2061. A further bond transacted on the Kilkenny staple between Ormond and Sir John Temple for £4,400 on 14 January 1639 survives among the Ormond deeds (NLI, D.4141 and D. 4146). In 1647 Ormond still owed his London tailor £226 16s 6d, HMC, Ormonde, NS, I, 112, 114. 61. NLI, D.4140, D.4141 and D.4146. 62. Carte, Ormond, IV, pp. 396, 418; Bodl., Carte MS 69, f. 342. 63. These figures are based on the following deeds: NLI, D.4223, D.4230, D.4231, D. 4233–4, D.4237, D.4239, D.4241, D.4243, D.4245–6, D.4248, D.4253, D.4255–7, D.4259, D.4262–4, D.4267, D.4270, D.4273, D.4276, D.4279, D.4283, D.4285–90, D.4293, D.4295–8, D.4301, D.4304, D.4305, D.4309, D.4311–13, D.4317–22, D.4324, D.4326, D.4338, D.4343, D.4347, D.4349– 51, D.4358, D.4368, D.4431 and NLI, MS 2,308, f. 357. 64. Carte, Ormond, IV, 407 asserted that he raised £40,000 – the NLI Ormond deeds do not support this. 65. NLI, D.4230. 66. NLI, D.4245 and D.4309. 67. For some that were redeemed see NLI, D.4243, D.4248, D.4259, D.4267, D.4313, D.4319, D.4322. 68. NLI, MS 2,308, f. 357. 69. Articles of Agreement, Made concluded and agreed on, at Dublin . . . the eighteenth day of June 1647. By . . . Ormonde . . . And Arthur Annesly . . . (Dublin, 1647). 70. John Gibney, ‘Some remarks on those who were friends and enemyes to the duke of Ormonde and to the Acts of Settlement of Ireland, c.1692’, Analecta Hibernica, 42 (2011), p. 35. 71. HMC, Ormonde, III, p. 450. 72. The Diary of John Evelyn, ed. E. S. de Beer, 6 vols. (Oxford, 1955), III, pp. 308–6. Also see HMC, Ormonde, NS, IV, p. 361. 73. Linda Pollock, ‘Honor, Gender, and Reconciliation in Elite Culture, 1570–1700’, Journal of British Studies, 46 (2007), pp. 8, 25–6. 74. NLI, MS 2,503. 75. HMC, Ormonde, NS, III, p. 439. 76. Gibney, ‘Some remarks’, p. 33. 77. Carte, Ormond, VI, p. 422. 78. HMC, Ormonde, NS, III, p. 445. 79. Ibid. NS, V, pp. 154 (quote), 175.

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  80. Bodl., Carte MS 69, ff. 467–8.   81. Gibney, ‘Some remarks’, p. 57.   82. Eleanor O’Keeffe, ‘The Family and Marriage Strategies of James Butler, 1st Duke of Ormonde, 1658–1688’ (unpublished PhD thesis, Cambridge, 2000), pp. 30–4, 46; W. G. Neely, ‘The Ormond Butlers of County Kilkenny 1515–1715’ in William Nolan and Kevin Whelan (eds.), Kilkenny: History and Society. Interdisciplinary Essays on the History of an Irish County (Dublin, 1990), pp. 116, 120–1, 123. Even after selling off huge tracts of the estate at the turn of the eighteenth century the debt still hovered around £73,000.   83. NLI, MS 2,503 p. 301; Barnard and Fenlon (eds.), The Dukes of Ormonde, pp. 23, 26.   84. Ibid., pp. 169–70.   85. The estimate is based on expenditure he recorded in his diary, Grosart (ed.), Lismore Papers, first series, IV and V.   86. Grosart (ed.), Lismore Papers, first series, V, pp. 12, 23, 60, 107, 155.   87. Ibid., pp. 182, 190   88. Ibid., pp. 172, 182, 192.   89. Ibid., p. 189.   90. Ibid., pp. 166, 173, 183.   91. Ibid., pp. 60, 63–4, 64–5, 68, 110.   92. Ibid., p. 39; the countess of Barrymore was godmother.   93. Ibid., pp. 57, 67, 105, 183 (quote).   94. Ibid., pp. 64–5.   95. Ibid., pp. 11, 69, 112–13, 217–18.   96. Ibid., pp. 9, 93, 135, 140.   97. Ibid., IV, p. 217.   98. Ibid., p. 46.   99. Ibid., V, pp. 161–2. 100. Ibid., IV, p. 46; V, pp. 147, 151, 161. 101. Ibid., p. 224; T. C. Barnard, ‘Public Wealth and Private Uses of Wealth in Ireland, c.1660–1760’ in Jacqueline Hill and Colm Lennon (eds.), Luxury and Austerity, Historical Studies, 21 (Dublin, 1999), pp. 66–83. 102. Grosart (ed.), Lismore Papers, first series, V, pp. 5–6, 52–3 (quote). 103. Ibid., pp. 12, 50–1, 142. 104. Ibid., pp. 78, 50–1, 175. 105. NLI, MS 6,899, 6,240 and 6,900. 106. NLI, MSS 6,900. 107. Grosart (ed.), Lismore Papers, first series, V, pp. 208–9; Nicholas Canny, The Upstart Earl: A Study of the Social and Mental World of Richard Boyle, First Earl of Cork, 1566–1643 (Cambridge, 1982), pp. 47–50. 108. Ohlmeyer and Ó Ciardha (eds.), The Irish Statute Staple Books, ID reference on the CD-Rom 2232. 109. Orrery Papers (consulted on microfilm, NLI, P 7074, originals in West Suffolk RO), folder 16. 110. G. R. Mayes, ‘The Early Stuarts and the Irish Peerage’, English Historical Review, 73 (1958), pp. 227–51. 111. Ohlmeyer and Ó Ciardha (eds.), The Irish Statute Staple Books, ID reference on the CD-Rom 2008. 112. Geraldine Talon (ed.), Court of Claims: Submissions and Evidence, 1663 (IMC, Dublin, 2006), pp. 163–4. 113. Raymond Gillespie, ‘The Problems of Plantations: Material Culture and Social Change in Early Modern Ireland’ in James Lyttleton and Colin Rynne (eds.), Plantation Ireland: Settlement and Material Culture, c.1550–c.1700 (Dublin, 2009), p. 52. 114. Gillespie, ‘The Problems of Plantations’, p. 56. 115. John C. Mac Erlean, S. J., The Poems of David Ó Bruadair, 3 vols. (London, 1910–17), I, p. 37. 116. Ibid., pp. 133–8. 117. Quoted in S. J. Connolly, Contested Island: Ireland 1460–1630 (Oxford, 2007), pp. 288–9. 118. Sharon Weadick, ‘How Popular were Fortified Houses in Irish Castle-Building History? A Look at their Numbers in the Archaeological Record and Distribution Patterns’ in Lyttleton and Rynne (eds.), Plantation Ireland, p. 62; James Lyttleton, ‘Gaelic Classicism in the Irish Midland Plantations: An Archaeological Reflection’ and Tadhg O’Keeffe, ‘Plantation-era Great Houses in Munster: A Note on Sir Walter Raleigh’s House and its Context’ in Thomas Herron and Michael Potterton (eds.), Ireland in the Renaissance, c.1540–1660 (Dublin, 2007), pp. 231–54 and 274–88. 119. Sweetman, The Medieval Castles, p. 175. 120. William J. Smyth, Map-making, Landscapes and Memory: A Geography of Colonial and Early Modern Ireland c.1530–1750 (Cork, 2006), p. 383.

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121. M. Airs, The Making of the English Country House, 1500–1640 (London, 1975), pp. 82–93. 122. John Ainsworth, ‘Some Abstracts of Chancery Suits Relating to Ireland’, Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, 9 (1939), p. 39. 123. William Roulston, ‘Seventeenth-Century Manors in the Barony of Strabane’ in James Lyttleton and Tadhg O’Keeffe (eds.), The Manor in Medieval and Early Modern Ireland (Dublin, 2005), p. 169. 124. S. J. Carleton, Heads and Hearths: The Hearth Money Rolls and Poll Tax Returns for County Antrim, 1660–69 (Belfast, 1991), p. 142. 125. CSPD, Jan. to Nov. 1671, pp. 410, 427, 474, 501, 513; CSPI, 1669–1670, p. 246. Carleton, Heads and Hearths, p. 139. 126. Rolf Loeber, ‘Irish Country Houses and Castles of the Late Caroline Period: An Unremembered Past Recaptured’, Quarterly Bulletin of the Irish Georgian Society, 14 (1973), pp. 33, 40; CSPD Jan.–Nov. 1671, pp. 112, 221. 127. CSPD 1673–1675, p. 135; Edward Berwick (ed.), The Rawdon Papers . . . (London, 1819), p. 232; CSPD, Jan. to Nov. 1671, pp. 54–5, 324. 128. CSPD, March 1677 to Feb. 1678, p. 445. 129. William Roulston, ‘Domestic Architecture in Ireland, 1640–1740’ in Audrey J. Horning et al. (eds.), The Post-Medieval Archaeology of Ireland 1550–1850 (Bray, County Wicklow, 2007), pp. 330–1. 130. Carleton, Heads and Hearths, p. 117. 131. Ibid., pp. 91, 92. 132. Rolf Loeber, A Biographical Dictionary of Architects in Ireland 1600–1720 (London, 1981), pp. 107–8. 133. Quoted in Brian de Breffney, ‘The Building of the Mansion at Blessington, 1672’, Irish Artists Review Yearbook (1988), p. 73. 134. De Breffney, ‘The Building of the Mansion at Blessington’, pp. 73–7. 135. Andrew Hadfield and John McVeagh (eds.), Strangers to that Land: British Perceptions of Ireland from the Reformation to the Famine (Gerrards Cross, Buckinghamshire, 1994), p. 64. 136. Terence Reeves-Smyth, ‘Community to Privacy: Late Tudor and Jacobean Manorial Architecture in Ireland, 1560–1640’ in Horning et al. (eds.), The Post-Medieval Archaeology of Ireland, pp. 289–326. 137. Brian Ó Dálaigh, ‘An Inventory of the Contents of Bunratty Castle and the Will of Henry, Fifth Earl of Thomond, 1639’, North Munster Antiquarian Journal, 36 (1995), pp. 139–65; Hector MacDonnell, ‘A Seventeenth-Century Inventory from Dunluce Castle, County Antrim’, Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries, 122 (1992), pp. 109–27; BL, Add. Ch 13340; Edward MacLysaght (ed.), Calendar of the Orrery Papers (IMC, Dublin, 1941). 138. HMC, Ormonde, NS, VII, pp. 502–7. 139. Barnard and Fenlon (eds.), The Dukes of Ormonde, pp. 37, 113. 140. Jane Fenlon, ‘French Influence in Late Seventeenth-Century Portraits’, Irish Artists Review Yearbook, (1989–90), pp. 158–65. 141. Gillespie, ‘The Problems of Plantations’, p. 56. 142. Katharine Simms, ‘Native Sources of Gaelic Settlement: The House Poems’ in Patrick Duffy, David Edwards and Elizabeth Fitzpatrick (eds.), Gaelic Ireland: Land, Lordship and Settlement c.1250–c.1650 (Dublin, 2001), pp. 246–8, 255. 143. TCD, MS 810, f. 132r. 144. The Diary of John Evelyn, IV, p. 137. 145. Anonymous, ‘Testamentary Records’, Irish Genealogist, 2 (1948), pp. 180–3. 146. Dorothea Townshend, Life and Letters of the Great Earl of Cork (London, 1904), pp. 498–9. 147. Ibid. 148. John Ainsworth, ‘Survey of Documents in Private Keeping’, Analecta Hibernica, 25 (1967), pp. 157–8. 149. Townshend, Life and Letters, pp. 498–9. 150. Lodge, I, p. 336. 151. TNA, PROB 11/445/117. 152. TNA, PROB 11/527/100. 153. CSPD, Jan. 1679–Aug. 1680, p. 118. 154. CSPD, Jan.–Dec. 1682, pp. 93–4. 155. T. C. Barnard, ‘Lawyers and the Law in Later Seventeenth-Century Ireland’, Irish Historical Studies, 28 (1993), pp. 268–9. 156. CSPI, 1669–1670, pp. 434–6; HMC, Report 9. Part II. Appendix (London, 1884), pp. 293–330; HMC, Report on the Manuscripts in Various Collections, vol. III (London, 1904). 157. The earl of Clanricarde’s letter books are revealing; Cunningham, ‘Clanricard Letters’, pp. 162–208. The archives of the Boyles, earls of Cork and of Orrery, the O’Briens of Thomond and the Brownes

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of Kenmare, are remarkably intact and bristle with materials relating to their legal cases, their lawyers and their attitudes towards the courts. 158. Jane Ohlmeyer, ‘Records of the Irish Court of Chancery: A Preliminary Report for 1627–1634’ in Desmond Greer and Norma Dawson (eds.), Mysteries and Solutions in Irish Legal History (Dublin, 2001), pp. 15–50. 159. J. Ainsworth, ‘Some Abstracts of Chancery Suits Relating to Ireland’, Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, 9 (1939), p. 39. Many of these cases refer to land transactions in England (such as Cork v Castlehaven, which concerns the former’s purchase of Castlehaven’s house in Stalbridge, Dorset: TNA, C2/ChasI/C66/24). Equally interesting are the exclusively Irish cases that appear in English Chancery: for example, PRO, C2/ChasI/C26/41: 24 October 1629, which deals with Sir James Carroll’s complaint against the earl of Londonderry about bonds sealed in Ireland; or TNA, C2/ChasI/C64/60: 11 February 1631, which relates to the earl of Cork’s complaint against Sir William Power for slander. The precise nature of the relationship between English and Irish Chancery clearly needs to be explored much more fully. 160. PRONI, D.3078/3, 1/5, pp. 8–9, 42, 63, 102–4, 139; TNA, C2/ChasI/K9/1: Kildare, earl of v Randolf; PRO, C2/ChasI/25/8: Kildare, earl of v Randolf. 161. John Kingston, ‘Lord Dunboyne’, Reportum Novum: Dublin Diocesan Historical Record, 3 (1961–2), pp. 62–82. HMC, Report 15. Appendix 1, Part II (London, 1897), pp. 291–3. 162. Joseph McLaughlin, ‘Richard Hadsor’s “Discourse” on the Irish State, 1604’, Irish Historical Studies, 30 (1997), pp. 337–53; Victor Treadwell, ‘Richard Hadsor and the Authorship of “Advertisements for Ireland”, 1622/3’, Irish Historical Studies, 30 (1997), pp. 305–36. R. Dudley Edwards, ‘Letterbook of Sir Arthur Chichester 1612–1614’, Analecta Hibernica, 8 (1938), pp. 5–177. PRONI, D.3078/3, 1/5; Grosart (ed.), Lismore Papers, second series, II, p. 288. 163. H. C. O’Sullivan, John Bellew: A Seventeenth-Century Man of Many Parts (Dublin, 2000), and Berwick (ed.), The Rawdon Papers. 164. Cunningham, ‘Clanricard Letters’, pp. 176, 179, 181, 193. Patrick Darcy also represented the earls of Antrim, Clanricarde, Cork and Ormond; Bríd McGrath, ‘A Biographical Dictionary of the Membership of the Irish House of Commons 1640–1641’ (unpublished PhD thesis, Trinity College Dublin, 1997), pp. 125–7, 295–6; Liam O’Malley, ‘Patrick Darcy, Galway Lawyer and Politician, 1598–1668’ in Diarmuid Ó Cearbhaill (ed.), Galway: Town and Crown 1484–1984 (Dublin, 1984), pp. 90–109; Lowe (ed.), Letter-Book of the Earl of Clanricarde; John Smyth, 11th Earl of Clanricarde, The Memoirs and Letters of Ulick, Marquis of Clanricarde, and Earl of Saint Albans (London, 1758); Kenneth Nicholls, ‘The Lynch Blosse Papers’, Analecta Hibernica, 29 (1980), pp. 115–28. 165. For litigation arising out of outstanding obligations on the statute staple see Ohlmeyer and Ó Ciardha (eds.), The Irish Statute Staple, pp. 29–33. For fascinating insights on the nature of economic litigation in England see Craig Muldrew, ‘Credit and the Courts: Debt Litigation in a SeventeenthCentury Urban Community’, Economic History Review, 46:1 (1993), pp. 23–38, and ‘The Culture of Reconciliation: Community and the Settlement of Disputes in Early Modern England’, Historical Journal, 39:4 (1996), pp. 915–42. 166. NLI, MS 9,739, f. 37. 167. M. Beckett, Sir George Rawdon, a Sketch of his Life and Times (Belfast, 1935). 168. Donovan and Edwards (eds.), British Sources for Irish History 1485–1641, p. 36. 169. PRONI, D. 301/1. 170. Cunningham, ‘Clanricard Letters’, p. 175; Jon G. Crawford (ed.), A Star Chamber Court in Ireland: The Court of Castle Chamber, 1571–1641 (Dublin, 2005), p. 137. 171. Edwards, The Ormond Lordship, pp. 128–31. 172. HMC, Report 12. Appendix 1 (London, 1888), p. 436; HMC, Report 12. Appendix 2 (London, 1888), p. 116. CSPI, 1615–1625, pp. 147, 169, 249, 264, 270; CSPI, 1625–1632, pp. 13, 291; fully summarized in CSPI, 1647–1660, pp. 94–6; Crawford (ed.), A Star Chamber Court in Ireland, p. 339. 173. Stevenson, Two Centuries of Life in Down, pp. 35, 40; Hill (ed.), The Montgomery Manuscripts, pp. 72, 77–8; CSPI, 1647–1660, pp. 156–7. 174. Hill (ed.), The Montgomery Manuscripts, p. 204. 175. CSPD, Jan.–June 1683, pp. 168–9. 176. Lords Antrim, Carlingford, Fingal, Iveagh and his family, plus the countess of Tyrconnell, Ladies Clanricarde and Ikerrin, HMC, Ormonde, NS, III, pp. 394, 373, 383, 394; CSPD, June 1687–Feb. 1689, p. 176. 177. Richard Lawrence, The interest of Ireland in its trade and wealth stated in two parts: first part observes and discovers the causes of Irelands not more increasing in trade and wealth from the first conquest till now: second part proposeth expedients to remedy all its mercanture maladies . . . by which it is kept poor and low; both mix’d with some observations on the politicks of government relating to the incouragement

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of trade and increase of wealth: with some reflections on principles of religion as it relates to the premisses (Dublin, 1682), I, p. 26. 178. Ibid., I, pp. 12–13. 179. Brown, Noble Society in Scotland, pp. 105–6. 180. Interestingly, local studies of prominent English royalists reach similar conclusions. Only heavy debts contracted prior to the outbreak of the war proved fatal and led to the dismemberment of family estates; Joan Thirsk, ‘The Sales of Royalist Land during the Interregnum’, Economic History Review, NS, 5 (1952), pp. 192, 195–6, 199, 203, and ‘The Restoration Land Settlement’, Journal of Modern History, 26 (1954), pp. 321, 323–4, 327–8; H. J. Habakkuk, ‘Landowners and Civil War’, Economic History Review, NS, 18 (1965), pp. 139–40, 142, 143. 181. CSPI, 1666–1669, p. 43; Bodl., Carte MS 160, ff. 10–10v. 182. Quoted in Barnard and Fenlon (eds.), The Dukes of Ormonde, pp. 165–6. 183. Toby Barnard, ‘Boyle, Richard, first earl of Burlington and second earl of Cork (1612–1698)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, Sept. 2004; online edn. Jan. 2008 [http://www. oxforddnb.com/view/article/3135, accessed 20 Sept. 2010]); T. C. Barnard, ‘Land and the Limits of Loyalty’ in Toby Barnard and Jane Clark (eds.), Lord Burlington: Architecture, Art and Life (London, 1995), pp. 172–3.

Chapter Fifteen: Lineage and Formation   1. Keith Brown, Noble Power in Scotland from the Reformation to the Revolution (Edinburgh, 2011), chapter 6.   2. David Edwards, The Ormond Lordship in County Kilkenny, 1515–1642: The Rise and Fall of Butler Feudal Power (Dublin, 2003), and Eleanor O’Keeffe, ‘The Family and Marriage Strategies of James Butler, 1st Duke of Ormonde, 1658–1688’ (unpublished PhD thesis, Cambridge, 2000).   3. Nicholas Canny, The Upstart Earl: A Study of the Social and Mental World of Richard Boyle, First Earl of Cork, 1566–1643 (Cambridge, 1982); Keith Wrightson, ‘The Family in Early Modern England: Continuity and Change’ in Stephen Taylor, Richard Conners and Clyve Jones (eds.), Hanoverian Britain and Empire: Essays in Memory of Philip Lawson (Woodbridge, Suffolk, 1998).   4. Mary O’Dowd, A History of Women in Ireland 1500–1800 (London, 2005), pp. 84, 100–3.   5. Brown, Noble Power in Scotland, p. 48.   6. Sharon Kettering, ‘Patronage and Kinship in Early Modern France’, French Historical Studies, 16 (1989), pp. 408–35.   7. Fiona Fitzsimons, ‘Fosterage and Gossiprid in Late Medieval Ireland: Some New Evidence’ in Patrick Duffy, David Edwards and Elizabeth Fitzpatrick (eds.), Gaelic Ireland: Land, Lordship and Settlement c.1250–c.1650 (Dublin, 2001), pp. 139–43; David Cressy, Birth, Marriage and Death: Ritual, Religion and Life-Cycle in Tudor and Stuart England (Oxford, 1997), pp. 148–61.   8. Brown, Noble Power in Scotland, p. 51.   9. O’Keeffe, ‘The Family and Marriage Strategies of James Butler, 1st Duke of Ormonde, 1658–1688’, p. 150. 10. Quoted in Brocard M. Mansfield, ‘Lady Thurles, 1588–1673’, Butler Society Journal, 3 (1987), p. 43. 11. O’Keeffe, ‘The Family and Marriage Strategies of James Butler, 1st Duke of Ormonde, 1658–1688’, pp. 40–9. 12. Keith M. Brown, Noble Society in Scotland: Wealth, Family and Culture, from Reformation to Revolution (Edinburgh, 2000), p. 80. 13. Edwards, The Ormond Lordship in County Kilkenny, pp. 16–17. 14. F. Elrington Ball, ‘Some Notes on the Households of the Dukes of Ormonde’, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, 38, Section C (1928–9), pp. 3–11. 15. HMC, Ormonde, NS, VII, p. 497; T. C. Barnard, ‘Public Wealth and Private Uses of Wealth in Ireland, c.1660–1760’ in Jacqueline Hill and Colm Lennon (eds.), Luxury and Austerity (Dublin, 1999), p. 79. 16. Barra Boydell and Kerry Houston, ‘The Seventeenth Century and the History of Music in Ireland’, and Barra Boydell, ‘The Earl of Cork’s Musicians: Music and Patronage in Early Seventeenth-Century Anglo-Irish Society’ in Barra Boydell and Kerry Houston (eds.), Music, Ireland and the Seventeenth Century (Dublin, 2009), pp. 17–19, 81–94. 17. For the later years see J. Graves, ‘Extracts from the Household Expenses of James, Earl of Ossory’, Kilkenny Archaeological Society Transactions, first series, 1 (1851), pp. 84–6, and NLI, MS 2,547. 18. TCD, MS 817, ff. 65–6.

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Notes to pp. 425–9

19. Jane Ohlmeyer, Civil War and Restoration in the Three Stuart Kingdoms: The Political Career of Randal MacDonnell, First Marquis of Antrim (1609–83) (Cambridge, 1993), pp. 26–7, 42–8; Cunningham, ‘Native Culture and Political Change in Ireland, 1580–1640’ in Ciaran Brady and Raymond Gillespie (eds.), Natives and Newcomers: Essays on the Making of Irish Colonial Society 1534–1641 (Dublin, 1986), pp. 149–50; Bernadette Cunningham and Raymond Gillespie, ‘The East Ulster Bardic Family of Ó Gnímh’, Egise, 20 (1984), pp. 108, 112–13. 20. Edmund Curtis and R. B. McDowell (eds.), Irish Historical Documents, 1172–1922 (London, 1943), p. 55. 21. Thomond remained a patron to Mac Bruaideadha poets until his death in 1624; Bernadette Cunningham, ‘Political and Social Change in the Lordships of Clanricard and Thomond, 1596– 1641’ (unpublished MA thesis, National University of Ireland, University College Galway, 1979), pp. 131–2. See also Jane Stevenson and Peter Davidson (eds.), Early Modern Women Poets: An Anthology (Oxford, 2001), pp. 174–7. 22. Brian Ó Dálaigh, ‘A Comparative Study of the Wills of the First and Fourth Earls of Thomond’, North Munster Antiquarian Journal, 34 (1992), p. 61. 23. Brian Ó Dálaigh, ‘An Inventory of the Contents of Bunratty Castle and the Will of Henry, Fifth Earl of Thomond, 1639’, North Munster Antiquarian Journal, 36 (1995), p. 164. 24. CSPI, 1625–1632, p. 64. 25. Raymond Gillespie, Colonial Ulster: The Settlement of East Ulster 1600–1641 (Cork, 1985), p. 230. 26. Margaret Anne Creighton, ‘The Catholic Interest in Irish Politics in the Reign of Charles II’ (unpublished PhD thesis, Queens’ University Belfast, 2000), p. 336. 27. Felicity Heal, ‘The Idea of Hospitality in Early Modern England’, Past and Present, 102 (1984), pp. 66–93; Phil Withington, ‘Company and Sociability in Early Modern England’, Social History, 32 (2007), pp. 291–307; Cressy, Birth, Marriage and Death, pp. 164–72, 350–5, 443–9. 28. Quoted in Cressy, Birth, Marriage and Death, pp. 290–1; Andrew Carpenter, Verse in English from Tudor and Stuart Ireland (Cork, 2003), p. 135. 29. Brian C. Donovan and David Edwards (eds.), British Sources for Irish History 1485–1641: A Guide to Manuscripts in Local, Regional and Specialised Repositories in England, Scotland and Wales (IMC, Dublin, 1997), p. 270. 30. Michael Hartnett, Haicéad (Oldcastle, County Meath, 1993), p. 41. 31. Thomas Kinsella, An Duanaire 1600–1900: Poems of the Dispossessed. Curtha I Láthair AG Seán Ó Tuama (Portlaoise, 1981), pp. 145–7. 32. Colm Ó Lochlainn, Irish Chiefs and Leaders (Dublin, 1960), pp. 134–5. 33. See, for example, Anglesey’s social engagements, HMC, Thirteenth Report, Appendix Part VI. The Manuscripts of Sir William FitzHerbert and Others (London, 1893), pp. 261–78. 34. John Lowe (ed.), Letter-Book of the Earl of Clanricarde 1643–1647 (IMC, Dublin, 1983), p. 186. 35. CSPI, 1606–1608; CSPD, 1679–1680; Grosart (ed.), Lismore Papers, second series, III, pp. 120–5, 483; HMC, Ormonde, NS, VII, pp. 148, 155. 36. HMC, Ormonde, NS, VII, p. 509. 37. Rolf Loeber, ‘Settlers’ Utilisation of the Natural Resources’ in Ken Hannigan and William Nolan (eds.), Wicklow: History & Society. Interdisciplinary Essays on the History of an Irish County (Dublin, 1994), pp. 270–2. 38. CSPD, Jan.–Nov. 1671, pp. 112, 115–16, 208, 553; CSPD, March 1678–Dec. 1678 with addenda 1674–1679, p. 42. 39. Bodl., Carte MS 161, f. 55v, and CSPD, May 1684–Feb. 1685, p. 101. 40. Toby Barnard, ‘The Cultures of Eighteenth-Century Irish Towns’ in Peter Borsay and Lindsay Proudfoot (eds.), Provincial Towns in Early Modern England and Ireland: Change, Convergence and Divergence (Oxford, 2002), p. 199. 41. CSPI, 1606–1608, p 535; HMC, Ormonde, NS, IV, p. 361. 42. Brown, Noble Society in Scotland, p. 163. 43. A. Laurence, ‘The Cradle to the Grave: English Observations of Irish Social Customs in the Seventeenth Century’, Seventeenth Century, 3 (1988), pp. 74–5. 44. Canny, The Upstart Earl. 45. Scottish family portraits from this period are also rare, an artistic lacuna that is not peculiar to Scotland before the later sixteenth century; Brown, Noble Society in Scotland, p. 158; T. C. Barnard, ‘Art, Architecture, Artefacts and Ascendancy’, Bullán: An Irish Studies Journal, 1 (1994), pp. 17–34. 46. Gilbert (ed.), Contemporary History, I, p. 243. 47. John Smyth, 11th Earl of Clanricarde, The Memoirs and Letters of Ulick, Marquis of Clanricarde, and Earl of Saint Albans (London, 1758), p. 68. 48. CSPI, 1603–1606, p. 215.

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Notes to pp. 429–34

561

49. CSPD, 1628–1629, p. 364. 50. Brown, Noble Society in Scotland, p. 159. 51. Ibid., p. 158. 52. Lawrence Stone, The Crisis of the Aristocracy 1558–1641 (Oxford, 1965), p. 168. 53. Lloyd Bonfield, ‘Marriage Settlements and the “Rise of the Great Estates”: The Demographic Aspect’, Economic History Review, New Series, 32 (1979), p. 489. 54. GEC, VII, p. 286. 55. C. Tait, ‘Safely Delivered: Childbirth, Wet-Nursing, Gossip-Feasts and Churching in Ireland c.1530–1690’, Irish Economic and Social History, 30 (2003), pp. 1–4. 56. CSPD, 1635, p. 385, and SCL, Strafford MS 15, f. 232. 57. HMC, Ormonde, NS, VII, p. xii. 58. BL, Stowe MS 845, f. 36v. 59. Edward Berwick (ed.), The Rawdon Papers . . . (London, 1819), pp. 192, 197, 199. 60. Grosart (ed.), Lismore Papers, second series, IV, pp. 85–6. 61. Brown, Noble Society in Scotland, p. 160. 62. Stone, Crisis, p. 619. 63. Laurence, ‘The Cradle to the Grave’, p. 78. 64. Funeral entries often mention ‘other children which died young’, but their names are not given in the entry or in the peerages. 65. HMC, Ormonde, NS, VI, p. 72. 66. Ibid., p. 81. 67. Ibid., p. 73. By his second wife, Arran had two sons, who died as infants, and two daughters; only one, Charlotte, outlived her father. He also had an illegitimate son with whom he had limited contact. 68. T. Crofton Croker (ed.), Autobiography of Mary Countess of Warwick (London, 1848), p. 30. 69. John Stevenson, Two Centuries of Life in Down, 1600–1800 (Belfast, 1920), p. 93. 70. O’Keeffe, ‘The Family and Marriage Strategies of James Butler, 1st Duke of Ormonde, 1658–1688’, p. 123. 71. Laurence, ‘The Cradle to the Grave’, pp. 75–8; Tom Connors, ‘The Impact of English Colonial Expansion on Irish Culture: The Clergy, Popular Religion, and the Transformation of the Family in Early Modern Galway’ (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1997), pp. 94–8. 72. O’Dowd, A History of Women in Ireland, pp. 84, 100–3. 73. Linda Pollock ‘Honor, Gender, and Reconciliation in Elite Culture, 1570–1700’, Journal of British Studies, 46 (2007), pp. 3–29, p. 8. 74. Canny, The Upstart Earl, pp. 100–1. 75. Thomas Farrington, ‘Robert Boyle’, Journal of the Cork Historical and Archaeological Society, 22 (1916), p. 74. 76. T. Birch (ed.), The Works of Robert Boyle (London, 1774), pp. 20–3. 77. Dorothea Townshend, Life and Letters of the Great Earl of Cork (London, 1904), p. 470. 78. Edward MacLysaght (ed.), Calendar of the Orrery Papers (IMC, Dublin, 1941), p. 182. 79. Raymond Gillespie, ‘Church, State and Education in Early Modern Ireland’ in Maurice O’Connell (ed.), Education, Church and State (Dublin, 1992), p. 44. 80. Quoted in Connors, ‘The Impact of English Colonial Expansion on Irish Culture’, p. 120. 81. Helga Hammerstein, ‘Aspects of the Continental Education of Irish Students in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth I’ in T. Desmond Williams (ed.), Historical Studies VIII (Dublin, 1971), pp. 137–53. 82. CSPI, 1615–1625, pp. 289 (quote), 392, 498, 530 (quote), 547; CSPI, 1647–1660, pp. 69–70; Grosart (ed.), Lismore Papers, second series, II, p. 309. 83. Glyn Redworth, ‘Beyond Faith and Fatherland: The Appeal of the Catholics of Ireland, c.1623’, Archivium Hibernicum, 52 (1998), pp. 13–14, and ‘Keeping the Faith at Gormanston 1569–1629’, in Father Luke Wadding: A Commemorative Volume, ed. Franciscan Fathers (Dublin, 1957). 84. Timothy Cochran, Studies in the History of Classical Teaching (Dublin, 1911), p. 68. 85. Monsignor John Hanly (ed.), The Letters of Saint Oliver Plunkett 1625–1681, Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland (Dublin, 1979), p. 331. 86. Brown, Noble Society in Scotland, pp. 181–6. 87. Quoted in George Hill, MacDonnells of Antrim (Belfast, 1873), p. 252. Gaelic was his mother tongue. 88. Hector McDonnell and Jane Ohlmeyer (eds.), ‘New Light on the Marquis of Antrim and the “Wars of the Three Kingdoms” ’, Analecta Hibernica (2009), p. 52. 89. Eithne Donnelly, ‘The Roches, Lords of Fermoy: The History of a Norman Irish Family’, Journal of the Cork Historical and Archaeological Society, second series, 41 (1936), pp. 20–8, 78–84; continued 42, pp. 40–52.

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Notes to pp. 434–8

  90. CSPI, 1625–1632, p. 484; and GEC, VIII, p. 119.   91. Birch (ed.), The Works of Robert Boyle, p. 21; CSPI 1625–1632, p. 619.   92. Canny, The Upstart Earl, p. 48.   93. Stuart Gillespie, ‘Dillon, Wentworth, fourth earl of Roscommon (1637–1685)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, Sept. 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/7667, accessed 27 June 2010]).   94. Henry Leslie, archdeacon of Down, A sermon preached at the funeral of the most honourable Rose, Lady Marchioness of Antrim at Carrickfergus, the 4th of July 1695 (Dublin, 1695), pp. 20, 24.   95. Donovan and Edwards (eds.), British Sources for Irish History, p. 56.   96. CSPD, 1629–1631, p. 286.   97. PRONI, D.3078/3, 1/5, pp. 6–7. Also see Berwick (ed.), The Rawdon Papers . . ., pp. 254, 256.   98. Brian Mac Cuarta, Catholic Revival in the North of Ireland, 1603–41 (Dublin, 2007), p. 153.   99. John Ainsworth, ‘Survey of Documents in Private Keeping’, Analecta Hibernica, 25 (IMC, Dublin, 1967), pp. 165–6. 100. Raymond Gillespie, ‘Catholic Religious Practices and Payments in Seventeenth-Century Ireland’, Archivium Hibernicum, 47 (1993), p. 7. 101. Aidan Clarke, The Old English in Ireland, 1625–42 (New York, 1966), p. 122. 102. Cochran, Studies in the History of Classical Teaching, p. 23; Myles Ronan, ‘Catholic Schools of Old Dublin’, Dublin Historical Records, 12 (1951), pp. 65–82; Hammerstein, ‘Aspects of the Continental Education of Irish Students in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth I’, pp. 137–53; Titus, or the Palme of Christian courage . . . (Waterford, 1644). 103. Stephen B. Barnwell, ‘The Barnewell Family during the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries’, Irish Genealogist, 3:8 (1963), pp. 311–21; HMC, Report 7, Appendix, pp. 268–9. 104. Canny, The Upstart Earl, p. 48. 105. CSPI, 1611–1614, p. 459; CSPI, 1615–1625, p. 83. 106. Charlene McCoy, ‘War and Revolution: County Fermanagh and its Borders, c.1640–c.1666’ (unpublished PhD thesis, Trinity College Dublin, 2007), pp. 82–6. 107. CSPI, 1603–1606, p. 3. 108. H. C. Maxwell Lyte, A History of Eton College (1440–1898), 3rd edn. (London, 1899), p. 233; Birch (ed.), The Works of Robert Boyle, p. 23. 109. Wasey Sterry (ed.), The Eton College Register 1441–1698 (London, 1943), pp. 8, 24, 45, 48, 56, 285–6; T. W. Moody, ‘The School Bills of Conn O’Neill at Eton, 1615–22’, Irish Historical Studies, 2 (1940), pp. 189–202; MacLysaght (ed.), Calendar of the Orrery Papers, p. 300. 110. CSPI, 1611–1614, p. 483. 111. Ibid., pp. 459, 481–4. 112. CSPI, 1615–1625, pp. 66, 83, 84, 212–13 (quotes). 113. Ibid., p. 66. 114. Jon G. Crawford (ed.), A Star Chamber Court in Ireland: The Court of Castle Chamber, 1571–1641 (Dublin, 2005), p. 384. 115. Cochran, Studies in the History of Classical Teaching, p. 56. 116. H. F. Berry, ‘Probable Early Students of Trinity College, Dublin (being Wards of the Crown), 1599–1616’, Hermathena, 16 (1911), pp. 19–39; Alan Ford, ‘Who Went to Trinity? The Early Students of Dublin University’ in H. H. W. Robinson-Hammerstein (ed.), European Universities in the Age of the Reformation (Dublin, 1998), pp. 53–75. 117. CSPI, 1615–1625, p. 193. 118. Estimating how many Irish nobles went to university anywhere in the early modern period is notoriously difficult but the trend was certainly upwards, as was the case for English noblemen. The share of English nobles attending university never exceeded 40 per cent, Stone, Crisis, pp. 687–92. 119. Mac Cuarta, Catholic Revival in the North of Ireland, p. 153. 120. ‘A seventeenth century will’, Irish Builder, 33 (1891), p. 218. In the event there is no record of Robert being admitted to one of the Inns. I am grateful to Bríd McGrath for bringing this reference to my attention. 121. Jane Ohlmeyer and Éamonn Ó Ciardha (eds.), The Irish Statute Staple Books, 1596–1687 (Dublin, 1998), ID reference on the CD-Rom 2232. 122. Ibid., 2681. 123. Nicholas Tyacke (ed.), The History of the University of Oxford. Vol. IV. Seventeenth-Century Oxford (Oxford, 1997), p. 9. 124. Bernadette Cunningham, ‘Clanricard Letters’, Journal of the Galway Archaeological and Historical Society, 48 (1996), pp. 182–3. 125. CSPD, Jan.–Aug. 1680, pp. 498–9.

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Notes to pp. 438–41

563

126. Bríd McGrath, ‘Ireland and the Third University: Attendance at the Inns of Court, 1603–1649’ in D. Edwards (ed.), Regions and Rulers in Ireland, 1100–1650: Essays for Kenneth Nicholls (Dublin 2004), pp. 217–36. 127. Ó Dálaigh, ‘An Inventory of the Contents of Bunratty Castle and the Will of Henry, Fifth Earl of Thomond, 1639’, p. 140; Ivar O’Brien, The O’Briens of Thomond. The O’Briens in Irish History 1500–1865 (Chichester, 1986), p. 52; F. J. B. ‘Connor Mac Uidir, Lord of Fermanagh’, Ulster Journal of Archaeology, second series, 16 (1910), pp. 108–37, p. 108; Gilbert (ed.), Contemporary History, I, p. xxi. 128. CSPD, Jan.–Aug. 1680, p. 286; HMC, Ormonde, NS, IV, pp. 166, 583 (quote). 129. CSPI, 1606–1608, pp. 234, 256. 130. PRONI, D.3078/3, 1/5, pp. 4–5, 6–7. 131. [Peter Pett,] The Happy Future State of England: or, A Discourse by Way of Letter to the late Earl of Anglesey, Vindicating him from the Reflections of an Affidavit published by the House of Commons Ao 1680 by occasion whereof observations are made concerning infamous witnesses (London 1688), p. 2. 132. HMC, Ormonde, NS, IV, p. 599. 133. T. C. Barnard, ‘Land and Limits of Loyalty: The Second Earl of Cork and First Earl of Burlington (1612–98)’ in Toby Barnard and Jane Clark (eds.), Lord Burlington: Architecture, Art and Life (London, 1995), pp. 195–6. 134. John Prendergast, ‘The Butlers, Lords Ikerrin, before the Court of Transplantation at Athlone, ad 1656, and at the Second Court of Claims’, Butler Society Journal, 3 (1987), p. 73; NLI, MS 8,539; CSPI, 1660–1662, p. 94. 135. HMC, Ormonde, NS, IV, pp. 306 and 355, also see (for Courcy) pp. 166–7; ibid., IV, p. 337. 136. HMC, Ormonde, V, pp. vii–ix. Also see ibid., VI, p. 76, and Bodl., Carte MS 220, ff. 34–5. 137. Reginald J. Fletcher (ed.), The Pension Book of Gray’s Inn. Vol. I. 1569–1669 (London, 1901), p. 295. In this respect the Inns were typical of comparable institutions throughout contemporary Europe; Filippo Ranieri, ‘From Status to Profession: The Professionalisation of Lawyers as a Research Field in Modern European Legal History’, Journal of Legal History, 10 (1989), p. 184, and W. R. Prest (ed.), Lawyers in Early Modern Europe and America (London, 1981). I am grateful to Professor Osborough for bringing this latter reference to my attention. 138. W. R. Prest, The Inns of Court under Elizabeth and the Early Stuarts (1590–1640) (London, 1972), and ‘Legal Education of the Gentry at the Inns of Court, 1560–1640’, Past and Present, 38 (1967), pp. 20–39. 139. Quoted in Prest, The Inns of Court, p. 40. 140. Prest, ‘Legal Education’, p. 35. Much more work needs to be done on the nature and extent of litigation in early modern Ireland. 141. Ibid., p. 39. 142. Donal Cregan, ‘Irish Catholic Admissions to the English Inns of Court, 1558–1625’, Irish Jurist, 5 (1970), p. 99. 143. Jane Ohlmeyer, ‘Irish Recusant Lawyers during the Reign of Charles I’ in Micheál Ó Siochrú (ed.), A Kingdom in Crisis: The Confederates and the Irish Civil Wars (Dublin, 2000), pp. 63–89. 144. HMC, Report on Franciscan manuscripts preserved at the convent, Merchant’s Quay, Dublin (Dublin, 1906), p. 71. 145. [Pet,] The Happy Future State of England, pp. 3–4. 146. BL, Add. MS 40,860, Annesley’s diary, 9 May 1671–2 October 1675; continued at BL, Add. MS 18,730. 147. Lincoln’s Inn Library, Admission Register, vol. 6, f. 5. Other honorary entrants included Adam, Viscount Loftus of Ely, and Sir Francis Annesley, vol. 5, f. 206. 148. Jane Ohlmeyer, ‘Records of the Irish Court of Chancery: A Preliminary Report for 1627–1634’ in Desmond Greer and Norma Dawson (eds.), Mysteries and Solutions in Irish Legal History (Dublin, 2001), p. 48; Cregan, ‘Catholic Admissions’, p. 109, and Bríd McGrath, ‘A Biographical Dictionary of the Membership of the Irish House of Commons 1640–1641’ (unpublished PhD thesis, Trinity College Dublin, 1997), pp. 244–6. 149. The Records of the Honourable Society of Lincoln’s Inn. Vol. 1. Admissions from ad 1420 to ad 1799 (London, 1896); H. A. C. Sturgess (ed.), Register of Admissions to the Honourable Society of the Middle Temple from the fifteenth century to the year 1944, vol. 1 (London, 1949); Joseph Foster, The Register of Admissions to Gray’s Inn 1521–1889 (London, 1889); and Students admitted to the Inner Temple 1547–1660 (London, 1877), and Inner Temple Library, ‘Admissions to the Inner Temple to 1659’ (typescript by L. Rees Lloyd, [1954]). 150. Anonymous, ‘Testamentary Records’, Irish Genealogist, 2:6 (1948), p. 180.

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Notes to pp. 441–4

151. William MacIlwaine, ‘Notice of Hitherto Unpublished Portion of the “Montgomery Manuscripts”’, Ulster Journal of Archaeology, 1st series, 9 (1861–2), p. 154. 152. Stuart Gillespie, ‘Dillon, Wentworth, fourth earl of Roscommon (1637–1685)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, Sept. 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/7667, accessed 27 June 2010]). 153. Gerald Dillon, ‘The Dillon Peerages’, Irish Genealogist, 3 (1958), p. 94. 154. Eustace Budgell, Memoirs of the lives and characters of the illustrious family of the Boyles: particularly of the late eminently learned Charles, earl of Orrery . . . (London, 1737), p. 118; Farrington, ‘Robert Boyle’, p. 77. 155. Dury’s marriage to Dorothy, a daughter of Archbishop Adam Loftus, and the widow of Sir John Moore, cemented his contact with Broghill and Lady Katherine Ranelagh (who had acted as matchmaker for the couple); Patrick Little, Lord Broghill and the Cromwellian Union with Ireland and Scotland (Woodbridge, Suffolk, 2004), pp. 97–9, 225–30; Donald Jackson, Intermarriage in Ireland 1550–1650 (Montreal, 1970), p. 24, and [John Dury], Madam, although my former freedom in writing might rather give me occasion to beg pardon for a fault committed . . . (London, 1645). See also G. H. Turnbull, Hartlib, Dury and Comenius: Gleanings from Hartlib’s Papers (Liverpool, 1947); Charles Webster, The Great Instauration: Science, Medicine and Reform 1626–1660 (London 1975); and Scott Mandelbrote, ‘John Dury and the Practice of Irenicism’ in Nigel Aston (ed.), Religious Change in Europe 1650–1914: Essays for John McManners (Oxford, 1997), pp. 41–58. I am grateful to Howard Hotson for alerting me to these references. 156. Orrery Papers (consulted on microfilm, NLI, P 7074, originals in West Suffolk RO), folder 16. 157. Ibid., folder 13. 158. CSPI, 1603–1606, p. 151. 159. CSPI, 1625–1632, p. 641; HMC, Report 7, Appendix, pp. 268–9. 160. CSPI, 1625–1632, pp. 168, 689. 161. Geraldine Talon (ed.), Court of Claims: Submissions and Evidence, 1663 (IMC, Dublin, 2006), p. 110. 162. Comment. Rinucc., II, p. 489. 163. Harman Murtagh, ‘Taaffe, Francis, third earl of Carlingford (1639–1704)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, Sept. 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/26905, accessed 20 Sept. 2010]). 164. For an excellent example see Donal Cregan, ‘The Social and Cultural Background of a CounterReformation Episcopate, 1618–60’ in A. Cosgrove and D. MacCartney (eds.), Studies in Irish History Presented to R. Dudley Edwards (Dublin, 1979), pp. 85–117; and Cathaldus Giblin, The Irish Francisan Mission to Scotland, 1619–1646: Documents from the Archives (Dublin, 1964). 165. Thomas O’Connor (ed.), The Irish in Europe, 1580–1815 (Dublin, 2001), pp. 16–17. 166. Christopher Storrs and H. M. Scott, ‘The Military Revolution and the European Nobility, c.1600– 1800’, War in History, 3 (1996), pp. 24–5. 167. HMC, Ormonde, NS, IV, pp. 269, 385. 168. MacLysaght (ed.), Calendar of the Orrery Papers, pp. 317, 343, 370. 169. Brown, Noble Society in Scotland, pp. 192–4. 170. MacIlwaine, ‘Notice of Hitherto Unpublished Portion of the “Montgomery Manuscripts”’, p. 154; George Hill (ed.), The Montgomery Manuscripts (1603–1706). Compiled from the family papers by William Montgomery of Rosemount . . . (Belfast, 1869), p. 91. 171. Hill (ed.), Montgomery Manuscripts, pp. 94, 352–4. 172. Ibid., pp. 91, 94, 151–2, 153 (for the quote), 351–2. 173. Ibid., p. 257. 174. Dionysius Massari, ‘My Irish Campaign’, Catholic Bulletin, 6:11 (1916), p. 620. 175. Budgell, Memoirs, p. 35. 176. Patrick Little, ‘The New English in Europe, 1625–60’ in Robert Armstrong and Tadhg Ó hAnnracháin (eds.), Community in Early Modern Ireland (Dublin, 2007), pp. 154–66; Patrick Little, ‘The Political Career of Roger Boyle, Lord Broghill, 1636–1660’ (PhD thesis, Birkbeck College, University of London, 2000); John Kerrigan, ‘Orrery’s Ireland and the British Problem’ in David Barker and Willy Maley (eds.), British Identities and English Renaissance Literature (Cambridge, 2002), pp. 197–225. 177. Grosart (ed.), Lismore Papers, second series, IV, pp. 100–1, 205–6. Also see Birch (ed.), The Works of Robert Boyle, pp. 34, 42. 178. Grosart (ed.), Lismore Papers, second series, IV, pp. 205–7. 179. Ibid., pp. 231–6. 180. Barbara Donagan, ‘Atrocity, War Crime and Treason in the English Civil War’, American Historical Review, 99 (1994), pp. 1,137–66, and ‘Codes and Conduct in the English Civil War’, Past and Present, 118 (1988), pp. 65–95.

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Notes to pp. 444–51

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181. SCL, Strafford MS 22, f.101, and CSPI, 1625–1632, pp. 81, 168, 186, 689. 182. Henry Hexham, The Principles of the Art Militarie: Practised in the Warres of the United Netherlands (London, 1637). 183. Carmel Larkin, ‘Principle and Pragmatism: The Early Life and Career of Daniel O’Neill at the Court of Charles I’ (unpublished PhD thesis, Maynooth, 2002), chapter 3. 184. CSPI, 1625–1632, p. 160. 185. Aidan Clarke, ‘Sir Piers Crosby (1590–1646): Wentworth’s “tawney ribbon” ’, Irish Historical Studies, 102 (1988); CSPD, 1627–1628, pp. 313, 331, 352, 403. 186. CSPI, 1603–1606, pp. 338, 339, 345. 187. Ibid., pp. 107, 128. 188. CSPI, 1625–1632, pp. 73, 242. 189. Clarendon, Rebellion, VI, pp. 44–7. 190. Talon (ed.), Court of Claims, p. 104. 191. CSPD, 1656–1657, pp. 59–60, 73. 192. CSPD, 1660–1661, pp. 178, 200, 355; O’Brien, O’Brien of Thomond, p. 90. 193. Caroline M. Hibbard, ‘The Role of a Queen Consort: The Household and Court of Henrietta Maria, 1625–1642’ in Ronald G. Asch and Adolf M. Birke (eds.), Princes, Patronage, and the Nobility (Oxford, 1991), pp. 396–7, also see p. 411. 194. Dunluce travelled back to London with the English ambassador, CSPI, 1625–1632, p. 203. 195. Ibid., p. 484. 196. Grosart (ed.), Lismore Papers, second series, IV, p. 80. 197. CSPD, 1635, p. 385. 198. Grosart (ed.), Lismore Papers, second series, IV, p. 210; ibid., V, pp. 150, 166–7, 180, 181; NLI, MS 13,237 (26). 199. Canny, Upstart Earl, pp. 49–51, 72–3, quotes at pp. 73 and 50. 200. PRONI, D.3078/3, 1/5, pp. 42–3. 201. HMC, Ormonde, NS, IV, p. 586. 202. Karin J. MacHardy, ‘The Rise of Absolutism and Noble Rebellion in Early Modern Habsburg Austria, 1570 to 1620’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 34 (1992), p. 430; John Adamson (ed.), The Princely Courts of Europe, 1500–1750 (London, 2000), pp. 7–41, 96–117.

Chapter Sixteen: Death and Memory   1. For an excellent introduction to death as a rite of passage see David Cressy, Birth, Marriage and Death: Ritual, Religion and Life-cycle in Tudor and Stuart England (Oxford, 1997).   2. Nicholas French, The Unkinde Desertor of Loyall Men and Frue Frinds ([Paris], 1676), p. 194.   3. Clodagh Tait’s pioneering study of death in early modern Ireland has transformed our understanding of the process and symbolism of death and dying there; Death, Burial and Commemoration in Ireland, 1550–1650 (London, 2002), and ‘Colonising Memory: Manipulations of Death, Burial and Commemoration in the Career of Richard Boyle, First Earl of Cork (1566–1643)’, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, 101, Section C (2001).   4. The women are Ladies Burlington, Charlemont, Clancarthy, Conway, Digby, Delvin, Dillon, Drogheda, Howth and Inchiquin, Kildare, Longford, Massareene, Orrery, Shannon, Thomond. The brothers of the earls of Donegal, Meath and Mountrath; the sons of Lords Moore and Slane; the eldest son of the earl of Thomond and Viscount Clanmalier.   5. PRONI, T. 956/22.   6. TNA, PROB 11/359/53.   7. TNA, PROB 11/386/1.   8. John Ainsworth, ‘Survey of Documents in Private Keeping’, Analecta Hibernica, 25 (1967), p. 167.   9. NA, T/12767. 10. TNA, PROB 11/374/147. 11. TNA, PROB 11/481/81. 12. Edward MacLysaght (ed.), Calendar of the Orrery Papers (IMC, Dublin, 1941), p. 189. 13. Dorothea Townshend, Life and Letters of the Great Earl of Cork (London, 1904), pp. 491–2, and TNA, PROB 11/448/259. 14. TNA, PROB 11/404/85. 15. NA, T/12767. 16. Jane Ohlmeyer, ‘Records of the Irish Court of Chancery: A Preliminary Report for 1627–1634’ in Desmond Greer and Norma Dawson (eds.), Mysteries and Solutions in Irish Legal History (Dublin, 2001), p. 45.

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17. NA, Thrift/199. 18. PRONI, D.207/16/4. 19. NA, RC 5/19/part 3/pp. 269, 271. 20. Grosart (ed.), Lismore Papers, first series, V, p. 214; Good and bad newes from Ireland in a letter of credit from Youghall not forged as are most pamphlets lately published . . . (London, 1641/2); A iournall of the most memorable passages in Ireland . . . (London, 1642); Good newes from Ireland. Or, A true relation of a great victory obtained by the Protestants in the province of Munster in Ireland (London, 1642). 21. Gilbert (ed.), Contemporary History, II, p. 46; HMC, Ormonde, NS, III, p. 28; A mighty victory over the Irish rebels obtained by Colonell Jones, at Lynceyes Knock neere Trim, August 8 instant where was slaine upon the place, the Earle of Fingall, Lieut. Generall Burne . . . (Dublin, 1647). 22. John D’Alton, Illustrations, historical and genealogical of King James’s Irish Army List (1689) (Limerick, 1997), p. 957; Gerald Dillon, ‘The Dillon Peerages’, Irish Genealogist, 3:3 (1958), p. 86; Pádraig Lenihan, ‘The Impact of the Battle of Aughrim (1691) on the Irish Elite’ in Brian MacCuarta (ed.), Reshaping Ireland 1550–1700: Colonization and its Consequences (Dublin, 2011), pp. 300–17. 23. A. Laurence, ‘The Cradle to the Grave: English Observations of Irish Social Customs in the Seventeenth Century’, Seventeenth Century, 3 (1988), pp. 78–9; Francis G. James, The Lords of the Ascendancy: The Irish House of Lords and its Members 1600–1800 (Dublin, 1995), pp. 21–2. 24. Keith M. Brown, Noble Society in Scotland: Wealth, Family and Culture, from Reformation to Revolution (Edinburgh, 2000), p. 252 25. Lawrence Stone, Crisis of the Aristocracy 1558–1641 (Oxford, 1965), p. 788. 26. Brown, Noble Society in Scotland, p. 252. 27. Francis G. James, ‘The Aristocracy of Ireland’s Ancien Régime’, Eir-Ireland, 26 (1991), pp. 29–37. 28. Data extracted from GEC and Lodge. In many cases the dates of birth and death are only known to the year and not the month, which introduces a margin of error. 29. Cynthia Herrup, ‘The Patriarch at Home: the Trial of the 2nd Earl of Castlehaven for Rape and Sodomy’, History Workshop Journal, 41 (1996), pp. 1–18, ‘ “To Pluck Bright Honour from the Pale-Faced Moon”: Gender and Honour in the Castlehaven Story’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, sixth series, 6 (1996), pp. 137–60, and A House in Gross Disorder: Sex, Law and the 2nd Earl of Castlehaven (Oxford, 1999), pp. 139–59. 30. Charlene McCoy, ‘War and Revolution: County Fermanagh and its borders, c.1640–c.1666’ (unpublished PhD thesis, Trinity College Dublin, 2007), pp. 246–52; Alan Orr, ‘England, Ireland, Magna Carta, and the Common Law: The Case of Connor Maguire, Second Baron of Enniskillen’, Journal of British Studies, 39 (2000), pp. 389–421, and Treason and the State: Law, Politics, and Ideology in the English Civil War (Cambridge, 2002), p. 154. 31. The last speeches and confession of the Lord Magurie . . . (London, 1645), p. 7. 32. The tryal and condemnation of Mervin, Lord Audley Earl of Castle-Haven. At Westminster, April the 5th 1631. For abetting a rape upon his Countess, committing sodomy with his servants, and commanding and countenancing the debauching his daughter (London, 1699), pp. 28–30. 33. J. A. Sharpe, ‘ “Last Dying Speeches”: Religion, Ideology and Public Execution in SeventeenthCentury England’, Past and Present, 107 (1985), pp. 144–67. 34. FJB., ‘Connor Mac Uidir, Lord of Fermanagh’, Ulster Journal of Archaeology, second series, 16 (1910), pp. 135–6; HMC, Report on Franciscan manuscripts preserved at the convent, Merchant’s Quay, Dublin (Dublin, 1906), pp. 55, 245. 35. FJB., ‘Connor Mac Uidir, Lord of Fermanagh’, pp. 108–37; The last speeches and confession of the Lord Maguire; Brian MacCuarta, Catholic Revival in the North of Ireland, 1603–41 (Dublin, 2007), p. 237. For the elegy on his death see TCD, MS 1,291, ff. 163v–164. 36. HMC, Ormonde, NS, IV, p. 19. 37. CSPI, 1633–1647, p. 489. 38. Micheál Ó Siochrú, God’s Executioner: Oliver Cromwell and the English Conquest of Ireland (London, 2008), p. 106. 39. Victor Treadwell, Buckingham and Ireland, 1616–1628: A Study in Anglo-Irish Politics (Dublin, 1998), pp. 40, 296; CSPD, March 1675–Feb. 1676, pp. 43, 47. 40. George Hill (ed.), The Montgomery Manuscripts (1603–1706). Compiled from the family papers by William Montgomery of Rosemount . . . (Belfast, 1869), pp. 238–41. 41. CSPI, 1611–1614, p. 245. 42. CSPI, 1669–1670, p. 298. 43. Peter Gaunt (ed.), The Correspondence of Henry Cromwell 1655–1659: British Library Lansdowne Manuscripts (Camden 5th series, vol. 31, Cambridge, 2007), p. 476. 44. HMC, Ormonde, NS, III, p. 364. 45. Alton, Illustrations, pp. 58–9.

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46. John Smyth, 11th Earl of Clanricard, The Memoirs and Letters of Ulick, Marquis of Clanricarde, and Earl of Saint Albans (London, 1758), p. 266. 47. Harold Nicholson, Helen’s Tower (London, 1937), pp. 36–7. 48. MacLysaght (ed.), Calendar of the Orrery Papers, pp. 206, 255. 49. Grosart (ed.), Lismore Papers, second series, III, pp. 75–6; CSPI, 1633–1647, p. 125. 50. MacLysaght (ed.), Calendar of the Orrery Papers, p. 218. 51. Edward Berwick (ed.), The Rawdon Papers . . . (London, 1819), pp. 157–8. 52. Grosart (ed.), Lismore Papers, second series, III, pp. 137–9. 53. HMC, Ormonde, NS, VI, pp. 249, 257, 270–1, 283, 292, 494, 515. 54. Ibid., p. 114. 55. J. D. Davies, ‘Butler, Thomas, sixth earl of Ossory (1634–1680)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, (Oxford, Sept. 2004; online edn., May 2010 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/ article/4210, accessed 29 July 2010]); The Diary of John Evelyn, ed. E. S. de Beer (6 vols., Oxford, 1955), IV, pp. 208–11; HMC, Ormonde, NS, V, pp. 354–5; HMC, Report 7. Appendix 2 (London, 1879), pp. 740–4. 56. HMC, Ormonde, NS, V, p. 362. 57. MacLysaght (ed.), Calendar of the Orrery Papers, p. 97; Thomas Morrice (ed.), A Collection of the State Letters of . . . Roger Boyle, First Earl of Orrery . . . (London, 1742), p. 46; HMC, Ormonde, NS, V, pp. 216, 218, 224, 229; HMC, Thirteenth Report, Appendix Part VI. The Manuscripts of Sir William FitzHerbert and Others (London, 1893), pp. 261–78; BL, Add. MS 18,730, Annesley’s Diary, 1675–1684. 58. CSPI, 1663–1665, pp. 590, 637; HMC, Ormonde, NS, V, p. 218. 59. Thomas Morris [Morrice], A sermon preached at the funeral of the Right Honourable Roger Earl of Orrery, who dyed the 16th of October, at Castle-Martyr, and was buried at Youghall in Ireland the 18th of the same month, in the year 1679 by Thomas Morris, M.A (London, 1681), pp. 30–1. 60. CSPD, 1659–1660, p. 255; CSPI, 1663–1665, p 164; HMC, Report 7, Appendix, p. 757. 61. CSPI, 1603–1606, pp. 215, 477; College of Arms, [Irish] Funeral Entries or College of Arms Betham MSS, [Irish] Funeral Entries, vol. III, f. 46 [125]. 62. Robert Armstrong, ‘Walter Butler (d. 1633), 11th earl of Ormond’, DIB, II, p. 188. 63. GEC, IX, p. 324. 64. Tait, Death, pp. 8–18. 65. Berwick (ed.), The Rawdon Papers . . ., pp. 186–7. 66. CSPD, 1651–1652, p. 440. 67. Berwick (ed.), The Rawdon Papers . . ., pp. 186–7. 68. Henry Leslie, archdeacon of Down, A sermon preached at the funeral of the most honourable Rose, Lady Marchioness of Antrim at Carrickfergus, the 4th of July 1695 (Dublin, 1695), pp. 31–2. 69. Bodl., Carte MS 128, f. 386; CSPI, 1663–1665, pp. 618–19. 70. HMC, Ormonde, NS, VII, p. 482. 71. HMC, Report 7, Appendix, p. 757. 72. HMC, Ormonde, NS, V, p. 360. 73. Ibid., p. 361. 74. Tait, Death, pp. 19–25. 75. CSPD, Jan.–Aug. 1680, pp. 568, 580. 76. HMC, Ormonde, NS, V, pp. 354, 357, 359, 366, 367. 77. Ibid., p. 358. 78. Ibid., p. 370. 79. Bodl., Carte MS 128, ff. 384v, 387. See also Bodl., Carte MS 32, ff. 62 and 70, f. 547. 80. Tait, Death, p. 39; CSPD, Jan.–June 1683, p. 56. 81. TNA, PROB 11/383/68 and PROB 11/646/236. 82. Townshend, Life and Letters, p. 471. 83. Alison Forrestal, Catholic Synods in Ireland, 1600–1690 (Dublin, 1998), pp. 17, 21, 187. 84. Tait, Death, pp. 40–8. 85. An account of the solemn funeral and interrment of the right honourable the Countess of Arran, as it was lately sent in a letter or narrative from Dublin. Bearing date, Aug. 21. 1668 ([London], 1668), pp. 2–3. Also in CSPI 1666–1669, pp. 637–41; NLI, Genealogical Office, MS 78, p. 212 (shield), and MS 67, pp. 137–8, 143. 86. CSPI, 1666–1669, p. 619. 87. Ibid., p. 639. 88. Ibid., pp. 638, 640. 89. Ibid., pp. 640–1.

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Notes to pp. 460–7

  90. Ibid., p. 641.   91. Bodl., Carte MS 49, f. 586.   92. Cressy, Birth, Marriage and Death, p. 440.   93. Raymond Gillespie, ‘Funerals and Society in Early Seventeenth- Century Ireland’, Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, 115 (1985), pp. 86–91.   94. Tait, Death, pp. 46–7; Folger Library, MS Add. 820, the names of individuals to be invited for the funeral of the countess of Cork, 1630. I owe this reference to Rolf Loeber.   95. ‘The Seventeenth-Century Will’, Irish Builder, 33 (1981), p. 218.   96. Diarmuid Mac Iomhair, ‘The House of Louth in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries’, Journal of the County Louth Archaeological Society, 16 (1966), p. 77.   97. Data extracted from Lodge, GEC and extant wills.   98. Townshend, Life and Letters, pp. 471–2.   99. TNA, PROB 11/392/110. 100. HMC, Report 7, Appendix, p. 757. 101. HMC, Ormonde, NS, V, p. 360. 102. Ibid., p. 400. 103. TNA, PROB 11/527/100. 104. Patrick Little, ‘Family and Faction: The Irish Nobility and the English Court, 1632–42’ (unpublished MLitt thesis, Trinity College Dublin, 1992), p. 220. 105. TNA, PROB 11/448/259. 106. TNA, PROB 11/347/39. 107. TNA, PROB 11/383/68. 108. His grandson later provided for the erection of a ‘decent monument’ over this tomb and for the repair of the family tomb in St Patrick’s cathedral in Dublin, TNA, PROB 11/527/100. 109. John Prendergast, ‘Charlemont Fort, especially in its Connection with Sir Toby Caulfeild’, Journal of the Royal Historical and Archaeological Association of Ireland, fourth series, 6 (1893–4), p. 334. 110. W. Fitzgerald (ed.), Some Funeral Entries of Ireland (London, 1909), pp. 159–60; Anonymous, ‘Testamentary Records’, Irish Genealogist, 2 (1948), pp. 180–3. 111. GEC, III, p. 420. 112. Walter Fitzgerald (ed.), Some funeral entries of Ireland from a manuscript version in the British Museum (Dublin, 1907–9), pp. 150–1. 113. Tait, ‘Colonising Memory’, pp. 119–20. 114. Grosart (ed.), Lismore Papers, first series, V, p. 215. 115. Ibid., pp. 215–16; NLI, MS 6,900; Tait, ‘Colonising Memory’, pp. 119–20. 116. Alan Ford, ‘Living Together, Living Apart: Sectarianism in Early Modern Ireland’ in Alan Ford and John McCafferty (eds.), The Origins of Sectarianism in Early Modern Ireland (Cambridge, 2005), pp. 19–20. 117. CSPD, Jan.–June 1683, p. 56; George Hill, MacDonnells of Antrim (Belfast, 1873), pp. 346–7; F. J. Bigger, The ancient Franciscan friary of Bun-Na-Margie, Ballycastle, on the north coast of Antrim (Belfast, 1898), p. 36. 118. NA, RC 5/24, pp. 74–5, and RC 5/28, p. 471. 119. Rolf Loeber, ‘Sculptured Memorials to the Dead in Early Seventeenth-Century Ireland’, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, 81, Section C (1981), p. 274. 120. PRONI, T. 956/22. 121. T. K. Lowry (ed.), Hamilton Manuscripts: containing some account of territories of Upper Clandeboye, Great Ardes, Dufferin in the county of Down, by Sir William Hamilton, afterward Viscount Clandeboye (Belfast, 1867), pp. 48, 84, 89. 122. Lodge, III, pp. 144–5. 123. William Brereton, Travels in Holland, the United Provinces, England, Scotland and Ireland, 1634– 1635, ed. and publ. by Edward Hawkins, printed for the Chetham Society, vol. 1 (Manchester, 1844); republished by CELT: Corpus of Electronic Texts: a project of University College, Cork College Road, Cork, Ireland – http://www.ucc.ie/celt (2007); consulted 16 June 2009, p. 375. 124. Gillespie, ‘Funerals and Society’, pp. 86–91. 125. Hill (ed.), Montgomery Manuscripts, p. 247. 126. Ibid., p. 248. 127. Cited in John Cunningham, ‘Transplantation to Connacht, 1641–1680: Theory and Practice’ (unpublished PhD thesis, National University of Ireland, University College Galway, 2009), p. 106. 128. Lodge, V, p. 116. 129. Brian Ó Dálaigh, ‘A Comparative Study of the Wills of the First and Fourth Earls of Thomond’, North Munster Antiquarian Journal, 34 (1992), p. 62; Brian Ó Dálaigh, ‘An Inventory of the

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Contents of Bunratty Castle and the Will of Henry, Fifth Earl of Thomond, 1639’, North Munster Antiquarian Journal, 36 (1995), pp. 139, 162. 130. Ivar O’Brien, The O’Briens of Thomond. The O’Briens in Irish History 1500–1865 (Chichester, 1986), pp. 91–2. 131. Tait, Death, chapter 7; Raymond Gillespie, ‘The Image of Death, 1500–1700’, Archaeology Ireland, 6 (1992), pp. 8–10; Amy Louise Harris, ‘Tombs of the New English in Late Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth-Century County Dublin’, Church Monuments, 11 (1996), pp. 25–41; Rolf Loeber, ‘Sculptured Memorials to the Dead in Early Seventeenth-Century Ireland’, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, 81, Section C (1981), pp. 267–93; Paul Cockerham, ‘ “To mak a Tombe for the Earell of Ormon and to set it up in Iarland”: Renaissance Ideals in Irish Funeral Monuments’ in Thomas Herron and Michael Potterton (eds.), Ireland in the Renaissance, c.1540–1660 (Dublin, 2007), pp. 195–230. 132. Lodge, I, pp. 326–8. 133. An elegie on the much lamented death of the Right Honorable Sir Arthur Chichester Knight, Lo. Baron of Belfast, Lo. high Treasurer of Ireland, one of the lords of His Maiesties most Honorable Priuie Counsell, and of the Counsell of Warre. By Alex Spicer (London, 1643). 134. Tait, Death, p. 125. 135. Tait, ‘Colonising Memory’, p. 108. 136. Ibid., pp. 115–16. 137. Ibid., p. 129. 138. Musarum lachrym in obitum illustrissimae et religiosissimae heroinae, Catharinae, comitiss (Dublin, 1630), [pp. 4, 5–6]. 139. Edward Haukes, Hecatonstichon, or, An elegy upon the much deplored death and solemn funeral of the Right Honourable Charles Earl of Mountrath, president of Connaght, & c., one of the lords justices of Ireland who deceased the 18 of December, anno Dom. 1661 [London?, 1662]. 140. Anonymous, An elegy to the memory of the Right Houorable [sic] Thomas, Earl of Ossory who depated [sic] this life July the 30th, 1680 ([London?, 1680); Anonymous, A Second elegy on that incomparable heroe, Thomas Earl of Ossory who died on Fryday the 30th of July 1680 (London, 1680); Anonymous, A brief compendium of the birth, education, heroick exploits and victories of the truly valorous and renowned gentleman, Thomas Earl of Ossory, eldest son to His Grace the Duke of Ormond who died in the preparation of his voiag [sic] to the relief of Tangiers, on the 30th of July 1680, so much to be lamented by all, for his great worth and loyalty to his prince and country, with several other observations (London?, 1680); Charles Cotton, Poems on several occasions written by Charles Cotton . . . (London, 1689), pp. 314–18, for ‘On the Death of the E. of Ossory’; John Crouch, An elegie upon the right honourable the late Earl of Ossory (London, 1680); Thomas Flatman, On the death of the Rt. Honourable Thos. Earl of Ossory. Pindariq’ Ode (Dublin, 1680); Sir William Petty, Upon the Earl of Ossory, who dyed of a fever, July 30, 1680 (London and Dublin, 1680); Elkanah Settle, An heroick poem on the Right Honourable Thomas Earl of Ossory (London, 1681); Nahum Tate, Elegies on I. Her Late Majesty of blessed memory, II. Late Arch-Bishop of Canterbury, III. Illustrious Duke of Ormond and Earl of Ossory, IV. Countess of Dorset, V. Consolatory poem, &c. together with a poem on the promotion of several eminent persons (London, 1699); John Wilson, To the memory of the most excellent and noble Thomas, earl of Ossory (Dublin, 1680). 141. Anonymous, An elegy to the memory of the Right Houorable [ sic] Thomas, Earl of Ossory who depated [sic] this life July the 30th, 1680 ([London?, 1680). 142. Thomas Carte, The life of James duke of Ormond (6 vols., Oxford, 1851), III, pp. 631–2, for Southwell’s description of him. 143. HMC, Ormonde, NS, IV, p. 591. 144. Thomas Flatman, On the death of the Right Honorable the Duke of Ormond a pindarique ode (London, 1688); Nahum Tate, A pastoral in memory of His Grace the illustrious Duke of Ormond, deceased July the 21st. 1688 (London, 1688). 145. B. Ó Cuiv, ‘An elegy on Donnchadh O Briain, fourth earl of Thomond’, Celtica, 16 (1984), pp. 93–7. 146. Rev. John C. Mac Erlean, S. J., The Poems of David Ó Bruadair (2 vols., Irish Texts Society, London, 1910), I, pp. 119–22. 147. Michael Hartnett, Haicéad (Oldcastle, County Meath, 1993), p. 41. 148. Fitzgerald (ed.), Some Funeral Entries, pp. 44–5, 47–8, 62–3; NLI, GO 72, p. 279; GO 78, p. 212; GO 67 pp. 137–8, 143. 149. Bernadette Cunningham, ‘Colonized Catholics: Perceptions of Honour and History in Michael Kearney’s Reading of Foras feasa ar Éirinn’ in Vincent P. Carey and Ute Lotz-Heumann (eds.), Taking Sides: Colonial and Confessional Mentalités in Early Modern Ireland (Dublin, 2003), pp. 150–6.

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570

Notes to pp. 471–3

150. Lori Anne Ferrell and Peter McCullough (eds.), The English Sermon Revised: Religion, Literature and History 1600–1750 (Manchester, 2000). 151. George Rust, A sermon preached at New-town the 29 of Octob. 1663. At the funeral of the right honourable Hugh Earl of Mount-Alexander, Lord Viscount Mountgomery of Ards, late master of the ordnance, and one of His Majesties most honourable Privy Council in Ireland (Dublin, 1664), pp. 37–8, also 32–4. 152. Ibid., p. 38. 153. Ibid. 154. Morris [Morrice], A sermon preached at the funeral of the Right Honourable Roger Earl of Orrery, p. 5. 155. Ibid., pp. 25–6. 156. Ibid., pp. 29, 33. 157. Ibid., p. 27; Morrice (ed.), A Collection of the State Letters of . . . Roger Boyle, First Earl of Orrery. 158. NLI, Orrery Papers, folder 22; Deana Rankin, Between Spenser and Swift: English Writing in Seventeenth-Century Ireland (Cambridge, 2005), chapter 6; HMC, Report 6, Appendix (London, 1877), p. 318. The papers Anglesey collected for his history have been published as James Hogan (ed.), Letters and Papers Relating to the Irish Rebellion between 1642–46 (IMC, Dublin, 1936), pp. v–vii. 159. John Lowe (ed.), Letter-Book of the Earl of Clanricarde 1643–1647 (IMC, Dublin, 1983). 160. HMC, Ormonde, NS, III, p. 372. 161. Ibid., IV, p. 374; also p. 378. 162. Ibid., pp. 374, 529. 163. Carte, The life of James duke of Ormond; M. Perceval-Maxwell, ‘Sir Robert Southwell and the Duke of Ormond’s Reflections on the 1640s’ in Micheál Ó Siochrú (ed.), Kingdoms in Crisis: Ireland in the 1640s (Dublin, 2001). 164. Nicholas French, The Unkinde Desertor of Loyall Men and Frue Frinds ([Paris], 1676), p. 194; M. Perceval-Maxwell, ‘The Anglesey-Ormond-Castlehaven Dispute, 1680–1682: Taking Sides about Ireland in England’, in Vincent P. Carey and Ute Lotz-Heumann (eds.), Taking Sides: Colonial and Confessional Mentalities in Early Modern Ireland (Dublin, 2003), pp. 213–30, and Rankin, Between Spenser and Swift, chapter 6. 165. [James Touchet,] earl of Castlehaven, The memoirs of James, Lord Audley, Earl of Castlehaven, his engagement and carriage in the wars of Ireland from the year 1642 to the year 1651 written by himself (London, 1680). 166. Ibid. As it was, Castlehaven’s family honour had been severely tarnished as a result of his father’s trial and execution in 1631; see Herrup, ‘ “To pluck bright honour from the pale-faced moon”, and A House in Gross Disorder; Esther S. Cope, Handmaid of the Holy Spirit: Dame Eleanor Davies, Never Soe Mad a Ladie (Michigan, 1992), and Esther S. Cope (ed.), Prophetic Writings of Lady Eleanor Davies (Oxford, 1995). 167. [Arthur Annesley, earl of Anglesey,] A letter from a person of honour in the countrey written to the Earl of Castlehaven: being observations and reflections upon His Lordships memoires concerning the wars of Ireland (London, 1681). 168. HMC, Ormonde, NS, V, p. 595; Patrick Little, ‘The Marquess of Ormond and the English Parliament, 1645–1647’ in Barnard and Fenlon (eds.), The Dukes of Ormond, pp. 83–100, and Robert Armstrong, Protestant War: The ‘British’ of Ireland and the Wars of the Three Kingdoms (Manchester, 2005), pp. 187, 195–203, 208–11. 169. A letter from His Grace James Duke of Ormond, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, in answer to the Right Honourable Arthur Earl of Anglesey Lord Privy-Seal . . . (London, 1682), preface. 170. A true account of the whole proceedings betwixt His Grace James Duke of Ormond, and the Right Honor [sic] Arthur, Earl of Anglesey, late Lord Privy-Seal, before the King and Council . . . (London, 1682), and [Peter Pet?,] The Happy Future State of England: or, A Discourse by Way of Letter to the late Earl of Anglesey, Vindicating him from the Reflections of an Affidavit published by the House of Commons Ao 1680 by occasion whereof observations are made concerning infamous witnesses (London 1688). Also see BL, Add. MS 18,730, Annesley’s Diary, 1675–1684, entry for 23 June, 1682. 171. Rankin, Between Spenser and Swift, p. 316. 172. Perceval-Maxwell, ‘Sir Robert Southwell’, p. 235. 173. The Works of John Dryden, ed. E. N. Hooker and H. T. Swedenberg, Jr, et al. (20 vols., Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1953–2000), II, ll. 817–28. 174. Ibid., XVII, p. 235. 175. Hector McDonnell, ‘A Fragment of an Irish Manuscript History of the MacDonalds of Antrim’, Ulster Journal of Archaeology, 64 (2005), pp. 140–153, and Hector McDonnell and Jane Ohlmeyer (eds.), ‘New Light on the Marquis of Antrim and the “Wars of the Three Kingdoms” ’, Analecta Hibernica (2009), pp. 67–82.

3697_CH-Notes-END.indd 570

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Notes to pp. 473–81

571

176. Lowry (ed.), Hamilton Manuscripts, and Hill (ed.), Montgomery Manuscripts. Also see Bernadette Cunningham and Raymond Gillespie, ‘Brian Maguire of Knockninny and his Manuscripts’, Clogher Record, 13 (1988), p. 41. 177. R. Gillespie, ‘The Making of the Montgomery Manuscripts’, Familia 2:2 (1980), p. 26.

Chapter Seventeen: Conclusion   1. The present posture, and condition of Ireland. A few considerations also humbly offered to higher debate, how the warre there may be soonest ended, and the ends of the warre best accomplisht (London, 1652), p. 7.   2. Bernadette Cunningham and Raymond Gillespie, ‘The East Ulster Bardic Family of Ó Gnímh’, Egise, 20 (1984), pp 106–14, p. 108; Fearflatha Ó Gnímh, ‘Mo thruaighe mar táid Gaoidhil’ in Thomas O’Rahilly (ed.), Measgra Dánta: Miscellaneous Irish Poems (2 vols., Cork, 1972–7), II, pp 144–7.   3. John C. Mac Erlean, S. J., The Poems of David Ó Bruadair (3 vols., London, 1910–17), I, p. 31.   4. Keith Brown, ‘The Origins of a British Aristocracy: Integration and its Limitations before the Treaty of Union’ in Steven Ellis and Sarah Barber (eds.), Conquest and Union: Fashioning a British State, 1485–1725 (Harlow, 1995), pp. 222–49.   5. Grosart (ed.), Lismore Papers, second series, I, pp. 156–7; also see I, pp. 148–9.   6. CSPI, 1611–1614, pp. 501–2.   7. H. M. Scott, ‘ “Acts of time and power”: The Consolidation of Aristocracy in Seventeenth-Century Europe, c.1580–1720’, Bulletin of the German Historical Institute, 30 (2008), pp. 15–20.   8. Ibid., pp. 29–30.   9. Most notably, Lawrence Stone, The Crisis of the Aristocracy, 1558–1641 (London, 1965), and Charles Jago, ‘The Influence of Debt on the Relations between the Crown and Aristocracy in SeventeenthCentury Castile’, Economic History Review, second series, 26 (1973), pp. 218–36, and ‘The “crisis of the aristocracy” in Seventeenth-Century Castile’, Past and Present, 84 (1979), pp. 60–90. 10. J. V. Beckett, ‘English Landownership in the Later Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries: The Debate and the Problems’, Economic History Review, second series, 30 (1977), and The Aristocracy in England 1660–1914 (London, 1986); M. Bush, The English Aristocracy: A Comparative Synthesis (London, 1984); J. Cannon, Aristocratic Century: The Peerage of Eighteenth-Century England (London, 1984), and ‘The Isthmus Repaired: The Resurgence of the English Aristocracy, 1660–1760’, Proceedings of the British Academy, 68 (1982); John Habakkuk, Marriage, Debt and the Estates System 1650–1950 (London, 1994); Stone, Crisis and The Family, Sex and Marriage in England 1500–1800 (London, 1977); Lawrence Stone and J. F. C. Stone, An Open Elite?: England 1540–1880 (London, 1984); and Michael Questier, Catholicism and Community in Early Modern England: Politics, Aristocratic Patronage and Religion, c.1550–1640 (Cambridge, 2006). 11. Keith Brown, Noble Power in Scotland from the Reformation to the Revolution (Edinburgh, 2011), pp. 208, 238–46 (quote p. 239). 12. Chris Storrs, ‘Empire and Bureaucracy in the Spanish Monarchy, c.1492–1825’, a paper delivered at a colloqium on ‘Empires and Bureaucracy’ held in Trinity College Dublin in June 2011. This will appear with Cambridge University Press in a collection of essays edited by Peter Crooks. 13. Dr John Cunningham received an IRCHSS/CARA postdoctoral award (2010–13) to undertake comparative research on Ireland and the Austro-Bohemian territories in the early modern period. 14. Karin J. MacHardy, ‘The Rise of Absolutism and Noble Rebellion in Early Modern Habsburg Austria, 1570 to 1620’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 34 (1992), pp. 407–38, 416, and War, Religion and Court Patronage in Habsburg Austria: The Social and Cultural Dimensions of Political Interaction, 1521–1622 (London, 2003), pp. 183–207. 15. MacHardy, ‘The Rise of Absolutism’, p. 433. 16. Scott, ‘ “Acts of time and power”, pp. 18–19; R. J. W. Evans, The Making of the Habsburg Monarchy 1550–1700 (Oxford, 1979), pp. 195–216; Thomas Winkelbauer, ‘Ein neues Standardwerk zur Geschichte der böhmischen Aristokratie im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert’, Zeitenblicke, 2 (2005), pp. 1–45. 17. They were Barnewall of Trimleston, Bourke of Brittas, Bourke of Castle Connell, Butler of Dunboyne, Butler of Galmoy, Dungan of Clane, Fleming of Slane, Hamilton of Strabane, Magennis of Iveagh, MacCarthy of Clancarthy, O’Brien of Clare, O’Dempsey of Clanmalier and Sarsfield of Kilmallock. 18. Francis G. James, Lords of the Ascendancy: The Irish House of Lords and its Members, 1600–1800 (Dublin, 1995), p. 12; also see S. J. Connolly, Religion, Law and Power: The Making of Protestant Ireland, 1660–1760 (Oxford, 1992), chapter 3.

3697_CH-Notes-END.indd 571

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Appendix I

Lands held by resident titled nobles in 1641, ranked according to size. (Catholics indicated in bold) Name

Title in 1641

Size of holdings (plantation acres)

Butler*

James

earl of Ormond

224,087

Bourke

Ulick

earl of Clanricarde

152,131

MacDonnell

Randal

earl of Antrim

149,353

O’Brien

Barnabas

earl of Thomond

120,230

MacCarthy

Donough

Viscount Muskerry

82,037

Dillon

Thomas

Viscount Dillon of Costello

53,629

Boyle

Richard

earl of Cork

46,257

Hamilton

James

Viscount Claneboye

44,569

Fitzgerald*

George

earl of Kildare

41,935

Nugent

Richard

earl of Westmeath

40,346

Bourke

Myles

Viscount Mayo

24,892

Blayney

Henry

Baron Blayney

24,572

Dempsey

Lewis

Viscount Clanmalier

22,457

Maguire

Connor

baron of Enniskillen

22,351

O’Brien

Murrough

earl of Inchiquin

21,007

Jones

Roger

Viscount Ranelagh

20,977

Plunkett

Christopher

earl of Fingal

20,627

Butler

Richard

Viscount Mountgarret

20,356

Magennis*

Arthur

Viscount Magennis of Iveagh

20,161

Roche

Maurice

Viscount Roche of Fermoy

18,656

Lambert*

Charles

Baron of Cavan

18,410

Barry

David

earl of Barrymore

18,401

Loftus

Adam

Viscount Loftus of Ely

18,368

Dillon

James

earl of Roscommon

17,353

Fleming

William

baron of Slane

16,472

3697_CH-Notes-END.indd 572

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Appendix I

573

Butler*

James

baron of Dunboyne

16,220

Montgomery

Hugh

Viscount Montgomery of the Ards

16,001

Moore*

Charles

Viscount Moore of Drogheda

15,780

Chichester

Arthur

Viscount Chichester

15,605

Annesley

Francis

Baron Mountnorris

14,972

Bourke*

Thomas

Viscount Bourke of Clanmorres

13,893

Butler

Thomas

Baron Cahir

13,694

Butler

Pierce

Viscount Ikerrin

12,882

Caulfeild*

Toby

Baron of Charlemont

12,119

Boyle

Roger

Baron Broghill

11,838

Fitzpatrick

Barnaby

baron of Upper Ossory

11,190

Cromwell

Thomas

Viscount Lecale

10,968

Roper

Thomas

Viscount Baltinglass

10,954

Sarsfield

William

Viscount Sarsfield of Kilmallock

10,919

Power

Henry

Viscount Valentia

10,792

Bermingham Richard

Baron Bermingham of Athenry

10,546

St Lawrence

Nicholas

baron of Howth

10,422

Preston

Nicholas

Viscount Gormanston

10,211

Fitzmaurice

Patrick

baron of Kerry

9,978

Brabazon

William

earl of Meath

8,754

Plunkett

Oliver

Baron Louth

8,382

Plunkett

Patrick

Baron Dunsany

8,116

Bourke*

William

Baron Bourke of Castleconnel

7,786

Digby

Robert

Baron Digby of Geashill

7,422

Hamilton

James

baron of Strabane

Ridgeway

Robert

earl of Londonderry

6,791

Netterville

Nicholas

Viscount Netterville

6,685

Taaffe

John

Viscount Taaffe

5,377

Bourke

Theobald

baron of Brittas

5,196

Aungier*

Garret

Baron Aungier of Longford

4,200

Barnewall

Mathias

Baron Trimleston

3,938

7,069

(Continued overleaf)

3697_CH-Notes-END.indd 573

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574

Appendix I

Name

Title in 1641

Size of holdings (plantation acres) 2,895

Folliott

Thomas

baron of Ballyshannon

Fitzwilliam

Thomas

Viscount Fitzwilliam of Merrion

2,761

Touchet

James

earl of Castlehaven

2,380

Stewart

Andrew

Baron Castle Stewart

2,116

De Courcy

Patrick

Baron Courcy of Kinsale

1,913

Power

John

Baron Le Power

400

Wilmot*

Charles

Viscount Wilmot of Athlone

310

63 peers (no data for 5) * Includes lands assigned to a wife or mother or, in the case of Lambert, a brother

3697_CH-Notes-END.indd 574

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3697_CH-Notes-END.indd 575

3/7/12 2:19 PM

Aungier

J = judge

CW = court of wards

Francis

I = Ireland

CR = custos rotulorum

Annesley

HS = high sheriff

Con = Connacht

James

HL = house of lords

commr = commissioner

Annesley

GPC = gentleman of privy chamber

CM = Council of Munster

Arthur

GBC = groom of bedchamber

CJ = chief justice

Annesley

GA = general assembly

C1660 = Convention of March 1660

Francis

G = governor

C = council

Surname

E = England

BE = baron of the exchequer

Forename

Dip = diplomat

AG = attorney general

1629

creation military/ naval

1st Baron Aungier 1621 of Longford

2nd earl of 1686 Anglesey in Wales

Viscount Valentia, 1660 earl of Anglesey

Baron Mountnorris

Title

1627

commr

local office

I

I, E

PC [I/E]

LK

VT

admin

MR

legal

P = planter

PS[E]

other

MC = Master in Chancery

M = Munster

LP = lord president

LL = lord lieutenant

LK = lord keeper

LJ = lord justice

LD = lord deputy

LC = lord chancellor

KS = keeper of the seal

KB = King’s Bench

catholic peers are indicated in bold; converts are marked with ‡; and reconverts with ‡‡

D = deputy

1627 – commissioners for raising money for the army

Irish parliaments of 1613, 1634, 1640, 1640s, 1661, 1689

Abbreviations for Appendix II and Appendix III

Office holding and political activity of resident peers, c. 1600–c.1690.

Appendix II

1597[E]

1661

1634

HL

(Continued overleaf  )

1647[E], 1660[E], 1659[I]

1613, 1625[E]

MP

* activist in parliament

V = vice

U = in Ulster

T = treasurer

SS = secretary of state

SC = supreme council

S = seneschal

PS = privy seal

PC = privy council

3697_CH-Notes-END.indd 576

3/7/12 2:19 PM

Surname

Aungier

Aungier

Balfour

Balfour

Balfour

Barnewall

Barnewall

Barnewall

Barnewall

Barnewall

Barnewall

Barnewall

Forename

Gerald

Francis

James

James

Alexander

Robert

Matthias

Robert

Matthias

Nicholas

Henry

Nicholas

3rd Viscount Kingsland

2nd Viscount Kingsland

1st Viscount Kingsland

10th Baron Trimleston

9th Baron Trimleston

8th Baron Trimleston

7th Baron Trimleston

3rd baron of Glenawley

2nd baron of Glenawley

1st baron of Glenawley

1st earl of Longford

2nd Baron Aungier of Longford

Title

1688

1663

1646

1687

1667

1639

1598

1636

1634

1619

1675

1632

M

M

M

M

creation military/ naval

CM

1627

G(U), commr

local office

I

PC [I/E]

VT, KS

admin

legal

P

other

1659[E], 1660[E], 1671[E]

MP

1689

1661

1689

1640*, GA, 1661

1613, 1634

1661, 1689

1634

HL

3697_CH-Notes-END.indd 577

3/7/12 2:19 PM

Barry

Barry

Barry

Bermingham 10th baron of Athenry

Bermingham 11th baron of Athenry

Bermingham 12th baron of Athenry

Bermingham 13th baron of Athenry

Blayney

Blayney

Blayney

Blayney

Blayney

Blayney

Richard

James

Richard

Edmond

Richard

Francis

Edward

Edward

Henry

Edward

Richard

Henry

William

1642

1628

1581

1677

1645

1614

1580

1673

1630

6th Baron Blayney 1689

5th Baron Blayney 1670

4th Baron Blayney 1669

3rd Baron Blayney 1646

2nd Baron Blayney

1st Baron Blayney 1621

2nd Baron Barry of Santry

1st Baron Barry of 1661 Santry

2nd earl of Barrymore

1st earl of Barrymore

Barry

David

5th Viscount Barry of Buttevant

Barry

David

M

M

M

M

M

M

M

M

M

G/S(U), CM, 1627

1627

CM; 1627

I

I

I

CJ, KB, BE

1656[E]

1613

1689

C, 1660

1661

1634, 1640*

1661, 1689

1634, GA

1585, 1613

1692

C, 1661

(Continued overleaf)

1634, 1641

C, 1660, 1661, 1689, 1692

1634

1585, 1613

3697_CH-Notes-END.indd 578

3/7/12 2:19 PM

Surname

Bourke

Bourke

Bourke

Bourke

Bourke‡‡

Bourke

Bourke

Bourke

Bourke

Bourke

Bourke

Bourke‡

Bourke

Forename

Theobald

John

Theobald

Edmund

William

Thomas

William

Richard

Ulick

Richard

William

Richard

John

1659

1654

1618

1st viscount Bourke of Clanmorres

8th earl of Clanricarde

7th earl of Clanricarde

6th earl of Clanricarde

marquis of Clanricarde

4th earl of Clanricarde

1629

1687

1666

1658

1646

1601

7th Baron Bourke 1687 of Castle Connell

6th Baron Bourke 1665 of Castle Connell

5th Baron Bourke 1638 of Castle Connell

M

M

M

M

M

creation military/ naval

4th baron Bourke 1599 of Castle Connell

3rd baron of Brittas

2nd baron of Brittas

1st baron of Brittas

Title

PC [I/E]

G(Galway)

G(Galway)

I

I

LPCon, G(Con&Galway), I CM, 1627

1627

1627

local office

LD

admin

legal

other

MP

GA, 1661

1640[E]

1689

1640

1634

1661, 1689

HL

3697_CH-Notes-END.indd 579

3/7/12 2:19 PM

Bourke

Bourke

Bourke

Bourke‡‡

Bourke‡‡

Bourke

Bourke

Boyle

Boyle

Boyle

Boyle

Boyle

Boyle

Boyle

Thomas

Theobald

Miles

Theobald

Theobald

Miles

Theobald

Richard

Richard

Charles

Roger

Roger

Lionel

Francis

1660

1691

1643

1620

1681

1676

1653

1649

1629

1627

1633

1st Viscount Shannon

3rd earl of Orrery 1660

1682

2nd earl of Orrery 1679

1st earl of Orrery

3rd earl of Cork, Lord Clifford [E]

2nd earl of Cork

1st earl of Cork

6th Viscount Mayo

5th Viscount Mayo

4th Viscount Mayo

3rd Viscount Mayo

2nd Viscount Mayo

1st Viscount Mayo

2nd viscount Bourke of Clanmorres

M

M

M

M

M

M

M

M

G(Cork)

VP(M)

LP(M)

G(Youghal)

G(M), CM, 1627

I

I, E

I

I, E

LJ

T

LJ, T

Pres C of State

LL[E]

1695[E]

1661 1661

1697

1634, C1660, 1661

1661, 1689[E]

1661

1634, 1640[E]

(Continued overleaf)

1654[E], 1660[E]

1670[E], 1679[E], 1685[E]

1646[E]

1613

1689

1661

GA

1640*, GA

1634

3697_CH-Notes-END.indd 580

3/7/12 2:19 PM

Surname

Boyle

Boyle

Brabazon

Brabazon

Brabazon

Brabazon

Brabazon

Browne

Butler‡

Butler

Butler

Butler

Butler

Butler

Forename

Murrough

Lewis

Edward

William

Edward

William

Edward

Valentine

Thomas

Walter

James

James

Richard

John

1628

1673

1627

1661

1614

1546

1689

1685

1675

1662

1st earl of Gowran 1676

1st earl of Arran

13th earl and 2nd 1688 duke of Ormond

12th earl and 1st duke of Ormond

11th earl of Ormond

10th earl of Ormond

1st Viscount Kenmare

4th earl of Meath

3rd earl of Meath

2nd earl of Meath 1651

1st earl of Meath

N, M

M

M, N

M

M

M

M

creation military/ naval

1st baron of Ardee 1616

Viscount Kinalmeaky

1st Viscount Blessington

Title

CR(Carlow)

1627

CM

commr, 1627

CM

G(Limerick)

local office

admin

I

I, E

DLL

LL

I, E, S LL

I

I

I

I

I

I

I

PC [I/E]

legal

1689

1661

1634

1665-6

MP

GBC

GBC, Lord Steward

Keeper of parks

HS[E]

other

1661

1685[E]

1634, 1640*, 1660[E], 1661

1613

1585

1689

1661

1661

1634

1585, 1613

1634

HL

3697_CH-Notes-END.indd 581

3/7/12 2:19 PM

Butler

Butler

Butler

Butler

Butler

Butler

Butler

Butler

Butler

Butler

Butler

Butler

Butler

Butler

Thomas

Thomas

Thomas

Piers

Theobald

James

Edmund

James

Piers

James

Edward

Edward

Piers

Pierce

1st Viscount Ikerrin

3rd Viscount Galmoy

2nd Viscount Galmoy

1st Viscount Galmoy

6th baron of Dunboyne

5th baron of Dunboyne

4th baron of Dunboyne

3rd baron of Dunboyne

2nd baron of Dunboyne

5th baron of Cahir

4th baron of Cahir

3rd baron of Cahir

2nd baron of Cahir

1st earl of Ossory

1629

1667

1653

1646

1690

1662

1640

1625

1567

1677

1648

1627

1596

1642

M

M

M

M

M, N

S(Kilkenny)

1627

1627

I

I, E

DLL

chamberlain to Q

1640

1661[E]

(Continued overleaf)

1689

1661

1689

1634

1613

1634

1613

1661

3697_CH-Notes-END.indd 582

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Surname

Butler‡

Butler

Butler

Butler

Butler

Butler

Butler

Caulfeild

Caulfeild

Caulfeild

Caulfeild

Caulfeild

Forename

Pierce

James

Pierce

Richard

Edmund called ‘Roe’

Richard

Theobald

Toby

William

Toby

Robert

William

1st viscount Charlemont

4th baron of Charlemont

3rd baron of Charlemont

2nd baron of Charlemont

1st baron of Charlemont

Viscount Butler of Tullowphelim

5th Viscount Mountgarret

4th Viscount Mountgarret

3rd Viscount Mountgarret

4th Viscount Ikerrin

3rd Viscount Ikerrin

2nd Viscount Ikerrin

Title

1665

1642

1640

1627

1620

1603

1679

1651

1602

1688

1686

1661

M

M

M

M

M

M

M

M

M

creation military/ naval

HS (Tyrone), 1627

G(U)

CM

commr, 1627

local office

I

I

I

PC [I/E]

admin

legal

P

other

1640

1613

MP

C, 1660, 1661

1640

1634

1689

1613, 1634, 1640, GA

1689

HL

3697_CH-Notes-END.indd 583

3/7/12 2:19 PM

Caulfeild

Chichester

Chichester

Chichester

Chichester

Chichester

Clotworthy

ClotworthySkeffington

Conway

Conway

Conway

Coote

Coote

William

Arthur

Edward

Arthur

Arthur

Arthur

John

John

Edward

Edward

Edward

Charles

Richard

1625

1613

1671

2nd earl of Mountrath

1st earl of Mountrath

1st earl of Conway, Co. Carnarvon

2nd viscount [E] Conway of Conway Castle

1st viscount [E] Conway of Conway Castle

2nd Viscount Massareene

1st Viscount Massareene

3rd earl of Donegal

2nd earl of Donegal

1661

1660

1679

1631

1627

1665

1660

1678

1678

1st earl of Donegal 1647

1st Viscount Chichester

Baron Chichester of Belfast

2nd viscount Charlemont

M

M

M

M

M

M

M

M

M

M

M

LP(Con)

G(U)

G(Antrim)

G(U)

G(Carrickfergus), 1627

CR(Armagh & Tyrone)

I, E

I

E

I

I

I

I

I, E

I

LJ

T commr

LD, T

1624[E], 1626[E]

1661

1634, 1640[E]

1661

1634, 1640

1661

1661

1661

1628[E], 1661

1628[E]

1692

C, 1660, 1661

1692

C, 1660

1661

1634

1613

(Continued overleaf)

1640, 1654[E]

LL[E], SS [North]

SS[E], Dip

Dip

1692

3697_CH-Notes-END.indd 584

3/7/12 2:19 PM

Surname

Coote

Coote

Coote

Cromwell

Cromwell

Cromwell

Cromwell

De Courcy

De Courcy

De Courcy

De Courcy

De Courcy

De Courcy‡

Digby

Forename

Charles

Richard

Richard

Thomas

Wingfield

Thomas

Vere Essex

John

Gerald

Patrick

John

Patrick

Almericus

Robert

1689

1672

1682

1668

1653

1st Baron Digby of Geashill

1620

18th Baron 1669 Courcy of Kinsale

17th Baron 1667 Courcy of Kinsale

16th Baron 1663 Courcy of Kinsale

15th Baron 1642 Courcy of Kinsale

14th Baron 1528 Courcy of Kinsale

13th Baron 1599 Courcy of Kinsale

4th earl of Ardgalss

3rd earl of Ardglass

2nd earl of Ardglass

1st earl of Ardglass 1645

M

M

M

M

creation military/ naval

baron of Colooney 1660

earl of Bellomont

3rd earl of Mountrath

Title

G(King’s Co), CM, 1627

1627

G(Leitrim)

local office

I

I

I

I

PC [I/E] LJ

admin

legal

GBC

GBC

G(NY, Mass)

other

1689[E]

MP

1634, 1640*

1689, 1692

1661

1661

1634

1613

1634

C, 1660, 1661

1696

1692

HL

3697_CH-Notes-END.indd 585

3/7/12 2:19 PM

Digby

Digby

Digby

Digby

Dillon‡‡

Dillon

Dillon

Dillon

Dillon

Dillon

Dillon

Dillon

Kildare

Robert

Simon

William

James

Robert

James

Wentworth

Robert

Cary

Theobald

Lucas

2nd Viscount Dillon of Costello-Gallen

1st Viscount Dillon of Costello-Gallen

5th earl of Roscommon

4th earl of Roscommon

4th earl of Roscommon

3rd earl of Roscommon

2nd earl of Roscommon

1st earl of Roscommon

5th baron Digby of Geashill

4th baron Digby of Geashill

3rd baron Digby of Geashill

2nd baron Digby of Geashill

1624

1622

1685

1689

1649

1642

1642

1622

1686

1677

1661

1642

M

M

M

M

I

I

I

1627

I

collector for Con & Thomond

commr

commr, 1627

G(King’s Co.)

master of mint

LJ

1661

1640

1634

1689[E]

1685[E]

1677[E]

(Continued overleaf)

1661

1640s

1640s

1634, 1640

1661

1661

3697_CH-Notes-END.indd 586

3/7/12 2:19 PM

Surname

Dillon‡‡

Dillon

Dillon

Dillon

Dillon

Docwra

Docwra

Dungan

Esmond

Fitzgerald

Fitzgerald

Fitzgerald

Fitzgerald

Forename

Thomas

Thomas

Lucas

Theobald

Henry

Henry

Theodore

William

Laurence

Lettice

Gerald

Gerald

George

16th earl of Kildare

15th earl of Kildare

14th earl of Kildare

Baroness Offaly

Baron Esmond of Limerick

1st earl of Limerick

2nd Baron Docwra

Baron Docwra

8th Viscount Dillon of Costello-Gallen

7th Viscount Dillon of Costello-Gallen

6th Viscount Dillon of Costello-Gallen

5th Viscount Dillon of Costello-Gallen

4th Viscount Dillon of Costello-Gallen

Title

1620

1612

1599

1620

1622

1686

1631

1621

1691

1682

1674

1673

1630

M

M

M

M

M

M

M

M

creation military/ naval

DG(Dublin)

G(Clare), commr Con, CM

S(Waterford), CM, 1627

G(Derry), CM, 1627

G(Roscommon&Galway)

G(Con & Mayo)

local office

I

I

I

PC [I/E]

T

admin

legal

other

1613

1689

MP

1634, 1640s

1634

1661, 1689

1640

1689

1634, 1640, 1640s, 1661

HL

3697_CH-Notes-END.indd 587

3/7/12 2:19 PM

Fitzgerald

Fitzgerald

Fitzmaurice

Fitzmaurice‡

Fitzmaurice

Fitzpatrick

Fitzpatrick

Fitzpatrick

Fitzpatrick

Fitzpatrick

Fitzwilliam

Fitzwilliam

Fitzwilliam

Wentworth

John

Thomas

Patrick

William

Florence or Finian

Thady or Teige

Barnaby or Brian

Barnaby

Barnaby or Bryan

Thomas

Oliver

William

1664

1660

1629

1666

1638

1627

1613

1581

3rd Viscount Fitzwilliam of Merrion

1661

earl of Tyrconnell 1661

1st Viscount Fitzwilliam of Merrion

7th baron of Upper Ossory

6th baron of Upper Ossory

5th baron of Upper Ossory

4th baron of Upper Ossory

3rd baron of Upper Ossory

20th baron of 1661 Kerry and Lixnaw

18th baron of 1630 Kerry and Lixnaw

17th baron of 1600 Kerry and Lixnaw

18th earl of Kildare

17th earl of Kildare

M

M

M

M

commr

G(Leinster) 1694[E]

1660[E]

(Continued overleaf )

1661

1634, 1640*, 1640s

1689

1640, GA, 1661

1634

1585

1689

1634, 1640*

1613

1695

1661

3697_CH-Notes-END.indd 588

3/7/12 2:19 PM

11th Baron Slane 1597

12th Baron Slane 1612

13th Baron Slane 1625

16th Baron Slane 1661

Fleming

Christopher Fleming

Fleming

Fleming

Fleming

Fleming

Thomas

William

Charles

Randal

Folliott

Forbes

Hamilton

Hamilton

Hamilton

Hamilton

Thomas

Arthur

Claude

James

George

Claud

1622

5th baron of Strabane

4th baron of Strabane

3rd baron of Strabane

2nd baron of Strabane

1668

1655

1638

1633

1st earl of Granard 1684

2nd baron of Ballyshannon

1st baron of Ballyshannon

Folliott

Henry

1620

17th Baron Slane 1676

Christopher Fleming

15th Baron Slane 1643

14th Baron Slane 1629

1673

William

4th Viscount Fitzwilliam of Merrion

Fitzwilliam

M

M

M

M

M

M

M

creation military/ naval

Thomas

Title

Surname

Forename

1627

G(Derry)

G(Ballyshannon)

local office

I

I

PC [I/E]

LJ

admin

legal

GBC

P

other

1661

1613

MP

1689

1661

1689, 1692

1634, 1640

1689

GA

1634, 1640*

1613

HL

3697_CH-Notes-END.indd 589

3/7/12 2:19 PM

Hamilton

Hamilton

Hamilton

Hamilton

Hamilton

Jones

Jones

Jones

King

King

Lambert

Lambert

Lambert

Lambert

James

James

Henry

Hugh

William

Roger

Arthur

Richard

John

Robert

Oliver

Charles

Richard

Charles

1676

1660

1677

1644

1628

1678

1661

1659

1647

1622

1647

3rd earl of Cavan

1690

2nd earl of Cavan 1660

1st earl of Cavan

1st baron of Cavan 1618

2nd Baron Kingston

1st Baron Kingston

1st earl of Ranelagh

2nd Viscount Ranelagh

1st Viscount Ranelagh

2nd baron of Glenawley

1st baron of Glenawley

2nd earl of Clanbrassil

1st earl of Clanbrassil

Viscount Claneboye

M

M

M

M

M

M

M

M

M

G(Con), CM, 1627

G(Con)

LP(Con), commr, 1627

CM, 1627

I

I

I

I, E

I

I

I

I

VT

GBC

P

1647[E]

1689, 1692

C, 1660, 1661, 1689

1634, 1640*, 1640s

1689, 1692

C, 1660, 1661

1640s, 1661

1640, 1640s

1661

1634

(Continued overleaf )

1626[E], 1628[E]

1613

1661, 1685[E]

1634, 1640[E]

1613

1634

1613

3697_CH-Notes-END.indd 590

3/7/12 2:19 PM

MacCarthy

MacCarthy

Callaghan (or poss Knelem)

Donough

4th earl of Clancarthy

3rd earl of Clancarthy

2nd earl of Clancarthy

1676

1666

1665

MacCarthy

1st earl of Clancarthy

Charles James

1643

1658

Loftus

Arthur

2nd Viscount Loftus of Ely

1622

MacCarthy

Loftus

Edward

1st Viscount Loftus of Ely

1686

Donough

Loftus

Adam

1st Viscount Lisburne

1683

1628

Loftus

Adam

2nd Viscount Lanesborough

1676

Charles (also MacCarthy‡‡ 1st Viscount Cormac Muskerry Oge)

Lane

James

1st Viscount Lanesborough

M

M

M

M

creation military/ naval

1680

Lane

George

Title

3rd Viscount Loftus of Ely

Surname

Forename

CR (Kildare)

CM

local office

I

I

I

PC [I/E]

legal

LJ

J, MC, LC

clerk to I Parl

admin

MP

GBC

1634

1613

1613

1661

SS, clerk to 1661 PC[E]

other

1689

1661

1634, 1640*, GA, 1661

1634

1661

1634

1689

HL

3697_CH-Notes-END.indd 591

3/7/12 2:19 PM

MacCarthy

MacDonnell

MacDonnell

MacDonnell

Magennis

Magennis

Magennis

Magennis

Magennis

Maguire

Maguire

Justin

Randal

Randal

Alexander

Arthur

Hugh

Arthur

Hugh

Brian

Brian Roe

Connor

1689

2nd Baron Maguire of Enniskillen

1st Baron Maguire of Enniskillen

5th Viscount Magennis of Iveagh

4th Viscount Magennis of Iveagh

3rd Viscount Magennis of Iveagh

2nd Viscount Magennis of Iveagh

1st Viscount Magennis of Iveagh

3rd earl of Antrim

marquis and 2nd earl of Antrim

1633

1628

1683

1683

1639

1629

1623

1683

1636

1st earl of Antrim 1620

Viscount Mountcashel

M

M

M

M

M

1627

G(U)

G(U), 1627

I

I

I

(Continued overleaf )

1634, 1640*

1689

1689

1689

1640*, GA, 1661

1634

3697_CH-Notes-END.indd 592

3/7/12 2:19 PM

Surname

Montgomery

Montgomery

Montgomery

Montgomery

Moore

Moore

Moore

Moore

MooreHamilton

Netterville

Netterville

Forename

Hugh

Hugh

Hugh

Hugh

Garret

Charles

Henry

Charles

Henry

Nicholas

John

1661

1636

1622

2nd Viscount Netterville of Dowth

1st Viscount Netterville of Dowth

3rd earl of Drogheda

2nd earl of Drogheda

1st earl of Drogheda

2nd Viscount Moore

1st Viscount Moore

1654

1622

1679

1676

1661

1627

1616

M

M

M

M

M

M

M

M

creation military/ naval

2nd earl of Mount 1663 Alexander

1st earl of Mount Alexander

2nd Viscount Montgomery

1st Viscount Montgomery

Title

1627

G(Meath & Louth)

G(Meath & Louth)

G(Drogheda)

S(Cavan), 1627

G(Charlemont), commr

commr, CM, 1627

local office

I

I

I

I

I

I

I

I

PC [I/E]

LJ

LJ

admin

legal P

other

1613

1640

1634

1613

MP

GA

1634*, 1640*

1692

1661

1634, 1640*, 1640s

1692

1661

`1640

1634

HL

3697_CH-Notes-END.indd 593

3/7/12 2:19 PM

Netterville

Netterville

Nugent

Nugent

Nugent

Nugent

O’Brien

O’Brien‡‡

O’Brien

O’Brien

O’Brien

O’Brien

O’Brien

Nicholas

John

Richard

Richard

Richard

Thomas

Dermot

Murrough

William

Donough

Henry

Barnabas

Henry

7th earl of Thomond

6th earl of Thomond

5th earl of Thomond

4th earl of Thomond

2nd earl of Inchiquin

1st earl of Inchiquin

5th Baron Inchiquin

4th earl of Westmeath

3rd earl of Westmeath

2nd earl of Westmeath

1st earl of Westmeath

4th Viscount Netterville of Dowth

3rd Viscount Netterville of Dowth

1657

1639

1624

1581

1674

1654

1597

1714

1684

1642

1621

1689

1659

M

M

M

M

M

M

M

M

M

G(Clare & Thomond)

G(Clare & Thomond)

CM, 1627

LP(M)

LP(M)

1627

I

I

I

I

I

I

G(Jamacia)

1661

1640

(Continued overleaf )

1613, 1634

1613, 1634

1585, 1613

1634, 1640*, 1661

1613

1689

GA, 1640s, 1661

1613, 1634

1689

3697_CH-Notes-END.indd 594

3/7/12 2:19 PM

O’Dempsey

O’Dempsey

O’Dempsey

Terence

Lewis

Maximilian

3rd viscount Clanmalier

2nd Viscount Clanmalier

1st Viscount Clanmalier

4th Baron Louth

Plunkett

Plunkett

Plunkett

Plunkett

Plunkett

Plunkett

Plunkett

Oliver

Mathew

Oliver

Mathew

Oliver

Christoper

Luke

1689

1679

1629

1607

1578

1670

1603

1602

1683

1637

1631

1st earl of Fingal

1628

8th Baron Killeen 1595

8th Baron Louth

7th Baron Louth

6th Baron Louth

5th Baron Louth

10th Baron Dunsany

Christopher Plunkett

Plunkett

1666

1662

M

M

M

M

creation military/ naval

3rd Viscount Clare 1670

9th Baron Dunsany

O’Brien‡

Daniel

2nd Viscount Clare

Patrick

O’Brien

Connor

1st Viscount Clare

8th Baron Dunsany

O’Brien

Daniel

Title

Christopher Plunkett

Surname

Forename

1627

G(Louth & Drogheda)

1627

1627

G(Queen’s Co)

G(Clare)

1627

local office

I

I

PC [I/E]

admin

legal

other 1613, 1634

MP

1613, 1634

1613

1689

1634, 1640*, GA

1613

1585

1689

1634, 1640*

1613

1689

1661

1634

1689

1661

HL

3697_CH-Notes-END.indd 595

3/7/12 2:19 PM

3rd earl of Fingal 1649

Plunkett

Plunkett

Power

Power

Power‡‡

Power

Preston

Preston

Preston

Preston

Preston

Preston

Ridgeway

Ridgeway

Ridgeway

Ridgeway

Luke

Peter

Richard

John

Richard

Henry

Thomas

Anthony

Thomas

Jenico

Nicholas

Jenico

Thomas

Robert

Weston

Robert

1607

1592

1621 1655

4th earl of Londonderry

3rd earl of Londonderry

2nd earl of Londonderry

1st earl of Londonderry

7th Viscount Gormanston

6th Viscount Gormanston

5th Viscount Gormanston

1672

1641

1632

1622

1643

1630

1600

3rd Viscount Tara 1659

2nd Viscount Tara

1st Viscount Tara 1650

Viscount Valentia

1st earl of Tyrone 1673

5th Baron Le Power

4th Baron Le Power

4th earl of Fingal 1684

2nd earl of Fingal 1637

Christopher Plunkett

M

M

M

M

M

M

M

CM, 1627

G(Meath)

1627

commr, CM

G(Waterford)

1627

I

I

I

I

VT, T

commr T

LL[E]

1613 1661

1640s

GA, 1689

1634, 1640*, GA

1613

1640*

1661, 1689

(Continued overleaf )

1613, 1640[E]

1613

1661

lunatic

1640*, GA

3697_CH-Notes-END.indd 596

3/7/12 2:19 PM

Surname

Roche

Roche

Roche

Roche

Roper

Roper

Roper

Sarsfield‡

Sarsfield

Sarsfield

Sarsfield

Forename

David

Maurice

David

John

Thomas

Thomas

Cary

Dominc

William

David

Dominc

4th Viscount Sarsfield of Kilmallock

3rd Viscount Sarsfield of Kilmallock

2nd Viscount Sarsfield of Kilmallock

1st Viscount Sarsfield of Kilmallock

3rd Viscount Baltinglass

2nd Viscount Baltinglass

1st Viscount Baltinglass

1687

1648

1636

1627

1670

1638

1627

10th Viscount 1681 Roche of Fermoy

9th Viscount 1670 Roche of Fermoy

8th Viscount 1635 Roche of Fermoy

M

M

M

M

M

M

creation military/ naval

7th Viscount 1600 Roche of Fermoy

Title

CM, 1627

CM

1627

local office

I

I

i

PC [I/E]

commr CW

admin

other

AG(M), CJ(M), CJ(CP)

legal

1634

1634

1634, 1640

MP

1689

1661

1640*

1634

1640, 1661

1634, 1640, 1661

GA

1613, 1634

HL

3697_CH-Notes-END.indd 597

3/7/12 2:19 PM

St Lawrence

St Lawrence‡

St Lawrence

St Lawrence

St Lawrence

St Lawrence

Stewart

Stewart

Stewart

Stewart

Stewart

Stewart

Taaffe

Taaffe

Taaffe

Taaffe

Nicholas

Christopher

Nicholas

Thomas

William

Thomas

Andrew

Andrew

Andrew

Josias

John

William

John

Theobald

Nicholas

Francis

3rd earl of Carlingford

2nd earl of Carlingford

1st earl of Carlingford

1st Viscount Taaffe

1st Viscount Mountjoy

5th baron of Castle Stewart

4th baron of Castle Stewart

3rd baron of Castle Stewart

2nd baron of Castle Stewart

1690

1677

1661

1628

1683

1662

1650

1639

1629

1st baron of Castle 1619 Stewart

13th Baron Howth 1671

12th Baron Howth 1649

11th Baron Howth 1644

10th Baron Howth 1619

9th Baron Howth 1607

8th Baron Howth 1589

M

M

M

M

M

M

M

G(Con)

commr, 1627

commr

1627

CR(Dublin)

1627

I

I

I

Dip

P

1640

(Continued overleaf )

GA, 1661

1634, 1640

1689, 1692

1661

1640s

1634

1613

1689

1661

1640s

1634, 1640*

1613

3697_CH-Notes-END.indd 598

3/7/12 2:19 PM

Surname

Talbot

Touchet

Touchet

Touchet

Touchet

Touchet

Trevor

Trevor

Trevor

Wilmot

Wilmot

Wingfield

Wingfield

Forename

Richard

George

Mervyn

James

Mervin

James

Mark

Lewis

Mark

Charles

Henry

Richard

Folliott

1692

1670

1662

1686

1684

1631

1617

1616

1689

viscount Powerscourt (2nd creation)

Viscount Powerscourt 1665

1618

2nd Viscount 1645 Wilmot of Athlone M

M

M

M

M, N

creation military/ naval

1st Viscount 1621 Wilmot of Athlone

3rd Viscount Dungannon

2nd Viscount Dungannon

1st Viscount Dungannon

5th earl of Castlehaven

4th earl of Castlehaven

3rd earl of Castlehaven

2nd earl of Castlehaven

1st earl of Castlehaven

duke of Tyrconnell

Title

CM, 1627

LP(Con)

1627

CM

local office

I

I

I, E

PC [I/E]

LJ

LL

admin

legal

other

1661

1613

MP

1661

1640[E], GA, 1661

1613

1689

HL

3697_CH-Notes-END.indd 599

3/7/12 2:19 PM

Aungier

Barnewall

Barry

Bermingham 11th lord Athenry 72; d.1645

Blayney

Bourke

Matthias

David

Richard

Henry

Miles

2nd Viscount Bourke of Mayo

2nd Lord Blayney

earl of Barrymore

8th Baron Trimleston*

d.1649– exec

‡d.1646

37; ‡d.1642

28

2nd Baron Aungier d.1655 of Longford

58

Gerald

Baron Mountnorris

Annesley

Age in 1642

Francis

Title

Surname

Forename

Theobald (son)

Edward (son)

Francis (grandson)

Richard (infant son)

Francis (nephew)

heir’s name

C

L/P

C

L

C

L?

P?

P/L/C HL

X

X?

X

GA

For further abbreviations see page 575 table of Abbreviations for Appendix II and Appendix III

42, 47b

47a, 47b

SC

X

X+

X

X+

X

E

Active service

(Continued overleaf )

OA

oath

Military and political activity of resident peers during 1640s1 * outlawed after 1642; ‡ = died in or as a result of the conflict; P = parliamentarian; L = loyal to Stuarts; C = confederate; N = neutral; OA = Oath of Association; SLC = Solemn League and Covenant; E = lived in England; Catholic peers are indicated in bold; + = held a military command pre-1641 (in standing army, royalist armies fighting in Bishops’ Wars or Wentworth’s ‘new army’)

Appendix III

3697_CH-Notes-END.indd 600

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Surname

Bourke

Bourke

Bourke

Bourke

Boyle

Boyle

Boyle

Brabazon

Butler

Butler

Butler

Forename

Theobald

Thomas

Ulick

William

Lewis

Richard

Roger

William

Edward

James

James

38; d.1657

d.1642

Age in 1642 d.1654

12th earl of Ormond

4th baron of Dunboyne*

1st viscount of Galmoy

1st earl of Meath

Lord Boyle, baron of Broghill

1st earl of Cork

Viscount Kinalmeaky

32

d. 1653

62; d.1651

21

76; d.1643

23; ‡d.1642

5th Baron Bourke 19 of Castle Connell*

5th earl of Clanricarde

2nd Viscount Bourke of Clanmories

1st Baron of Brittas

Title

L

C

L

C

C

Edward (grandson)

Edward (son)

L

C

C

L/P

L/P

X

P/L/C HL

Richard (son) L

Extinct

Richard (cousin)

Extinct

John (son)

heirs name

X

?

?

X

GA

47b

SC

OA

SLC

OA

oath

X+

X

X

?

X+

X

X+

X

X+

X

Active service X

3697_CH-Notes-END.indd 601

3/7/12 2:19 PM

Butler

Butler

Butler

Caulfeild

Chichester

Conway

Cromwell

De Courcy

Digby

Dillon

Pierce

Richard

Thomas

Toby

Edward

Edward

Thomas

Gerald

Robert

James

48; d.1653

48; d.1655

74; d.1648

21; ‡d.1642

d.1648

64; d.1651

1st earl of Roscommon

d.1642

1st Baron Digby of ‡?d.1642 Geashill

14th Lord Courcy d.1642 of Kinsale

1st Viscount Lecale

1st Viscount [E] Conway

Viscount Chichester of Carrickfergus

Lord Caulfeild, 3rd baron of Charlemont

3rd Baron Cahir*

2nd Viscount Mountgarret*

1st Viscount of Ikerrin*

Robert (son)

Kildare (son)

Patrick (brother)

Wingfield (son)

Edward (son)

Arthur (son)

Robert (brother)

Piers (grandson)

Edmund (son)

L

L

L

L

L

L

L/P?

C

C

C

X

X

X

X OA

X?

?

?

X[E+]

X+

X

X

X

X

X

(Continued overleaf )

42, 43a, 43b, 44, 45, 46a, 47b

OA

3697_CH-Notes-END.indd 602

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Surname

Dillon

Docwra

Esmond

Fitzgerald

Fitzgerald

Fitzmaurice

Fitzpatrick

Fitzwilliam

Fleming

Folliott

Hamilton

Forename

Thomas

Theodore

Laurence

George

Lettice

Patrick

Barnaby

Thomas

William

Thomas

James

3rd baron of Strabane

Lord Folliott, 2nd baron of Ballyshannon

14th Lord Slane*

1st Viscount Fitzwilliam of Merrion

6th baron of Upper Ossory*

18th baron of Kerry

Baroness Offaly (for life)

16th earl of Kildare

Lord Esmond

2nd Lord Docwra

4th Viscount Dillon of Costello-Gallen

Title

9; d.1655

29

‡?d.1642

60; d.1650

47

62

39

d.1645

33; d.1647

Age in 1642 37

George (brother)

Charles (son)

Oliver (son)

Extinct

Extinct

heirs name

C

P

C

L

C

L

L

L

L/P

?

L/C

1642 1645 1646

X

P/L/C HL

X

X

X

GA 47b

SC

SLC

OA

OA

oath

X+

X

X[E]

X

N

X

X

X+

X[E?]+

Active service X

3697_CH-Notes-END.indd 603

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Hamilton

Jones

Lambert

Loftus

MacCarthy

MacDonnell

Magennis

Maguire

Montgomery

Moore

James

Roger

Charles

Adam

Donough

Randal

Arthur

Connor

Hugh

Charles

33

48

74; d.1643

42

d.1644

d.1644

2nd Viscount Moore of Drogheda

2nd Viscount Montgomery of the Ards 39; ‡d.1643

‡d.1642

2nd Lord 30; d.1645 Maguire, baron of exec Enniskillen*

3rd Viscount Magennis of Iveagh*

2nd earl of Antrim

2nd Viscount Muskerry*

1st Viscount Loftus of Ely

2nd baron of Cavan

1st Viscount Ranelagh

Viscount Claneboye

Henry (son)

Hugh (son)

Forfeited

Edward (son)

Arthur (son)

James (son)

L/P?

P/L

C

L/C

C

P

L

L/P?

P/L

X

X

X

?

X

X

43b, 44, 47a, 47b

43b, 44, 47a, 47b

SLC

OA

OA

OA

X+

X

X

X+

X

X[E]

X+

X+

X

(Continued overleaf )

44, 45, 46a, 47a, 47b

SLC

3697_CH-Notes-END.indd 604

3/7/12 2:19 PM

Surname

Netterville

Nugent

O’Brien

O’Brien

O’Dempsey

Plunkett

Plunkett

Plunkett

Power

Power

Preston

Forename

Nicholas

Richard

Barnabas

Murrough

Lewis

Christopher

Oliver

Patrick

Henry

John

Nicholas

‡ d.1649

28

52

60; ‡d.1642

61; d.1654

Age in 1642

6th Viscount Gormanston*

5th Baron Le Power and Coroghmore

Viscount Valentia

9th Lord Dunsany

34; ‡? d.1643

45

80; d.1642

47

6th Baron Louth* 34

2nd earl of Fingal*

2nd Viscount Clanmalier

6th Baron Inchiquin

6th earl of Thomond

1st earl of Westmeath

1st Viscount Netterville of Dowth*

Title

Jenico (son)

lunatic

extinct

Luke (son)

Maximilian (son)

Richard (grandson)

John (son)

heirs name

C

L

L/C

C

C

C

L/P/L

L

N/C

C

1644

P/L/C HL

X

X

X

X

X

GA

42

46a, 47b

43a, 43b, 44, 45

SC

OA?

OA

OA

OA

OA

oath

X

X

X

X

X

X

N

X

X

Active service

3697_CH-Notes-END.indd 605

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Roche

Roper

Sarsfield

St Lawrence

Stewart

Taaffe

Touchet

Wilmot

Maurice

Thomas

William

Nicholas

Andrew

John

James

Charles

1st Viscount of Athlone

3rd earl of Castlehaven*

1st Viscount Taaffe of Corren

3rd Baron Castle Stewart

10th Lord Howth

2nd Viscount Sarsfield of Kilmallock

2nd Viscount Baltinglass

8th Viscount Roche of Fermoy*

3rd earl of Londonderry

1645

25

‡? d.1642

d.1650

45; d.1644

d.1648

22

extinct

Theobald

Josias (brother)

Thomas (brother)

David (son)

L

L/C

L/C

P

L

L?

L/P?

C

L

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

43a, 43b, 44, 45

42, 43a, 43b, 47a

?

X

?+

X

OA

+

X

X

SLC? X+

OA

?

of the Irish House of Lords of the Kingdom of Ireland, 8 vols. (Dublin, 1779–1800), I (1634–1698); Micheál Ó Siochrú, Confederate Ireland 1642–1649: A Constitutional and Political Analysis (Dublin, 1999); Gilbert (ed.), Irish Confederation, II, pp. 212–19.

1 Journals

Ridgeway

Weston

3697_CH-Notes-END.indd 606

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Christian name

Nicholas

Richard

Richard

Roger

Edward

Elizabeth

Arthur

John

Edward

Charles

Patrick

Wingfield

Titualdoes Surname

Barnewall

Barry

Boyle

Boyle

Brabazon

Butler

Chichester

Clotworthy

Conway

Coote

Courcy

Cromwell

Viscount Lecale

Baron Courcy of Kinsale

Later earl of Mountrath

Viscount Conway

later Viscount Massareene

Viscount Chichester

Lady Thurles

earl of Meath

Baron Broghill

earl of Cork

earl of Barrymore

Viscount Kingsland

Title held in 1660

City of Dublin & Liberties

Barrymore

Balrothery

Barony

Downe

Cork

Dublin

Antrim

Antrim

Antrim

Lecale

Coursies

City of Dublin & Liberties

Massareene

Antrim

Belfast

Tipperary Eliogurty & Ikerryn

Dublin

Cork

Cork

Cork

Dublin

County

Downe towne

Ouldhead

St Warbroughs Street

Lisnegarvie

Town and Quarters of Belfast

Thurles

Cork City

Youghal

Castlelyon

Turvey

Townland/place

308

17

316

357

301

589

518

1356

88

956

297

63

Total

146

0

274

217

167

366

72

970

80

459

86

8

162

17

42

140

134

223

446

386

8

497

211

55

English Irish & Scots

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

C

Peers recorded in the 1660 poll tax (the so-called ‘1659 census’)1 (Catholics listed in bold; peerages dating from the Restoration in italics; C=1660 commissioners appointed to collect the poll tax)

Appendix IV

3697_CH-Notes-END.indd 607

3/7/12 2:19 PM

626–7.

Dublin

Clare

Lixnaw

Kilkae

Grage

Scryne

Farrard

Ards

Belfast

Ophaly

Cowlocke

Cowlocke

Tirhugh

Cowlocke

Tulla

Howth House

Clonty West

Curraghmore

Killeen

Mellefont

Newtowne Corporation

Towne and Quarters of Belfast

Monestereuen

Tartayne

Festryne

Ballishannon

City of Dublin Irishtowne & Liberties

Clanmorice

Kilkae & Moone

Geshell

Waterford Upperthird

Meath

Louth

Down

Antrim

Kildare

Dublin

Dublin

Donegal

Dublin

Kerry

Kildare

27

11

47

105

68

146

589

105

40

15

134

98

30

107

16

14

0

4

7

16

87

366

11

8

3

63

23

0

6

5

13

11

43

98

52

59

223

94

32

12

71

75

30

101

11

X

X

X

X

X

Ire., 1659, pp. 3, 5, 8, 43, 69, 94, 170, 195, 200, 212, 248, 273, 343, 351, 365, 368, 371, 386, 388–9, 395, 404, 439, 470, 483, 619, 620–4,

Baron of Howth

St Lawrence

1 Census

Viscount Sarsfield of Kilmallock

Baron Le Power

Sarsfield

William

John

Baron Dunsany

Thomas

Power

Viscount Loftus of Ely

Baron of Cavan

Plunkett

Edward

Loftus

Viscount Moore

Charles

Lambert

Baron of Strabane

Henry

George

Hamilton

Baron of Ballyshannon

Moore

Thomas

Folliott

Viscount Fitzwilliam

Viscount Montgomery of the Ards

Oliver

Fitzwilliam

baron of Kerry and Lixnaw

Montgomery Hugh

Patrick

Fitzmaurice

earl of Kildare

Baron Digby of Geashill Offaly

marquis of Antrim

Wentworth

Fitzgerald

MacDonnell [Randal]

Kildare

Digby

Appendix V

Attendance and activity in the House of Lords, 1661–6 Session I: 8 May–31 July 1661 Session II: 6 September 1661 and 22 March 1662 Session III: 17 April 1662 and 16 April 1663 Session IV: 26 October 1665 and 7 August 1666 ‡ = outlawed after 1642

P = proxy [name of proxy, if known] P* = held proxy [session] Committee membership: CP = Committee of Privileges C+ = ad hoc committees

Surname

Title

Activity

HL petition

Annesley

Viscount I [P: Donegal], Valentia and earl II [P], III, IV of Anglesey

C+, P* [III]

land settlement, 1662

Aungier

earl of Longford

I, II [P: ?], III [P: Donegal], IV

CP, C+, P* [I, II]

Barnewall‡

Baron Trimleston

II [P: Westmeath]

Barnewall

Viscount Kingsland

IV?

P*[IV]

Barry

Baron Barry of Santry

I, II, IV

CP, C+, P* [III]

Barry

earl of Barrymore

I, II [P: Shannon], III [P: Baltinglass], IV [P: ?]

C+, P* [I, II] land settlement, 1662

I, III, IV

C+, P* [II, III]

Bermingham Baron Bermingham of Athenry

Sessions attended1

(Continued overleaf )

3697_CH-Notes-END.indd 608

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Appendix V

609

Surname

Title

Sessions attended1

Activity

Blayney

Baron Blayney

II, IV [P: Howth]

C+

Boyle

Dungarvan, son of earl of Cork

III

Boyle

earl of Cork and Burlington, LT

I, II [P: Roscommon], III [P], IV

Boyle

earl of Orrery, LJ I, II, III, IV [P: (1660–2) Inchiquin]

C+, P* [III]

Boyle

Viscount Shannon

I, III [P: Charlemont], IV [P: ?]

CP, C+, P* [I, II]

Brabazon

Ardee, son of earl of Meath

IV

C+, P* [IV]

Brabazon

earl of Meath

I, II [P: ?], IV

P* [I, IV]

Bourke‡

baron of Castle Connell

Abroad

Bourke

baron of Brittas II, III, IV

C+, P* [II]

land settlement 1661–2

Bourke

earl of Clanricarde

I, III [P: ?], IV [P: Dungan]

P* [II, III]

land settlement 1661–2

Bourke

Viscount Mayo

I, II [P: ?], III

C+, P* [III, IV]

distraint of cattle, 1662

Butler‡

Baron Cahir

?

Butler‡

baron of Dunboyne (d. 1663)

?

Butler

duke of Ormond, LL (1662–9)

I [P: Kildare], III, IV

C+

Butler

earl of Arran

III [P: ?], IV

C+

Butler

earl of Ossory

III, IV

C+

Viscount Ikerrin

?

Butler‡

3697_CH-Notes-END.indd 609

HL petition

C+

land settlement, 1662

3/7/12 2:19 PM

610

Appendix V

Butler‡

Viscount Mountgarret

Old age?

Butler

Viscount of Galmoy

I [P: Kildare], III [P: ?]; IV [P: CostelloGallen]

Caulfeild

Viscount Charlemont

I, II, III, IV

CP, C+, P* [III]

Chichester

earl of Donegal

I, III [P: Orrery], IV

C+, P* [III]

Clotworthy

Viscount Massareene

I [P: Donegal], III [P: Donegal], IV

CP, C+, P* [III]

Conway

earl of Conway

I, III, IV

CP, C+, P* [II]

Coote

baron of Colooney

I, II, III [P: ?], IV

CP, C+, P* [I]

land settlement, 1662

Coote

earl of Mountrath, LJ, (d. 1661)

III [P: Santry]

C+

land settlement, 1662

Cromwell2

earl of Ardglass

?

De Courcy

baron of Kinsale

III [P: Athenry], IV

Dempsey

Viscount Clanmalier

I [P: Westmeath]

Digby

Baron Digby of Geashill

I

Dillon

earl of Roscommon

I, II [P: CP, C+, P* Barrymore], III, [II, IV] IV [P: ?]

Dillon

Viscount Dillon III [P: of Clanricarde], Costello-Gallen IV [P: Mayo]

C+, P* [IV]

Dungan

Viscount Dungan of Clane

P* [IV]

III [P: Strabane], IV

land settlement, 1662

land settlement, 1662; fishings, 1666

C+, P* [I] land settlement, 1662

land settlement, 1662 (Continued overleaf )

3697_CH-Notes-END.indd 610

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Appendix V

Surname

Title

Fitzgerald

earl of Kildare

Fitzmaurice

baron of Kerry

?

Fitzpatrick‡

baron of Upper Ossory

?

Fitzwilliam

earl of Tyrconnell

II [P: ?], III [P: C+, P* [II] Howth], IV

Fleming‡

baron of Slane

?

Folliott

baron of Ballyshannon

I [P], III [P: C+ Massareene], IV

Hamilton

baron of Strabane

I, III, IV [P: Kingsland]

Hamilton

earl of Clanbrassil

Minor

Jones

earl of Ranelagh

I, II, III, IV

CP, C+, P* [I]

land settlement, 1663

King

Baron Kingston

I, III [P: Charlemont], IV

CP, C+, P* [I, III]

land settlement, 1662

Lambert

earl of Cavan

I [P: ?], IV

Loftus

Viscount Loftus of Ely

I [P: Drogheda], III, IV [P: Mayo]

C+

land settlement, 1663

MacCarthy‡

earl of Clancarthy

I, III [P: Mayo] CP, C+, P* [I]

MacCarthy

Muskerry, son of earl of Clancarthy

III

MacDonnell

marquis of Antrim

II, III, IV [P: ?] CP, C+

3697_CH-Notes-END.indd 611

Sessions attended1 I, II [P: ?], III [P: Orrery]

611

Activity

HL petition

CP, C+, P* [I, II, III]

distress, 1661; land settlement, 1662 land settlement, 1662

land settlement, 1663

C+, P* [III]

land settlement, 1662

C+

land settlement, 1661–2

3/7/12 2:19 PM

612

Appendix V

Magennis‡

Viscount Magennis of Iveagh

?

Montgomery

earl of Mount Alexander (d. 1663)

I, II [P: ?], III [P: Kildare]

Moore

earl of Drogheda I, II, III, IV

Netterville‡

Viscount Netterville of Dowth

?

Nugent

earl of Westmeath

I, III [P: ?], IV [P: Dungan]

O’Brien

earl of Inchiquin

I [P: C+, P* [IV] Clancarthy, IV]

O’Brien

earl of Thomond I [P: Meath], III [P: Meath], IV

O’Brien

Viscount Clare

IV [P: Ardee]

Plunkett

Baron Dunsany

?

Plunkett‡

Baron Louth

Abroad

Plunkett‡

earl of Fingal

?

Power

earl of Tyrone

IV

Preston‡

Viscount Gormanston

?

Preston

Viscount Tara

Minor

Ridgeway

earl of Londonderry

IV [P: Meath]

Roche‡

Viscount Roche of Fermoy

?

Roper

Viscount Baltinglass

I [P: Howth], III [P: ?], IV

Sarsfield

Viscount Sarsfield of Kilmallock

I, II [P: ?]

St Lawrence

baron of Howth

I, III, IV

CP, C+, P* [I]

land settlement, 1662

CP? C+, P* [I]

CP, C+, P* [I, II]

land settlement, 1666 land settlement, 1662; tithes, 1665

C+

CP, C+

C+, P*[I, III]

CP, C+, land P*[I, III, IV] settlement, 1662 (Continued overleaf )

3697_CH-Notes-END.indd 612

3/7/12 2:19 PM



Appendix V

Surname

Title

Sessions attended1

Stewart

Baron Castlestewart

I [P: Geashill], III [P: Mayo]

Taaffe

earl of Carlingford

Trevor

613

Activity

HL petition

III [P: Mayo]

C+

land settlement, 1662

Viscount Dungannon

IV

C+

slander, 1666

Touchet‡

earl of Castlehaven

III

C+

Wingfield

Viscount Powerscourt

IV [P: Inchiquin]

CP

1 Journals

of the Irish House of Lords vol. 1 1634–1698 (Dublin, 1779), attendance determined by roll calls (for sessions I, III and IV), committee membership, petitions presented and other evidence. 2 His son sat in the House of Commons.

3697_CH-Notes-END.indd 613

3/7/12 2:19 PM

Appendix VI

The land settlement and the process of restoration 1

Catholics are indicated in bold; newcomers to the peerage in italics CC = First Court of Claims (20 September 1662–21 August 1663) D = Charles II’s Declaration confirming Cromwellians in possession and providing for ‘innocent papists’ (30 November 1660) I = judged innocent; N = judged nocent P = petition to the Irish House of Lords (Charles II’s Irish parliament, 8 May 1661–7 August 1666) S = Act of Settlement (14 & 15 Chas II, c.2, 31 July 1662) – to effect Charles II’s Declaration SE = Act of Explanation (17 & 18 Chas II, c.2, 23 December 1665) – providing, with specified exceptions, that Cromwellians should give up a third of their holdings to make land available for restoration of Catholics Surname

Title held in 1670

Annesley

earl of Anglesey

Aungier

earl of Longford

Barnewall

Baron Trimleston

Barry

earl of Barrymore

Bermingham

Baron Bermingham of Athenry

Boyle

earl of Orrery

Boyle

earl of Cork and Burlington

Browne

Viscount Kenmare

X

X

I

X

Bourke

earl of Clanricarde

X

X

I

X

X

Bourke

Viscount Mayo

[X]

X

X

X

Bourke

Baron Bourke of Castle Connell

3697_CH-Notes-END.indd 614

D

S

CC

X

SE

P

X

X

X X

X

X X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

3/7/12 2:19 PM



Appendix VI

615

Surname Bourke

Title held in 1670 baron of Brittas

D

S

CC

Butler

duke of Ormond

Butler

viscount of Galmoy

X

X

I

Butler

baron of Dunboyne

X

X

I

X

Butler

Viscount Mountgarret

X

X

I

X

X

I2

X

X

X

SE X

P X

X

Butler

Viscount Ikerrin

Clotworthy

Viscount Massareene

Conway

earl of Conway

Coote

earl of Mountrath

X

X

X

Coote

baron of Colooney

X

X

X

Dempsey

Viscount Clanmalier

Dillon

Viscount Dillon of Costello-Gallen

Fitzgerald

earl of Kildare

Fitzpatrick

baron of Upper Ossory

Fitzwilliam

earl of Tyrconnell

N

X

Fleming

earl of Slane

I

X

Forbes

earl of Granard

Hamilton

baron of Strabane

Hamilton

earl of Clanbrassil

Jones

earl of Ranelagh

King

baron Kingston

Lambert

earl of Cavan

Lane

Viscount Lanesborough

MacCarthy

earl of Clancarthy

MacDonnell

marquis of Antrim

Magennis

Viscount Magennis of Iveagh

Montgomery

earl of Mount Alexander

Netterville

Viscount Netterville

X

X

N

X

Nugent

earl of Westmeath

X

X

I?

X

X

O’Brien

earl of Inchiquin

X

X

O’Brien

Viscount Clare

X

X

X

X

I X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X X

X

X X

X I I

X

X

X

X

X

I

X

X X

X X

X

I

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X X

X

X

X

X 3

Plunkett

Baron Dunsany

X

X

N

X

Plunkett

earl of Fingal

X

X

I

X

X

(Continued overleaf )

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616

Appendix VI

Surname

Title held in 1670

Plunkett

Baron Louth

Preston

Viscount Gormanstown

Preston

Viscount Tara

Roche

Viscount Roche of Fermoy

Roper

Viscount Baltinglass

Taaffe

earl of Carlingford

Trevor

Viscount Dungannon

Touchet

earl of Castlehaven

D

S

CC

SE

P

X

X

I X

X

I I

X I X

X X

I I

X X

X

X

X

X

1

  Statutes at large passed in the parliaments held in Ireland (1300–1800), 20 vols. (Dublin, 1786–1801) and Geraldine Talon (ed.), Court of Claims: Submissions and Evidence, 1663 (IMC, Dublin, 2006). 2 Second Court of Claims. 3 See Karl Bottigheimer, ‘The Restoration Land Settlement: A Structural View’, Irish Historical Studies, 18 (1972), p. 11. 4  H.C. O’Sullivan, John Bellew: A Seventeenth-Century Man of Many Parts (Dublin, 2000), p. 102. Carlingford’s petition to the court of claims was on 6 November 1662: his case was heard on 5 August 1663 and the verdict delivered in October after an inquiry.

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Select Bibliography The more important manuscript material, together with some of the primary sources relating to key lineages, is listed below. The full references to secondary works are given in the notes and, with a few exceptions, are not listed here. There is an extensive pamphlet literature relating to the peers that is available at Early English Books Online and at Eighteenth-century Collections Online. Other online resources, especially the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography and the Dictionary of Irish Biography, together with the peerages – George E. Cokayne, The complete peerage of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain and the United Kingdom: extant, extinct or dormant (13 vols., London, 1910–59), and John Lodge, The peerage of Ireland: or, a genealogical history of the present Nobility of that kingdom. With engravings of their paternal coats of arms / by John Lodge; revised, enlarged and continued to the present time by Mervyn Archdall (7 vols., Dublin, 1789) – were also used extensively in this study. Manuscripts Public Records Office of Northern Ireland, Belfast T.956/22 – Chichester, Arthur, earl of Donegal (1606–1675) D.207/16/4 – Clotworthy, John, Viscount Massareene (d.1665) D.389 and T.712 – Donegall estate papers D.552/B/1/1/30 – Montgomery, Hugh, viscount Montgomery of the Ards (1560–1636) D.562 – Massereene/Foster Papers D.778 – Trevor estate records D.1503, D.1854 – Annesley Papers D.1618 – Castle Stewart Papers D.1939 – Erne Papers (the Balfour estate) D.2977 – Antrim Papers D.3078 – Kildare letter-book

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618

Select Bibliography

National Library of Ireland, Dublin MS 32–36A – letters and papers of Roger, earl of Orrery, Margaret dowager countess and other members of the family, 1650–1689, see McLysaght, Calendar of the Orrery Papers MS 392 – Dineley manuscripts (see E. P. Shirley and J. Graves [eds.], ‘Extracts from the journal of Thomas Dineley, giving account of his visit to Ireland . . .’, Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, 6 [1867]) MS 2307–35 – letters and papers to Ormond, 1640–65 MS 2456 – letters and papers to Ormond, 1690–9 MS 2481–6 – undated letters to Ormond MS 2505 – miscellaneous letters, 1631–1754 MS 2543 – valuation in 1640 of Ormond estates MS 2547 – account book of James, 2nd duke of Ormond, 1694–1707 MSS 6899, 6240, 6900 – details of Cork’s income, 1638–44 MS 7195 – ‘a Booke of Entreys of all Deeds papers books and writings . . . in my Lord’s study in Youghall’, 1707 MS 7196 – book containing Cork’s conveyances to his children MS 7861 – Herbert of Castle Island MS 8539 – documents concerning the Butlers, Viscounts Ikerrin MS 9739 – Lady Moore’s Account Book, 1602–4 MS 12813 – calendar of the Lismore Papers MS 13177–13225 – letters and papers of the earls of Orrery with many estate papers – the originals of these were reclaimed by the family (Pembroke) in 1975 but the NLI retained a microfilm (P.7074–7) MS 13255 – letters re: Cork’s estate and financial matters, 1602–1794 MS 13237 – letters re: Cork’s estate and financial matters, 1620–43 MS 13238 – letters re: Cork’s estate and financial matters MS 31,994(A) – list of disbursements by [Bellew] agent for the first earl of Carlingford, 1666–7 Sarsfield of Kilmallock Papers – reports on private collections # 309 Fingal Papers – report on private collections # 6 Thomond Papers – Petworth collection consulted on microfilm: P4767, 4768, 4769 D.3301–D.4431 – the extensive collection of Ormond deeds provide a wealth of detail on the Ormond estates D.8735–D.8746 – Coote deeds, 1662–5 G[enealogical] O[ffice] – MS 40, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 75, 76 – for funeral entries; also see W. Fitzgerald (ed.), Some Funeral Entries of Ireland (London, 1909)

National Archives, Dublin RC 5/2/p. 605 – will of Aungier, Francis, Baron Aungier (1558–1632) RC 10/7/p. 287 – will of Butler, Edmund, Viscount Mountgarret RC 5/19/part 3/pp. 269, 271 – will of MacCarthy, Donough, earl of Clancarthy (1594–1665) RC 5/25/p. 217 – will of Fleming, Christopher, Baron Slane [d.1625?] RC 5/25/p. 358 – will of Folliott, Henry, baron of Ballyshannon (1569–1622) RC 5/29/p. 325 – will of Bourke, Richard, earl of Clanricarde (1572–1635) RC 5/25/p. 122 – will of Caulfeild, William, Baron Charlemont (1587–1640) Prerogative will book 4/206/1 – wills of Bourke, Richard, earl of Clanricard (d.1666); Boyle, Roger, earl of Orrery (1646–1682); Cromwell, Thomas, earl of Ardglass (1594–1653) T/8725 – will of Lord Viscount Mountjoy (12 January 1688/9) T/12767 – will of Dillon, Cary, earl of Roscommon (1627–1689) Thrift/1501 – will of (extract) Jones, Roger, Viscount Ranelagh (d.1643) Thrift/1521 – will of (extract) Jones, Arthur, Viscount Ranelagh (d.1670) Thrift/199 – will of (extract) Magennis, Arthur, Viscount Iveagh (d.1629) Thrift/201 – will of (extract) Magennis, Hugh, Viscount Iveagh (1599–1639)

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Select Bibliography

619

Trinity College Dublin MS 809–41 – 1641 depositions; available online at www.1641.tcd.ie

British Library, London Add. Charter 5847 – Drogheda marriage, 1670 Add. Charter 13340 – inventory of 5 April 1628 of all the household goods and chattels remaining at Coleshill Hall, Co. Warwick Add. MSS 4763 – Milles collection relating to Ireland Add. MSS 18730 – Annesley’s diary, 1675–84 Add. MSS 20100 – brief relation of the 1641 rebellion in Co. Clare by Maurice Cuffe, 1 Nov. 1641– 15 June 1642 Add. MSS 22548 – miscellaneous autograph letters, 1588–1831 Add. MSS 25277 – political and miscellaneous papers Add. MSS 37207 – Orrery’s state papers, 1665–7 Add. MSS 37772 – letters from Lady Meath Add. MSS 40860 – Annesley’s diary, 1671–5 Add. MSS 46924 – Egmont papers Add. MSS 46932 – Egmont papers Add. MSS 46926 – Egmont papers Add. MSS 34345 – letters of Lord Castlehaven, 1672–4 Add. MSS 5347 – colour illustrations of Irish soldiers Add. MSS 15892 – correspondence of Lawrence Hyde, earl of Rochester, 1675–1709 (7 vols.) Add. MSS 24023 – original letters of royal and other personages, 1596–1844 Egerton MSS 80 – letters from Cork, 1610–43 Egerton MSS 789 – abstracts of decrees of Court of Claims, 1662–3 Egerton MSS 2541–2 – papers of Sir Edward Nicholas Harl. MSS 2138 – survey of part of Antrim lands, 1641 Stowe MSS 180 – Mountgarret to Sir Wm Andrews, Balleyn, 13 September 1613 Stowe MSS 755 – miscellaneous letters, 1613–1818 Stowe MSS 844 – letters to Sir Edward Dering, 1640–67 Stowe MSS 845 – letters to Sir Edward Dering, 1667–77

National Archives, London PROB 11/131/54 – will of Lambert, Oliver, baron of Cavan (d.1618) PROB 11/131/54 – will of Conway, Edward, Viscount Conway (1564–1631) PROB 11/168/76 – will of Balfour, James, Lord Baron of Glenawley (d.1634) PROB 11/176/44 – will of Brabazon, Anthony, brother of the earl of Meath (d.1635) PROB 11/275/181 – will of O’Brien, Barnabas, earl of Thomond (d.1657) PROB 11/317/57 – will of Digby, Kildare, 2nd baron of Geashill (1631–1661) PROB 11/335/44 – will of Blayney, Edward, Baron Blayney (d.1669) PROB 11/347/39 – will of O’Brien, Mary, dowager countess of Thomond, widow of Barnabas (d.1673) PROB 11/349/122 – will of Brabazon, Edward, earl of Meath (1610–1675) PROB 11/359/53 – will of Conway, Lady Anne (d.1673) PROB 11/365/35 – will of Boyle, Elizabeth, Lady Shannon (Elizabeth Killigrew) (d.1680) PROB 11/374/147 – will of Conway, Edward, earl Conway (1623–1683) PROB 11/379/9 – will of Dillon, Wentworth, earl of Roscommon (1637–1685) PROB 11/379/47 – will of Brabazon, William, earl of Meath (1635–85) PROB 11/383/68 – will of Annesley, Arthur, earl of Anglesey (1614–1686) PROB 11/386/1 – will of Butler, Richard, earl of Arran (1639–1686)

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Select Bibliography

PROB 11/392/110 – will of Butler, James, duke of Ormond (1610–1688) PROB 11/404/48 – will of Boyle, Lady Burlington, wife of Richard, earl of Cork (d.1691) PROB 11/404/85 – will of Boyle, Lady Orrery (Margaret Howard) (d.1689) PROB 11/413/24 – will of Digby, Mary, widow of Kildare, Lord Digby of Geashill (d.1692) PROB 11/414/66 – will of O’Brien, William, earl of Inchiquin (1640–1692) PROB 11/438/118 – will of Folliott, Thomas, baron of Ballyshannon (1613–1697) PROB 11/445/117 – will of MacCarthy, Elizabeth, countess of Clancarthy (d.1698) PROB 11/448/259 – will of Boyle, Richard, earl of Cork and Burlington (1612–1694) PROB 11/472/172 – will of Boyle, Lionel, earl of Orrery (1670–1703) PROB 11/475/88 – will of Boyle, Charles, earl of Burlington (c.1674–1704) PROB 11/481/81 – will of Fitzwilliam, Thomas, Viscount Merrion (d.1704) PROB 11/501/106 – will of Fitzgerald, John, earl of Kildare (1661–1707) PROB 11/511/224 – will of Coote, Charles, earl of Mountrath (1655–1709) PROB 11/527/100 – will of Jones, Richard, Viscount Ranelagh (1641–1712) PROB 11/542/178 – will of Ridgeway, Robert, earl of Londonderry (1714) PROB 11/566/237 – will of Plunkett, Peter, earl Fingal (1678–1718) SP 63 – state papers, Ireland

Bodleian Library, Oxford Carte MSS 1–221 – letters and papers of Ormond, 1633–87 Clarendon MSS – state papers of Clarendon, 1635–67 Rawlinson MSS B507 – letters and papers relating to the Irish rebellion, 1641–6 Rawlinson MSS C841 – an account of Antrim’s trial, 1663

City Library, Sheffield Wentworth Woodhouse muniments 3–12, 14–22, 24, 34, 40 (Strafford Papers)

University of Bangor, Wales Mostyn Papers, MS 5422 – Barnewall, Nicholas Viscount Barnewall of Kingsland – will, n.d., pr 11/9/1663

Huntington Library, San Marino, California Hastings collections, Irish Papers, boxes 1, 3, 6, 8, 9, 11, 23 and 27 – this includes extensive correspondence between the Conways and Sir George Rawdon, their Irish agent. HAM – contains details of the Huntington estates in Counties Fermanagh and Tyrone.

Folger Library, Washington DC Add. MSS 820, the names of individuals to be invited for the funeral of the countess of Cork, 1630

Works relating to titled families Anglesey of Mountnorris and Anglesey Bibliotheca Angleseiana, sive catalogues variorum librorum . . . (London, 1686) Patrick Little, ‘Select Document. Providence and Posterity: A Letter from Lord Mountnorris to his Daughter, 1642’, Irish Historical Studies, 32 (2001), pp. 556–64

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Select Bibliography

621

Aungiers of Longford Anonymous, ‘Testamentary Records’, Irish Genealogist, 2:6 (1948), pp. 180–3 Anonymous, ‘Gerald Aungier of the East India Company: The Story of a Younger Son’, Notes and Queries, 146 (Jan.–June 1924), pp. 147–51, 165–8, 185–7, 204–8 Nuala T. Burke, ‘An Early Modern Dublin Suburb: The Estate of Francis Aungier, Earl of Longford’, Irish Geography, 6:4 (1972), pp. 365–85

Balfour of Glenawley Anonymous, ‘The Life of James Spottiswoode, Bishop of Clogher, my great-grandfather’, The Spottiswoode Miscellany: A collection of Original Papers and Tracts, Illustrative of the Civil and Ecclesiastical History of Scotland, vol. 1 (Edinburgh, Spottiswoode Society, 1844), pp. 96–164 Raymond Gillespie, ‘The Trials of Bishop Spottiswood 1620–40’, Clogher Record, 12:3 (1987), pp. 320–33 George Hamilton, A History of the House of Hamilton (Edinburgh, 1933) John D. Johnston, ‘The Plantation of County Fermanagh 1610–1641: An Archaeological and Historical Study’ (unpublished MA thesis, Queen’s University Belfast, 1976)

Barnewall of Trimleston Stephen B. Barnwell, ‘The Barnewell Family during the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries’, Irish Genealogist, 3:8 (1963), pp. 311–21 for Trimlestons John Kingston, ‘Catholic Families of the Pale’, Reportum Novum: Dublin Diocesan Historical Record, 1:2 (1956), pp. 323–50 Terence O’Donnell, ‘Lord Trimleston’s Advice of his Son – A Fragment’, Riocht na Midhe, 3:2 (1964), pp. 152–4

Barnewalls of Kingslande John Kingston, ‘Catholic Families of the Pale’, Reportum Novum: Dublin Diocesan Historical Record, 1:2 (1956), pp. 323–50

Barrys of Barrymore E. Barry, ‘Barrymore’, Journal of the Cork Archaeological and Historical Society, second series, 7 (1901), pp. 1–16, 65–80, 129–38, 193–204 – examines the various cadet branches of the Barry family

Bourkes of Clanricarde Bernadette Cunningham, ‘Clanricard Letters: Letters and Papers, 1605–1673, Preserved in the National Library of Ireland Manuscript 3111’, Journal of the Galway Archaeological and Historical Society, 48 (1996), pp. 162–208 Bernadette Cunningham, ‘Political and Social Change in the Lordships of Clanricard and Thomond, 1596–1641’ (unpublished MA thesis, National University of Ireland, University College Galway, 1979) J. Fahey, ‘Ulick de Burgo, First Earl of Clanricard’, Irish Ecclesiastical Record, third series, 12 (1891), pp. 525–34 John Lowe (ed.), Letter-Book of the Earl of Clanricarde 1643–1647 (IMC, Dublin, 1983) John Smyth, 11th Earl of Clanricard, The Memoirs and Letters of Ulick, Marquis of Clanricarde, and Earl of Saint Albans (London, 1758)

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Select Bibliography

Boyles of Blessington Brian de Breffney, ‘The Building of the Mansion at Blessington, 1672’, Irish Artists Review Yearbook (1988), pp. 73–7

Boyles of Cork and Burlington T. C. Barnard and Jane Clark (eds.), Lord Burlington: Architecture, Art and Life (London, 1995) T. Birch (ed.), The Works of Robert Boyle (London, 1774) Eustace Budgell, Memoirs of the lives and characters of the illustrious family of the Boyles: particularly of the late eminently learned Charles, earl of Orrery . . . (London, 1737) Nicholas Canny, The Upstart Earl: A Study of the Social and Mental World of Richard Boyle First Earl of Cork, 1566–1643 (Cambridge, 1982) J. Coleman, ‘The Earl of Cork’s Appropriation of the Revenues of the See of Lismore’, Journal of the Waterford and Southeast of Ireland Archaeological Society, 11 (1908), pp. 225–35 Thomas Farrington, ‘Robert Boyle’, Journal of the Cork Historical and Archaeological Society, 22 (1916), pp. 71–9, 114–20, 171–7 Alexander B. Grosart (ed.), The Lismore Papers. First [and the second] series . . . Edited with introd. and notes by Alexander B. Grosart from the original MSS. belonging to the Duke of Devonshire preserved in Lismore Castle (10 vols., London, 1886–8) H. F. Kearney, ‘Richard Boyle, Ironmaster: A Footnote to Irish Economic History’, Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, 83 (1953), pp. 156–62 Patrick Little, ‘The Earl of Cork and the Fall of the Earl of Strafford’, Historical Journal, 39:3 (1996), pp. 619–35 T. O. Ranger, ‘Richard Boyle and the Making of an Irish Fortune, 1588–1614’, Irish Historical Studies, 10: 39 (1957), pp. 257–97 Dorothea Townshend, The Life and Letters of the Great Earl of Cork (London, 1904)

Boyles of Orrery T. C. Barnard, ‘Lord Broghill, Vincent Gookin and the Cork Elections of 1659’, English Historical Review, 88 (1973), pp. 352–65 Eustace Budgell, Memoirs of the lives and characters of the illustrious family of the Boyles: particularly of the late eminently learned Charles, earl of Orrery . . . (London, 1737) Patrick Little, Lord Broghill and the Cromwellian Union with Ireland and Scotland (Woodbridge, Suffolk, 2004) Edward MacLysaght (ed.), Calendar of the Orrery Papers (IMC, Dublin, 1941) Thomas Morrice (ed.), A Collection of the State Letters of . . . Roger Boyle, First Earl of Orrery . . . (London, 1742, later edn. 2 vols., Dublin, 1743)

Brownes of Kenmare E. MacLysaght (ed.), Kenmare Manuscripts (IMC, Dublin, 1942)

Butlers of Dunboyne John Kingston, ‘Lord Dunboyne’, Reportum Novum: Dublin Diocesan Historical Record, 3:1 (1961–2), pp. 62–82

Butlers of Galmoy Sean O’Brien, ‘The Butlers of Lower Grange, Viscounts Galmoy’, Old Kilkenny Review, Journal of the Kilkenny Archaeological Society, 16 (1964), pp. 16–23

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Select Bibliography

623

Butlers of Ikerrin John Prendergast, ‘The Butlers, Lords Ikerrin, before the Court of Transplantation at Athlone, ad 1656, and at the Second Court of Claims’, Butler Society Journal, 3 (1987), pp. 72–6

Butlers of Ormond F. Elrington Ball, ‘Some Notes on the Households of the Dukes of Ormonde’, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, 38, section C (1928–9), pp. 1–20 Toby Barnard and Jane Fenlon (eds.), The Dukes of Ormonde, 1610–1745 (Woodbridge, Suffolk, 2000) T. Butler Blake, ‘Ormond Deeds, 1644–9’, Butler Society Journal, 3 (1988–9), pp. 166–75 Thomas Carte, The life of James duke of Ormond (6 vols., Oxford, 1851) David Edwards, The Ormond Lordship in County Kilkenny, 1515–1642: The Rise and Fall of Butler Feudal Power (Dublin, 2003) James Graves, ‘Anonymous Account of the Early Life and Marriage of James, first Duke of Ormond’, Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries, 7 (1862–3), pp. 276–92 HMC, Calendar of the Manuscripts of the marquess of Ormonde, preserved at Kilkenny Castle (Old and New Series, 11 vols., London, 1895–1920) Brocard M. Mansfield, ‘Lady Thurles, 1588–1673’, Butler Society Journal, 3 (1987), pp. 42–4 Eleanor O’Keeffe, ‘The Family and Marriage Strategies of James Butler, 1st Duke of Ormonde, 1658– 1688’ (unpublished PhD thesis, Cambridge University, 2000)

Caulfeilds of Charlemont John Prendergast, ‘Charlemont Fort, especially in its Connection with Sir Toby Caulfield’, Journal of the Royal Historical and Archaeological Association of Ireland, fourth series, 6 (1893–4), pp. 319–44

Chichesters of Donegal F. J. Bigger, ‘Sir Arthur Chichester, Lord Deputy of Ireland’, Ulster Journal of Archaeology, 10:1 (1904), pp. 1–12, 56–66 R. Dudley Edwards, ‘Letter-Book of Sir Arthur Chichester 1612–1614’, Analecta Hibernica, 8 (1938) Peter Roebuck, ‘The Donegal Family and the Development of Belfast, 1600–1850’ in P. Butel and L. M. Cullen (eds.), Cities and Merchants: French and Irish Perspectives on Urban Development, 1500–1900 (Dublin, 1986), pp. 125–36 Peter Roebuck, ‘The Making of an Ulster Great Estate: The Chichesters, Barons of Belfast and Viscounts of Carrickfergus, 1599–1648’, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, 79, Section C (1979), pp. 1–25

Conway of Conway Edward Berwick (ed.), The Rawdon Papers . . . (London, 1819) F. J. Bigger, ‘Lord Conway and his Books’, Ulster Journal of Archaeology, second series, 11 (1905), p. 95 HMC, Report on the Manuscripts of the Late Reginald Rawdon Hastings (? vols., London, ?–1930)

Dillons of Costello-Gallen Bernadette Cunningham, ‘Theobald Dillon, a Newcomer in Sixteenth-Century Mayo’, Cathair na Mart: Journal of the Westport Historical Society, 6:1 (1986), pp. 24–32 Gerald Dillon, ‘The Dillon Peerages’, Irish Genealogist, 3:3 (1958), pp. 87–100

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Select Bibliography

Dillons of Roscommon Gerald Dillon, ‘The Dillon Peerages’, Irish Genealogist, 3:3 (1958), pp. 87–100

Fitzgeralds of Kildare and Offaly Vincent Carey, Surviving the Tudors: The ‘wizard’ Earl of Kildare and English Rule in Ireland, 1537–1586 (Dublin, 2002) C. W. Fitzgerald, The Earls of Kildare and their Ancestors 1057 to 1773 (Dublin, 1858) Frederick Fitzgerald, ‘Lettice, Baroness of Offaly and the Siege of her Castle of Geashill, 1642’, Journal of the Kildare Archaeological Society, 3:7 (1902), pp. 418–24

Fitzmaurices of Kerry T. C. Barnard, ‘Sir William Petty, Irish Landowner’ in H. Trevor-Roper (ed.), History and Imagination (London, 1981), pp. 201–17 M. J. Bourke, ‘The Fitzmaurices – Lords of Kerry’, Journal of the Cork Historical and Archaeological Society, second series, 26 (1920), pp. 10–18 Donal T. Flood, ‘William Petty and “The Double Bottom” ’, Dublin Historical Record, 30:3 (1977), pp. 96–110

Fitzpatricks of Upper Ossory David Edwards, ‘Collaboration without Anglicisation: The MacGiollapadraig Lordship and Tudor Reform’, Patrick Duffy, David Edwards and Elizabeth Fitzpatrick (eds.), Gaelic Ireland: Land, Lordship and Settlement c.1250–c.1650 (Dublin, 2001), pp. 78–96

Filzwilliams, Viscounts Merrion Fear Cualann, ‘The Break-up of Mount Merrion’, Catholic Bulletin, 15 (1925), pp. 1,189–97 John Kingston, ‘Catholic Families of the Pale’, Reportum Novum: Dublin Diocesan Historical Record, 2:1 (1957–8), pp. 88–108

Forbes of Granard George A. H. Forbes, earl of Granard (ed.), Memoirs of the Earls of Granard (London, 1868)

Hamiltons of Clandeboy and Clanbrassil George Hamilton, A History of the House of Hamilton (Edinburgh, 1933) George A. Little, ‘Hungry Hamilton, Fellow of Trinity’, Dublin Historical Record, 11 (1930–40), pp. 7–17 T. K. Lowry (ed.), Hamilton Manuscripts: containing some account of territories of Upper Clandeboye, Great Ardes, Dufferin in the county of Down, by Sir William Hamilton, afterward Viscount Clandeboye (Belfast, 1867) John Stevenson, Two Centuries of Life in Down, 1600–1800 (Belfast, 1920)

Hamiltons of Strabane George Hamilton, A History of the House of Hamilton (Edinburgh, 1933)

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625

Herberts of Castleisland Kiernan O’Shea, ‘A Castleisland Inventory, 1590’, Kerry Archaeological and Historical Society Journal, 15–16 (1982–3), pp. 37–46

MacCarthys of Muskerry and Clancarthy John A. Murphy, Justin MacCarthy, Lord Mountcashel: Commander of the First Irish Brigade in France (Cork, 1959)

MacDonnells of Antrim George Hill, The MacDonnells of Antrim (Belfast, 1873) Hector MacDonnell, ‘A Seventeenth-Century Inventory from Dunluce Castle, County Antrim’, Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries, 122 (1992), pp. 109–27 Hector MacDonnell, ‘A Noble Pretension’, The Glynns, 8 (1980), pp. 20–33 Jane Ohlmeyer, Civil War and Restoration in the Three Stuart Kingdoms: The Political Career of Randal MacDonnell First Marquis of Antrim (1609–83) (Dublin, 2001)

Maguires of Enniskillen F. J. B., ‘Connor Mac Uidir, Lord of Fermanagh’, Ulster Journal of Archaeology, second series, 16:2 & 3 (1910), pp. 108–37 Charlene McCoy, ‘War and Revolution: County Fermanagh and its borders, c.1640–c.1666’ (unpublished PhD thesis, Trinity College Dublin, 2007)

Montgomery of Mount Alexander R. Gillespie, ‘The Making of the Montgomery Manuscripts’, Familia 2:2 (1980), pp. 23–9 George Hill (ed.), The Montgomery Manuscripts (1603–1706). Compiled from the family papers by William Montgomery of Rosemount . . . (Belfast, 1869) William MacIlwaine, ‘Notice of Hitherto Unpublished Portion of the “Montgomery Manuscripts” ’, UJA (Ulster Journal of Archaeology), 1st series, 9 (1861–2), pp. 151–171, 278–293 John Stevenson, Two Centuries of Life in Down, 1600–1800 (Belfast, 1920)

Nugents of Westmeath John F. Ainsworth and Edward MacLysaght (eds.), ‘Survey of Documents in Private Keeping’, Analecta Hibernica, 20 (IMC, Dublin, 1958)

O’Briens of Inchiquin John Ainsworth (ed.), Inchiquin Manuscripts (IMC, Dublin, 1961) G. Mac Niocaill, ‘Seven Irish Documents from the Inchiquin Archives’, Analecta Hibernica, 26 (IMC, Dublin, 1970), pp. 47–69 John A. Murphy, ‘Inchiquin’s Changes of Religion’, Journal of Cork Historical and Archaeological Society, 72 (1967), pp. 58–68 Donough O’Brien, History of the O’Briens (London, 1949) Ivar O’Brien, The O’Briens of Thomond. The O’Briens in Irish History 1500–1865 (Chichester, 1986) Ivar O’Brien, Murrough the Burner: A Life of Murrough, Sixth Baron and First Earl of Inchiquin, 1614–74 (Whitegate, Co. Clare, 1991) J. O’Donoghue, Historical memoirs of the O’Briens compiled from the Irish Annalists (Dublin, 1860)

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626

Select Bibliography

O’Briens of Thomond Bernadette Cunningham, ‘Political and Social Change in the Lordships of Clanricard and Thomond, 1596–1641’ (unpublished MA thesis, National University of Ireland, University College Galway, 1979) A. Mac Lochlainn, ‘Papers at Petworth House’, Analecta Hibernica, 23 (1966), pp. 303–5 Alison McCann (ed.), The Petworth House Archives: A Catalogue (vol. 2, Chichester, 1979) Alison McCann (ed.), The Petworth House Archives: A Catalogue (vol. 3, Chichester, 1997) Peter Maher, ‘Donough O’Brien, Fourth Earl of Thomond’, The Other Clare, 8 (1984), pp. 20–3 Donough O’Brien, History of the O’Briens (London, 1949) Ivar O’Brien, The O’Briens of Thomond. The O’Briens in Irish History 1500–1865 (Chichester, 1986) Brian Ó Cuív, ‘An Elegy on Donnchadh Ó Briain, Fourth Earl of Thomond’, Celtica, 16 (1984), pp. 87–105 Brian Ó Dálaigh, ‘A Comparative Study of the Wills of the First and Fourth Earls of Thomond’, North Munster Antiquarian Journal, 34 (1992), pp. 48–63 Brian Ó Dálaigh, ‘An Inventory of the Contents of Bunratty Castle and the Will of Henry, Fifth Earl of Thomond, 1639’, North Munster Antiquarian Journal, 36 (1995), pp. 139–65 J. O’Donoghue, Historical memoirs of the O’Briens compiled from the Irish Annalists (Dublin, 1860) Francis W. Steer and Noel H. Osborne (eds.), The Petworth House Archives: A Catalogue (vol. 1, Chichester, 1968)

O’Dempseys of Clanmalier Walter Fitzgerald, ‘The O’Dempseys of Clanmaliere’, Journal of the County Kildare Archaeological Society, 4 (1903–5), pp. 396–454

Plunketts of Louth Diarmuid Mac Iomhair, ‘The House of Louth in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries’, Journal of the County Louth Archaeological Society, 16:2 (1966), pp. 67–84

Prestons of Gormanston John Ainsworth, ‘Survey of Documents in Private Keeping’, Analecta Hibernica, 25 (IMC, Dublin, 1967), pp. 151–83 for Gormanston Papers John Brady, ‘Keeping the Faith at Gormanston, 1569–1629’ in Franciscan Fathers (eds.), Father Luke Wadding Commemorative Volume (Dublin, 1957), pp. 405–13 John Kingston, ‘Catholic Families of the Pale’, Reportum Novum: Dublin Diocesan Historical Record, 2:2 (1960), pp. 236–56 Glyn Redworth, ‘Beyond Faith and Fatherland: The Appeal of the Catholics of Ireland, c.1623’, Archivium Hibernicum, 52 (1998), p. 52 (1998), pp. 3–23

Prestons of Tara André de Rychman de Betz, ‘Un Colonel Irlandais’, Tablettes de Brabant (published under the direction of CL-R Paternostre de la Marrieu Tome VI, Grandmetz, Belgium, 1966), pp. 13–44

Roches of Fermoy Eithne Donnelly, ‘The Roches, Lords of Fermoy: The History of a Norman Irish Family’, Journal of the Cork Historical and Archaeological Society, second series, 41 (1936), pp. 20–8, 78–84; continued 42, pp. 40–52

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Select Bibliography

627

Sarsfields of Kilmallock Richard Caulfield, ‘The Family of Sarsfield’, Herald and Genealogist, 2 (1865), pp. 205–15 J. Coleman, ‘Dr Caulfeild’s Records of the Sarsfield Family of the County Cork’, Journal of the Cork Historical and Archaeological Society, second series, 21 (1915), pp. 82–91, 131–6

Taaffes of Carlingford H. C. O’Sullivan, John Bellew: A Seventeenth-Century Man of Many Parts (Dublin, 2000) Rudolph Taaffe, ‘Taaffe of County Louth’, Journal of the County Louth Archaeological and Historical Society, 14:2 (1960), pp. 55–68

Talbots of Tyrconnell John Kingston, ‘Catholic Families of the Pale’, Reportum Novum: Dublin Diocesan Historical Record, 2:1 (1957–8), pp. 88–108 Lilian Tate, ‘Letter-Book of Richard Talbot’, Analecta Hibernica, 4 (IMC, Dublin, 1932), pp. 99–138

Touchets of Castlehaven Esther S. Cope, Handmaid of the Holy Spirit: Dame Eleanor Davies, Never Soe Mad a Ladie (Ann Arbor, MI, 1992) Cynthia Herrup, ‘The Patriarch at Home: the Trial of the 2nd Earl of Castlehaven for Rape and Sodomy’, History Workshop Journal, 41 (1996), pp. 1–18 Cynthia Herrup, ‘ “To Pluck Bright Honour from the Pale-Faced Moon”: Gender and Honour in the Castlehaven Story’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, sixth series, VI (1996), pp. 137–60 Cynthia Herrup, A House in Gross Disorder: Sex, Law and the 2nd Earl of Castlehaven (Oxford, 1999)

Trevors of Dungannon H. C. O’Sullivan, ‘The Trevors of Rosetrevor: A British Colonial Family in Seventeenth-Century Ireland’ (unpublished MLitt thesis, Trinity College Dublin, 1985)

Wingfields of Powerscourt Mervyn Edward Wingfield, first Baron Powerscourt, Muniments of the Ancient Family of Wingfield (privately printed, London, 1894; reprinted, Durham, NC, 1987)

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Index Abbot, George, archbishop of Canterbury 159 acre, definition xviii Act of Explanation (1665) xx and Anglesey 316–17 and Antrim 326 and Carlingford 321 and Clancarthy 315–16 and Clanmalier 333, 345–6 and Dillon of Costello-Gallen 320 and Dunboyne 331, 344 and Dunsany 331 and Fingal 328 and Inchiquin 319 and Irish Parliament of 1661–6 234, 338, 341, 344–5 and Kildare 323 and Mayo 320 and Netterville 330 and Ormond 311 and Trimleston 322, 344 and Tyrconnell 322 Act of Satisfaction (1653) 288 Act of Settlement (1652) 287, 288, 296 Act of Settlement (1662) xx, 234, 319–21, 322–3, 328, 331, 341–2 and Ormond 311, 313, 315–16, 338 Acts of Supremacy (1534 and 1559) 70 administration: Catholic exclusion from 27–8, 70, 136, 231, 275 and corruption 99, 349 and inflation of honours 46–7, 48, 50, 53, 211 local and national 218–24, 349–50 Adventurers’ Act (1642) 234, 287 agriculture:

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English system 27, 35, 101, 105, 121, 374, 476 harvest crises 372, 376, 400, 417 improvement 361–2, 388 Irish systems 30 and pastoralism 85 as source of wealth 361, 362, 373 Albermarle, earl 301 Alexander, Sir William 201 alienation of land 94, 106–7, 126, 127, 399 church land 150 Anderson, Patrick (Jesuit priest) 145 Annals of the Four Masters 137, 145 Annesley, Altham, baron of Altham 174 Annesley, Arthur, viscount Valentia and earl of Anglesey 51, 55, 82, 95, 495 n.166 burial 463 and children 436 and Cromwellian settlement 286, 317 and dynastic marriages 174–5, 198–201, 200, 316–17, 471 and earl of Tyrone 55, 198, 317, 353, 463 education 439, 440 English houses 350 and English Parliament 338, 351 as entrepreneur 385 illnesses 455 and Irish Parliament 246, 575, 608 landholdings 305, 307, 308, 311–13, 312, 316, 370 and military service 354 and personal piety 156–7 and plantation of Wexford 132 portrait 412, Plate 2 and Presbyterianism 156

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Index

and Protectorate Parliament 297–8 and Restoration settlement 299, 302, 310, 316–17, 327, 333, 334, 340, 342, 368, 614 and Wars of the Three Kingdoms 272–3, 471–2 Annesley, Francis, 1st baron Mountnorris (later viscount Valentia) 3, 47, 219 children 429 death 454 dynastic marriages 200 education 440 income 364 and Irish Parliament 575 landholdings 88, 91, 93–5, 103, 114–16, 131–2, 134, 573 and military service 599 and moneylending 379–80 and religion 156 and Wars of the Three Kingdoms 273 and Wentworth 241, 243 Annesley, Francis (brother of Arthur) 81–2 Annesley, Francis (son of Robert) 103 Annesley, James, 2nd earl of Anglesey 200, 436, 575 Antrim see MacDonnell of Antrim; MacDonnell, Randal, 1st earl; MacDonnell, Randal, 2nd earl Antrim Plot (1641) 247, 270, 528 n.91 Aphorismical Discovery of Treasonable Faction 52, 67, 74, 255, 269, 278, 428 Armagh, synod (1618) 137 armorial bearings 71, 75 army: Catholic exclusion from 27–8, 49, 57, 224, 252, 353, 355 and Charles I 237–8 confederate 276, 277–8 and inflation of honours 46, 48, 50, 53, 69, 74, 211, 223 and military revolution 74, 252–3, 272 Parliamentary 277–8, 291 private armies 29–30, 212, 223–4, 253, 278, 425–6 and rebellion of 1641 258–9, 265–70 restoration 353–5 Scottish 270–1, 272–3 Army Plot (1641) 247, 256–7 Arran see Butler, Richard, 1st earl Ascendancy, Protestant 8, 164, 168, 301, 357, 476, 481 Asch, Ronald 22 assimilationism 10 Athenry see Bermingham of Athenry

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629

Aungier, Douglas (née Fitzgerald), baroness Aungier of Longford 160, 227 Aungier, Francis, 1st baron Aungier of Longford 50, 219 burial 464 children 441 expenditure 411 and Irish Parliament 575 landholdings 132 as lawyer 46–7, 49, 226–7, 387, 441 marriage 160 Aungier, Francis, 3rd baron Aungier of Longford and 1st earl 55, 151–2 and development of Dublin 347 education 445 and English Parliament 88, 351 and Irish Parliament 576 landholdings 313, 370 marriages 183 and military service 354 and Protectorate Parliament 297 and Restoration of Charles II 299, 317, 333, 614 and trade with India 387 Aungier, Garret, baron Aungier of Longford, landholdings 573 Aungier, Gerald, 2nd baron Aungier of Longford 599 education 434 as governor of Bombay 387 and Irish Parliament 576, 608 landholdings 99–100 Aungier of Longford 3, 59 Austria see Habsburg Empire Bagnel, Walter, 1st viscount Newry 52 Balfour, Alexander, 3rd baron Balfour of Glenawley 576 Balfour, Anne (née Blayney), baroness Balfour of Glenawley 205 Balfour of Glenawley, extinction of title 59 Balfour, James, 1st baron Balfour of Glenawley and Church of Ireland 150 and Irish Parliament 576 and local justice 228 marriage 205 and royal court 214 as undertaker 47, 126, 130 Balfour, James, 2nd baron Balfour of Glenawley 576 Balfour, Michael, Lord Balfour of Burleigh 126

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Index

Balfour, Sir William (keeper of the Tower of London) 126 Ballycastle (seat of earl of Antrim) 118–20, 145, 407 Ballynahatty (seat of earls of Castlehaven) 116, 407 Ballyshannon see Folliott of Ballyshannon; Folliott, Thomas, 2nd baron Bannister, Peregrine 528 n.89 Bard, Henry, 1st viscount Bellomont 54 bards 424–5, see also poetry, bardic Barnard, Toby 8, 15, 548 n.28 Barnewall, Barnaby 142 Barnewall, Henry, 2nd viscount Kingsland: and Irish Parliament of 1661–6 338, 576 landholdings 312, 322, 370 and William III 357 Barnewall, John 146–7 Barnewall, Margaret 147 Barnewall, Margaret (née Dungan of Clane), baroness, marriage 195 Barnewall, Matthias, 8th baron Trimleston: and Confederate wars 277 and Cromwellian court 282 and Irish Parliament of 1661–6 344, 576, 609 landholdings 88, 573 memorialization 466 and rebellion of 1641 260, 532 n.67, 599 and Restoration settlement 299, 322, 323, 330, 344, 369, 614 and transplantation 288, 289, 290, 466 Barnewall, Matthias, 10th baron Trimleston 169–70, 452, 576 Barnewall, Nicholas, 1st viscount Kingsland 52, 53, 142 and Confederation of Kilkenny 274 and Cromwellian settlement 286, 293 education 442 and Englishness 7, 286 and Irish Parliament 576, 609 and landholdings 97, 97, 98, 288, 289, 293 marriage 191 and poll tax 606 and transplantation 289, 290–1 Barnewall, Nicholas, 3rd viscount Kingsland 576 Barnewall, Patrick 528 n.89 Barnewall, Sir Patrick 191 Barnewall, Robert, 7th baron Trimleston 37, 138, 146, 435, 576 Barnewall, Robert, 9th baron Trimleston: and family marriage strategy 169–70

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and Irish Parliament 576 landholdings 370 as magistrate 350 marriage settlement 195 Barnewall of Trimleston: and Catholicism 147 creation 29 forfeiture of title 496 n.195 landholdings 91, 97, 97, 288 Barry, Alice (née Boyle), countess Barrymore 194, 196, 197, 244 Barry, David, 3rd viscount Buttevant 36 Barry, David, 5th viscount Buttevant (later 1st earl of Barrymore) 42, 69, 406, 599 conversion to Protestantism 254, 266, 465 death and burial 451, 464–5 debts 378, 379, 404, 418 education 434, 435, 436 and Irish Parliament 577, 608 landholdings 88, 107, 373, 572 and the law 41, 176, 229 loyalty to Stuarts 296 marriage 176, 196, 197, 244 and poll tax 607 and rebellion of 1641 256, 264–6 wardship 159, 378 Barry family 29 Barry, Garrett 265, 271 Barry, James, 1st baron Santry: and Irish Parliament of 1661–6 338, 577, 608 landholdings 97, 371 as lawyer 53, 226, 227–8 and Restoration 52 Barry, John 67 Barry, Katherine 176 Barry, Laurence, 3rd earl of Barrymore 176 Barry, Martha (née Lawrence), countess of Barrymore 295, 464 Barry, Richard, 2nd baron Santry 176, 577 Barry, Richard, 2nd earl of Barrymore: debts 393 income 368 and Irish Parliament 577 landholdings 308, 312, 318, 370 marriage 295 and military service 354 and Restoration Parliament 298 and Restoration settlement 312, 318, 614 Barry, Robert, bishop of Cork 144 Baynes, Edward 149

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Index

Beaumont of Swords, Thomas, 1st viscount Beaumont 41 Behn, Aphra 75 Belfast, development 128 Belfast castle 127, 128, 407 Bellew, Sir John 321 Bellings, Richard: and Confederate Association 274, 276 and Old English peers 5, 83, 167, 187, 255 and Ormond 314 and rebellion of 1641 5, 231, 255, 259, 270 and remonstrance of 1661 139 Benburb, battle (1646) 273, 443, 451 Bennet, Henry, 1st earl of Arlington 301, 310, 317–20, 322, 327, 329, 332–3, 343, 345 Beresford, Sir Tristram 331 Berkeley, Charles, viscount Fitzhardinge of Berehaven 55 Berkeley, John, 1st baron Berkeley of Stratton 140 Bermingham of Athenry, creation 29 Bermingham, Edmond, 10th baron Bermingham of Athenry 577 Bermingham, Edward, 13th baron Bermingham of Athenry 357, 577 Bermingham, Francis, 12th baron Bermingham of Athenry: and Confederate Wars 269, 274, 275, 277 and Irish Parliament of 1661–6 339, 341, 344, 577, 608 landholdings 371, 539 n.8 and Restoration settlement 299, 324, 330, 344, 368, 614 and transplantation 288, 289 Bermingham, Richard, 11th baron Bermingham of Athenry: and Irish Parliament 242, 577, 599 landholdings 88, 299, 573 and rebellion of 1641 260, 261 Bermingham, William, 1st baron Bermingham of Carbery 31 Beverly, Sir Thomas 342 bishops, in Irish House of Lords 3, 70, 238–9, 247, 341, 356 Bishops’ Wars (1639, 1640) 247, 255–7, 278, 404, 445 Black Oath 148 Blake, Sir Richard (lawyer) 528 n.90 Blake, Valentine (lawyer) 528 n.90

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631

Blarney castle (seat of viscounts MacCarthy) 108, 251, 252 Blayney, Edward, 1st baron Blayney of Monahan: and Chichester 219 and Irish Parliament 577 landholdings 124–5 military service 47, 49 public offices 222–3 Blayney, Edward, 3rd baron Blayney 75, 577 Blayney, Henry, 2nd baron Blayney 599 and ceasefire of 1643 272–3 death 451 and Irish Parliament 577 landholdings 89, 117, 572, 306 military service 444 and rebellion of 1641 257, 258–9, 261, 262–3, 270, 364 Blayney, Henry, 5th baron Blayney 577 Blayney, Richard, 4th baron Blayney: death 454 and Irish Parliament of 1661–6 339, 577, 609 landholdings 308, 322, 323 and Protectorate Parliament 297 and Restoration 298, 369 Blayney, William, 6th baron Blayney 356, 577 Blennerhasset, Thomas 33 Blood, Col. 343–4 Blount, Charles, baron Mountjoy and earl of Devonshire 39 Boate, Gerard 452 Bohemia, and Catholic nobility 133–4, 135, 231, 334, 479, 480–1 Books of Survey and Distribution 19–20, 28–9, 55 and 1641 rebellion 132 and landed wealth 368 landholders in 1641 and c.1670 87, 90, 91, 92, 98, 109, 302–10 and Ormond estates 118 and Restoration land settlement 301, 316–20, 324, 330–3, 334, 343 and Ulster 114, 118, 126–7 Borlase, Edmund 471 Borris-in-Ossory, siege (1642) 260 borrowing: levels 389, 390–4 see also credit; debt Bourke, Anne, marchioness of Clanricarde 289, 323–4 Bourke of Brittas, forfeiture of title 496 n.195

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Index

Bourke (Burke), Elizabeth (daughter of Lord Castle Connell) 289 Bourke (Burke), Katherine, viscountess Clanmorres 87, 289 Bourke (Burke), Margaret, baroness of Castle Connell 289 Bourke of Castle Connell 50 forfeiture of title 496 n.195 Bourke of Clanricarde 48 anglicization 61 as Anglo-Norman 6, 35 status 62, 65, 85 succession 60, 69 Bourke, Dominic (priest) 145 Bourke, Edmund, 4th baron Castle Connell 158, 437, 445, 578 Bourke, Ellen (née Loftus), countess of Mayo 320 Bourke, Frances (née Walsingham), countess of Clanricarde 36, 172, 203, 215 Bourke, Lady Honour (daughter of marquis of Clanricarde) 148 Bourke, Honoura (daughter of 4th earl of Clanricarde) 185–6, 215 Bourke, Hubert 353 Bourke, John, 1st baron Bophin and 9th earl of Clanricarde 56, 163–4, 356 Bourke, John, 1st viscount of Clanmorres 44, 228, 260, 578 Bourke, John, 2nd baron Brittas 578 Bourke, Margaret (née Fleming), viscountess Clanmorres 87, 192–3, 367 Bourke, Miles, 2nd viscount Mayo 579, 599 and Catholicism 166, 188–9, 244 landholdings 88, 303, 572 Bourke, Miles, 5th viscount Mayo 579 Bourke, Richard, 2nd earl of Clanricarde: and English Parliament 235 marriages 172 Bourke, Richard, 4th earl of Clanricarde 3, 4, 77, 172, 185–6, 203 and Catholicism 145 and commerce 382, 395 and Confederacy of Kilkenny 274, 276, 278 debts 372, 396 and education 438, 440 and English Parliament 242, 243–4 income 368 and Irish Parliament 244, 247, 578 landholdings 35–6, 88, 91, 302, 303, 373, 395–6 and legal disputes 416 as lord president of Connacht 220–1

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and manorial courts 226 and military service 224 and rebellion of 1641 259–60, 261, 264, 268–9 and Wentworth 215, 240–1, 243 Bourke, Richard, 6th earl of Clanricarde 57–8, 68, 221 in exile 282 income 370, 396 and Irish Parliament of 1661–6 339, 340–1, 578, 609 marriage 422 and Restoration settlement 299, 314, 323–4, 323, 614 Bourke, Richard, baron Dunkellin (later 8th earl of Clanricarde) 134, 163, 164 education 436 and Irish Parliament 578 marriage 397 Bourke, Theobald, 1st baron Brittas 43, 578, 601 landholdings 107, 573 and rebellion of 1641 264, 266 Bourke, Theobald, 1st viscount Mayo 44, 49, 579 Bourke, Theobald, 3rd baron Brittas: exile 357 and Irish Parliament of 1661–6 339, 341, 344, 578, 609 and military service 355 and Restoration settlement 324, 344–5, 615 Bourke, Theobald, 3rd viscount Mayo 319–20 and Confederation of Kilkenny 275, 277, 278 conversion to Protestantism 269, 299, 305, 340 execution 284, 319 and Irish Parliament 578 and rebellion of 1641 260, 261, 264, 269 Bourke, Theobald, 4th viscount Mayo: and Confederation of Kilkenny 275 death 454 education 435 income 285 and Irish Parliament of 1661–6 340–1, 579, 609 landholdings 371 marriage 320 and Patriot Parliament 356 and Restoration settlement 307, 308, 309, 312, 319–20, 614 Bourke, Theobald, 6th viscount Mayo 579

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Index

Bourke, Thomas 244 Bourke, Thomas, 2nd viscount Clanmorres 600 and Confederation of Kilkenny 275 and Irish Parliament 579 landholdings 573 and rebellion of 1641 261–2, 269 Bourke, Thomas, 6th baron Castle Connell 578, 614 Bourke, Ulick, 1st earl of Clanricarde 32, 235 Bourke, Ulick, 3rd earl of Clanricarde 172 Bourke (de Burgh), Ulick, 5th earl and 1st marquis of Clanricarde 192, 600 birthplace 428–9 and Catholicism 148, 259–60, 268 and Cromwellian settlement 282, 285, 396 debts 391, 396 and family history 18, 471 income 365, 395–6 and Irish Parliament 578 landholdings 323, 395, 572 as lord deputy 219 and marriage 172 portrait 252, Plate 3 rank and status 51, 77 and royal court 215, 268 and succession 57, 323–4 Bourke, William, 5th baron of Castle Connell 230, 600 conversion to Catholicism 264 in exile 282 and Irish Parliament of 1661–6 338, 578, 609 landholdings 88, 107, 319, 573 and rebellion of 1641 166, 262, 264, 266, 532 n.67 and war-crimes charges 284 Bourke, William, 7th baron of Castle Connell 578 Bourke, William, 7th earl of Clanricarde 58 debts 396–7 and Irish Parliament 578 landholdings 304, 308, 309 as lord justice 219 marriage 215 Boyle of Blessington, extinction of title 59 Boyle, Catherine (née Fenton), countess of Cork 196, 429 Boyle, Charles, 3rd earl of Cork: burial 463 education 439 and Irish Parliament 579

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633

as viscount Dungarvan 350, 446 Boyle of Cork 3, 62, 134 correspondence 17 family history 18 Boyle, Elizabeth (née Clifford), countess of Cork 173, 196, 217, 464, 468 Boyle, Elizabeth (née Killigrew), viscountess Shannon 53, 173, 196 Boyle, Francis, 1st viscount Shannon: Discourses useful for the vain modish ladies 173, 174, 177 education 436, 443–4 and Irish Parliament of 1661–6 338, 579, 609 landholdings 107, 318, 371 marriage 53, 173, 196 and military service 354 poverty 418 and Restoration of Charles II 298 Boyle, Henry, marriage 198, 199 Boyle, Joshua 528 n.89 Boyle, Lewis, 1st viscount Kinalmeaky 406, 580, 600 death 87, 451, 464 debts 446 education 443 and Irish Parliament 580 marriage 196, 404 and rebellion of 1641 256, 265, 266 status 45 Boyle, Lionel, 3rd earl of Orrery 441, 442, 454–5, 579 Boyle, Margaret (née Howard), countess of Orrery 173–4, 178, 196, 199 Boyle, Mary (née O’Brien) 198, 199 Boyle, Lady Mary (née Sackville), countess of Orrery 199, 204 Boyle, Michael, archbishop of Armagh 55, 60–1, 140, 197, 457–8 as lord chancellor 409 Boyle, Murrough, 1st viscount Blessington 55, 197, 455, 580 Boyle of Orrery 3, 62 correspondence 17 family history 18 wardship of heirs 158 Boyle, Richard, 1st earl of Cork 21, 41–2, 45, 75, 600 and Catholic Church 143 children 430 and Church of Ireland 151, 153 death and burial 458, 461–2, Plate 11 and dynastic marriages 177–8, 194–6, 196, 217, 244, 378, 404

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634

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Boyle, Richard, 1st earl of Cork (cont...) and education of girls 435 English estates 217, 402 and English Parliament 235, 242, 243–4, 247 expenditure 389, 394, 401–5, 402, 405, 411–12 income 377 and fisheries 375 industry and commerce 376, 381 landed 372, 376–7 moneylending 378–9 and Irish Parliament 243–4, 246–7, 579 and justice 228, 229, 238 landholdings 88–91, 104–6, 107, 297, 373, 402–3, 404–5, 476, 572 longevity 456 as lord justice 219 and marriage 171, 464 memorialization 468 and offices 222 portrait 412, Plate 4 and rebellion of 1641 256–7, 261, 264–6, 404–5 and royal court 216–17, 378 tenants 376–7 and wardship of Kildare 160–1, 244, 438–9 and Wentworth 243 will 433, 450 Boyle, Richard, 2nd earl of Cork: burial 463 and Cromwellian land settlement 295, 296 as earl of Burlington 51, 283 education 439, 441 and English Parliament 235, 351, 527 n.65 financial difficulties 418 houses 350 income 113, 363, 365–6, 369 and Irish Parliament 579, 609 landholdings 93, 288, 305, 306, 307, 308, 312, 318, 370 longevity 456 marriage 173, 196 and poll tax 606 and Restoration of Charles II 299, 368, 614 and royal court 217 and textile industry 384 as viscount Dungarvan 105, 256, 403, 609 will 152, 450

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Boyle, Robert (son of 1st earl of Cork) 201, 204, 432–3, 436, 441, 443–4, 445 Boyle, Roger, 2nd earl of Orrery: and Irish Parliament 579 marriage 199, 204 Boyle, Roger, baron Broghill (later 1st earl of Orrery) 46, 51, 54, 80, 600 and Antrim 326 and children 152, 176–7, 198 and Cromwellian settlement 286, 294–5 and cultural patronage 15 death 455, 470–1 debts 418, 446 and dynastic marriages 176–7, 198, 199 education 406, 436, 441, 443 English houses 350 and English Parliament 351–2 expenditure 403–4 impeachment 318 and Inchiquin 318–19, 340 and Irish Parliament of 1661–6 339, 341, 342, 344, 579, 609 landholdings 107, 308, 312, 317–18, 370, 403, 573 as lord justice 219 as lord president of Munster 220, 349 marriage 173–4, 178, 196 and military service 354, 446 as parliamentarian 267, 273, 280 and poll tax 606 and Protectorate Parliament 297 and rebellion of 1641 256, 264–6 and Restoration of Charles II 298, 352 and Restoration settlement 302, 310, 313, 316, 317–20, 332–3, 334, 341, 614 and textile industry 384 see also Castlemartyr; Charleville Boyle of Shannon 3, 59, 62 Boyne, battle (1690) 57, 356–7, 451 Brabazon, Chambre, 5th earl of Meath 380, 437 Brabazon, Edward, 2nd earl of Meath: death 454 imprisonment 295 and Irish Parliament 580, 609 landholdings 97, 313, 370 and poll tax 607 and Restoration of Charles II 299 Brabazon, Edward, 4th earl of Meath 580 Brabazon, Edward, viscount Ardee 132, 580, 610 Brabazon, Mary, countess of Meath 380, 437

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Index

Brabazon, William, 1st earl of Meath 8, 42, 45, 132, 194, 600 and Irish Parliament 580 landholdings 97, 98, 114, 364, 573 and Wentworth 240 Brabazon, William, 3rd earl of Meath 580 Bradshaw, Brendan 525 n.21 Bramhall, John, archbishop of Armagh 150, 203 Brereton, Sir William 128, 232 Broderick, Sir Allen 342 Broghill, Roger Boyle see Boyle, Roger, baron Broghill Brooke, Sir Henry 131 Brown, Keith 4, 22, 417, 479 Browne, Geoffrey (lawyer) 528 n.90 Browne, Thomas (mason) 409 Browne, Valentine, 1st viscount Kenmare 56, 62, 356, 423 and Cromwellian settlement 299 education 442 and Irish Parliament 580 and Restoration settlement 304, 305, 308, 309, 614 Buckingham, George Villiers, 1st duke 2, 6, 459 clients 47, 213–14, 217, 220 and inflation of honours 28, 37–41, 46 La Rochelle expedition 224, 444 and plantation 38 and royal court 214, 237 Buckingham, George Villiers, 2nd duke 351, 352, 460 Bulkeley, Thomas, 1st viscount Cashel 54 Bunratty castle (seat of earl of Thomond) 103, 267–8, 374, 407, 409, Plate 17 Butler, Amelia (née van Nassau), countess of Ossory 185, 423, 459–60, 536 n.13 Butler, Anne (née Chichester), countess of Donegal (later countess of Longford) 183, 413, 455 Butler, Charles, 3rd duke of Ormond 61 Butler, Dorothy (née Ferrar), countess of Arran 204 Butler, Dorothy (née Touchet), viscountess Mountgarret 186 Butler of Dunboyne, forfeiture of title 62, 496 n.195 Butler, Edmund, 3rd baron Dunboyne 372 and Catholicism 153 death 426, 469–70 and Irish Parliament 581 marriage 88, 423 trial 70, 80–1, 228

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635

Butler, Edmund ‘Roe’, 4th viscount Mountgarret 171, 352, 380 and Irish Parliament 582 longevity 456 marriage 171, 186 and Restoration settlement 299, 314, 324, 328, 615 Butler, Edward, 1st baron Dunboyne 31 Butler, Edward, 1st viscount Galmoy 52, 600 and Irish Parliament 581 landholdings 111 Butler, Edward, 2nd viscount Galmoy: and Confederacy 276, 277 and Irish Parliament 581 and transplantation 288, 289, 291, 293 Butler, Edward (son of Lord Mountgarret) 284 Butler, Elizabeth (née Preston), duchess of Ormond 397, 422, 423 children 431 and Confederate Wars 264 and Cromwellian settlement 283, 290, 294 death 455 and dynastic marriages 175, 372 and family debts 397, 399–400 and kinship links 421 landholdings 87 and Ormond estates 40, 60, 112, 213, 294–5, 309n., 311 and poll tax 606 portrait 413, 428, Plate 6 relationship with husband 203, 295 Butler, Ellen (née Fitzgerald), baroness Dunboyne 87–8 Butler, Emilia (née Blundell), viscountess Mountgarret 186, 380 Butler of Galmoy: forfeiture of title 496 n.195 wardship of heirs 158 Butler, James, 2nd baron Dunboyne 153, 422, 581 Butler, James, 3rd viscount Ikerrin 353, 455, 582 Butler, James, 4th baron Dunboyne 146, 600 and Confederation of Kilkenny 275, 276, 277 and Irish Parliament 581 landholdings 88, 107, 111, 573 and rebellion of 1641 261, 266, 532 n.67 Butler, James, 6th baron Dunboyne 581

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636

Index

Butler, James, 12th earl and 1st duke of Ormond 1–2, 51, 54, 600 and Catholicism 164–6, 455–7 children 424 and Church of Ireland 152 and civil war 250 and commerce 351, 383–4 and Confederate Association 277, 287 death and burial 455–7, 462–3 debts 113, 311, 391, 397–401, 398, 399 and dynastic marriages 178, 185, 194, 203, 421 education 440 English houses 350, 400 and English Parliament 235, 338, 351, 460–1 entrepreneurialism 383–4, 397 in exile 282–3, 410 expenditure 98, 400–1, 408, 409–10 family history 18, 471–3 and honour 155, 278, 349, 400–1, 472 income: from land 113, 365–6, 368, 372–3, 391, 401 from offices 364 and Irish Parliament: of 1640–1 244–5, 247, 580 of 1661–6 337, 339, 343–4, 580, 609 Irishness and Englishness 7–8, 68–9, 460, 474 kin and client links 109, 112, 221–2, 421–4, 422, 423 landholdings 88, 89–91, 93, 94, 97, 98, 107, 109–13, 110, 305, 306–8, 311–13, 312, 370, 572 longevity 455, 456 as lord lieutenant 1, 56, 77–8, 219, 222, 325–7, 337, 343–6, 347, 349, 352, 424 loyalty to Crown 272, 277–8, 314 marriage 40, 60, 112, 171, 175, 203, 213 and military service 354, 355 mistresses 206, 423 and patronage 15, 314–16, 342, 347, 348–9, 417–18, 421–4 and personal piety 155 and plantation of Munster 103, 112 portrait 412, Plate 5 and Protestantism 144, 149–50, 151, 155, 159, 162, 164–6, 314 and rebellion of 1641 112–13, 257, 258–9, 261, 365, 397, 471–2 and reputation 82, 313–14, 471–2 and Restoration 282, 298–9, 302, 372

3697_Index.indd 636

and Restoration settlement 300, 310, 311–16, 322, 325–30, 331, 334, 471–2, 615 royal service 10, 75–6, 352 surrender of Dublin to Parliament 277, 294, 472 and teenage marriages 182 tenants 111–12 as viceroy 336–7, 339, 460–1 and wardships 159, 162–3, 421 and Wentworth 244–5 see also Kilkenny castle; Maynooth castle Butler, James, 13th earl and 2nd duke of Ormond 432, 484 n.23 death 463 education 439 and English Parliament 235 and Irish Parliament 580 longevity 456 marriage 61, 423, 430 royal service 352, 357 Butler, Col. John 271–2 Butler, John, 1st earl of Gowran 59, 62, 424, 460 death 454 debts 400 and Irish Parliament 580 marriage 183, 413, 423 and Restoration Parliament 339 Butler, Mary (abbess) 164 Butler, Mary (née Stuart), countess of Arran, funeral 1–2, 459–61, Plate 9 Butler of Mountgarret 32, 60 arms Plate 13 and Englishness 7, 186 as patrons of Catholic Church 144 Butler of Ormond 4, 30, 48 as Anglo-Norman 6, 7, 29 correspondence 17 earldom 29–30, 35 extinction of line 59, 60–1 historiography 21 landholdings 85, 134 lineage 419 status 62, 65, 75–6, 400 Butler, Pierce, 1st viscount Ikerrin 44, 601 and Confederate Wars 277 and Irish Parliament 581 landholdings 91, 107, 111, 289, 573 marriage 422 and military service 355 and rebellion of 1641 261, 266, 532 n.67 and Restoration settlement 299, 314, 324, 330, 344–5, 615

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Index

and transplantation 289 Butler, Pierce, 2nd viscount Ikerrin 165, 439, 582, 609 Butler, Pierce, 4th viscount Ikerrin 198, 582 Butler, Piers, 3rd viscount Galmoy 314 and Irish Parliament of 1661–6 338, 339, 341, 581, 610 landholdings 311, 312, 371 and military service 354, 355 and Restoration settlement 299, 322, 328, 615 Butler, Piers, 4th baron Cahir: death 453 and Irish Parliament 581 landholdings 371 and Restoration settlement 314–15, 324 Butler, Piers, 5th baron Dunboyne 357, 417–18 and Irish Parliament 581, 609 and Restoration settlement 299, 330, 331, 332, 344, 355, 615 Butler, Richard, 1st earl of Arran 53, 62, 384, 424, 536 n.13 children 431 death 59–60, 462 debts 400 and Irish Parliament 580, 609 landholdings 309n., 311, 312, 370 marriage 204, 423, 459 and military service 354 will 449 Butler, Richard, 2nd viscount Mountgarret 601 and 1640–1 Parliament 245 and Confederation of Kilkenny 275, 276–7 landholdings 303, 572 and rebellion of 1641 112, 250, 254, 260, 261–2, 263, 264–5, 271 Butler, Richard, 3rd viscount Mountgarret: and Irish Parliament 582 landholdings 88, 109–11 longevity 456 marriages 186 Butler, Richard, 5th viscount Mountgarret 357, 380, 582 marriage 186, 380 Butler, Richard of Kilcash 328, 421, 422, 423 Butler, Theobald, 5th baron Cahir 357, 581 Butler, Theobald Mathew 315 Butler, Theobald, viscount Tulleophelim 35, 59, 60, 219, 582 Butler, Thomas, 2nd baron Cahir 581

3697_Index.indd 637

637

Butler, Thomas, 3rd baron Cahir 581, 601 and Confederation of Kilkenny 276 and Irish Parliament 581, 609 landholdings 107, 111, 573 and rebellion of 1641 532 n.67 Butler, Thomas, 6th earl of Ossory 52, 62, 152, 424 children 432 death 455, 457–8, 462–3, 469 debts 400 education 442 and Irish Parliament 580, 609 and Irish trade 351–2 landholdings 3, 309n., 311, 312 marriage 185, 206, 423, 536 n.13 and military service 7, 75–6, 354–5 portrait 413, 428, Plate 6 royal service 352, 457 Butler, Thomas (Black Tom), 10th earl of Ormond 41, 44, 60 at royal court 212–13 and Catholicism 144, 166 and family marriages 175, 423 house 111 and Irish Parliament 580 landholdings 109 longevity 456 and Nine Years War 35 Butler, Walter, 11th earl of Ormond 112, 262, 290, 422, 423 and Catholicism 144 debts 397, 416 and Irish Parliament 236, 580 landholdings 213 longevity 456 Caball, Marc 68, 137 Calthrope, Charles 99 Calvert, George, 1st baron Baltimore 40–1, 239 Canny, Nicholas 21, 75, 105, 170–1, 183, 197, 428 Carrick-on-Suir (seat of 12th earl of Ormond) 111–12, 258 Carrickfergus castle 257, 270–1, 473, Plate 15 Carte, Thomas 206, 397, 471 Cary, Lucius, 2nd viscount Falkland, as lord deputy of Ireland 237–8 Cashel: sack (1647) 267, 283 synod (1624) 137 Castle Annesley 132, 407 Castle Balfour 126, 130, 257, 407

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638

Index

Castle Caulfeild 129, 407 Castle Curlews house 116 Castle Lyons (seat of earl of Barrymore) 83, 105, 229, 264–6, 295, 378, 407, 408 Castle Stewart see Stewart, Andrew, 1st baron; Stewart of Castle Stewart Castlederg house 116 Castlehaven see Touchet, George; Touchet, James; Touchet, Mervyn Castlemartyr (seat of earl of Orrery) 317–18, 384, 409, 450 Catherine of Braganza 352 Catholicism: anti-Catholicism 51, 313 and clergy 140–3, 146–8 and education 141, 142, 433–5, 441–2, 447 and extinction of lines 59, 417 and forfeiture of titles 60 and honour 83 lay patronage 142–6, 166 and marriage 177 and penal legislation 138–9, 142, 168, 236, 335, 357, 477 and persecution 142 reversions to 166–7, 188–9, 287, 305 and service nobility 2, 4, 5, 6–7, 10–11, 12, 23, 62, 73, 136, 220–2 and Stuart monarchy 5, 27, 34, 137–40, 231 see also Parliament, Irish Catholics: and Confederate Association 274–6, 343 and Confederate Wars 141–2, 145–6, 230, 268–71, 274–6, 277 and inflation of honours 42–3 and landholding 86, 87, 88, 91–3, 98, 113–14, 301, 302–5, 303, 304, 308–9, 309, 311, 335, 478 and military service 27–8, 49, 57, 224, 353–4, 355, 426 and personal piety 153–5 and plots against James VI and I 138–9 political influence 337 and rebellion of 1641 5, 28, 54, 72, 122, 130–1, 166, 230–1, 253–4, 257–64, 265–70 and Restoration settlement 301–2, 309–10, 314–21, 322–4, 330–3, 332, 334, 336–7, 340–1, 343–6 and survivalism 134, 168, 284–7, 309–10, 322–4, 352, 417–18, 477–8

3697_Index.indd 638

and transplantation 287–91, 289 cattle: raiding 30, 419 trade in 346, 351–2, 385 Cattle Act (1667) 346, 351–2, 385 Caulfeild, Mary (née King), baroness Charlemont 149 Caulfeild, Robert, 4th baron Charlemont 454, 582 Caulfeild, Thomas 339 Caulfeild, Toby, 1st baron Charlemont 582 death and funeral 140, 458, 464 landholdings 127, 128–9, 219 military service 46, 49, 74, 444 Caulfeild, Toby, 3rd baron Charlemont 601 and Irish Parliament 582 landholdings 88, 573 and Wars of the Three Kingdoms 257, 270 Caulfeild, William, 1st viscount Charlemont 51, 205 death and burial 465 and Irish Parliament of 1661–6 339, 582, 610 landholdings 371 and Restoration of Charles II 298, 322, 323 Caulfeild, William, 2nd baron Charlemont 46, 74–5, 140, 582 Caulfeild, William, 2nd viscount Charlemont 583 Cavendish, Mary (née Butler), duchess of Devonshire 178, 203–4, 423, 424 Cavendish, William, 1st duke of Devonshire 178, 203–4, 423 Cecil, Sir Robert 40 ceremony and ritual, display 1–2, 77–8 Chamberlain, Michael (Jesuit priest) 143 Chancery court: litigation in 415–16 records 19, 393, 408 Chapelizod (seat of duke of Ormond) 97–8, 383, 384, 408, 459 chaplains, personal: Catholic 142–3, 425 military 146 Protestant 149, 150–3, 157, 189, 198 Charlemont castle 129, 257, Plate 16 Charles I: and Bishops’ Wars 247, 255–7, 278 and Catholic peers 310 execution 273–4 and inflation of honours 37, 40 and Irish Parliament 233–4, 247, 272

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Index

and Old English peers 237–8, 277, 296, 378 and patronage 213–14, 216, 445 and social order 172 and wardship and conversions 160 see also Wars of the Three Kingdoms Charles II: and Butler of Ormond 68–9, 283, 302, 314, 400 and Catholic aristocracy 5, 28, 309, 315, 338 and court in exile 280, 282, 284 Declaration (1660) 299, 315, 319–20, 322, 327, 331, 341 favourites 301–2, 314, 321–2, 352 and Irish Parliament 233, 298–9, 337–41 Restoration 29, 51, 52–3, 54–5, 62, 281, 297, 298–9, 310 and Restoration settlement 301–35 Charleville (seat of earl of Orrery) 105, 204, 252, 317–18, 409 Chaworth, George, 1st viscount Chaworth of Armagh 39 Cheevers, Edward, 1st viscount Mount Leinster 57 Chester, and Irish imports 362 Chesterfield, Lady Elizabeth (née Butler) 203, 423, 424 Chesterfield, Philip, 2nd earl 200, 203, 423 Chichester, Arthur, 1st earl of Donegal 59 borrowings 394 and Church of Ireland 152 and Confederate Wars 272 death 454 and development of Dublin 347 and Irish Parliament 583, 610 landholdings 91, 309, 312, 373 marriage settlement 195 and military service 354, 444 and teenage marriages 182–3 wealth 368, 370 will 449 Chichester, Arthur, 2nd viscount and 2nd earl of Donegal: as high sheriff of Antrim and Down 296 and Irish Parliament 583 and poll tax 606 Chichester, Arthur, 3rd earl of Donegal: and Irish Parliament 583 marriage 199 Chichester, Arthur, baron Chichester of Belfast:

3697_Index.indd 639

639

and anti-Catholicism 51, 138 and clientage 46, 114, 115, 219, 227, 421 death and burial 458, 463, 465, 467 houses 127–8, 347, 407 income 364 and Irish Parliament 236, 242, 583 landholdings 127–8, 375, 573 as lord deputy of Ireland 10, 34, 41, 49, 76–9, 122, 127, 130, 219–20, 223 and succession 58–9 and wardship of minors 157–8, 160 and wealth and status 361–2, 367, 368 Chichester, Barbara (née Boyle of Orrery), countess 199 Chichester, Edward, 1st viscount of Carrickfergus 46, 59, 601 debts 391 and Irish Parliament 583 landholdings 91, 117, 375 Chichester, John 465, 528 n.89 Chichester, Leticia (née Hicks), countess of Donegal 195 Chichester, Mary (née Digby), countess of Donegal 195, 423 childbirth, dangers 430–1 children: deaths 431 illegitimate 95, 172, 192, 205–6 and lineage 420, 428–33, 447 relationships with 431–3 and religion 152 see also education Church of England see conformity, religious Church of Ireland see conformity, religious Churchill, Sir Winston 333, 342 Civil Survey 291 civil war, Irish see rebellion of 1641 Civil War, English see Wars of the Three Kingdoms civility 9, 10–11, 30–1, 69–70, 476 and Established Church 100 and government of Ireland 221 and income 361, 388 and James VI and I 27, 113 and land tenure 99 and marriage 170, 186, 206 and plantation 100–1, 116, 120, 133, 374 and role of Catholic peers 309–10, 476–7 role of education 433–7, 447 Clancare, earldom 32, 33

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640

Index

Clancarthy, Donough, 1st earl see MacCarthy, Donagh, 2nd viscount Muskerry Clancarthy house, Dublin Plate 19 Clare, County: plantations 99, 103 transplantations 288 Clarendon, Edward Hyde, 1st earl 47, 204, 440 and Antrim 327, 395 and duke of Ormond 75, 282, 313 as lord lieutenant 355–6 and rebellion of 1641 261 and Restoration settlement 309, 313 Clarke, Aidan 6, 243, 299 Cleland, James 76 clergy 15 Catholic 140–3, 146–8 clientage 12, 14, 39–40, 44, 84, 219, 221–2, 227, 341, 419, 420–8 and Antrim 216 and Buckingham 46–7, 213–14, 217, 220 and Butlers of Ormond 109, 112, 221–2, 420 and Chichester 47, 114, 219, 227, 421 and Cork 106, 217 and Longford 464 and obligation 112, 136, 193, 225, 420, 432 and Restoration settlement 301–35 see also patronage Clotworthy, John, 1st viscount Massareene 52, 193 borrowings 394 and Cromwellian land settlement 291–2, 296–7 death 455 education 435 family 430 and Irish Parliament of 1661–6 338, 344, 583, 610 landholdings 91, 375 and poll tax 606 and Presbyterianism 148, 149–50 and Restoration of Charles II 298, 615 will 451 Clotworthy-Skeffington, John, 2nd viscount Massareene 180, 193 and Irish Parliament 583 landholdings 305, 307, 308, 311, 313, 322, 371 coign and livery 30 Cokayne, Charles, 1st viscount Cullen 54 Cokayne, G. E. 16

3697_Index.indd 640

colonialism, and Irish peers 386–7, 480 Colvill, Alexander and Robert 393–4 Colvill family 191–2, 262, 380, 391, 393–4 Colvill, Sir Robert 192 Commentarius Rinuccinianus 159, 166 commerce: as income source 361, 362, 375, 381–5, 386, 387–8, 476–7 and urbanization 362–3, 381–5, 388 Commission for the Remedy of Defective Titles 101, 106, 225 Committee of Privileges and Grievances 242 composition, definition xviii Composition of Connacht (1585) 33 concealment, definition xviii Confederate Association 52, 274–6 divisions in 276–7 surrender to Cromwell 278 Confederate Wars (1641–53): as baronial struggle 254–5 and Catholics 141–2, 145–6, 230, 268–71, 274–6, 277, 343 ceasefire of 1643 272–3, 277, 287 and Cromwellian settlement 280–1, 284–7 and loyalty to the Crown 139, 268, 272, 278, 280 and military leadership 253–4, 278 peace treaty (1649) 277–8, 337, 398 planned invasion of Scotland 270–1 and plantations 100, 103 and political leadership 276–8, 279 and Protestants 272–3, 277 truce of 1648 277 conformity, religious 60, 69, 79, 168, 470 and civility 100 intermittent 54, 58, 114 and native Irish peers 43 and Old English peers 36 and wardships 159–64 see also conversion; Protestantism Connacht: Catholicism in 145 landholdings in 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 297, 305 lords president and council 220–1 plantations 99, 158, 215, 246 provincial council 275 rebellion of 1641 260, 261, 268–9 transplantation to 280, 287–91, 289, 322 consumption, conspicuous 14, 98, 218 and debt 394, 417–18 and funerals 461 luxury goods 406, 411–12

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Index

and status 71, 361, 388, 389 consumption (tuberculosis) 454–5 Convention of 1660 227, 298–9, 339 conversion: and marriage 188 sincerity 164–7 to Catholicism 166, 188–9, 305 to Protestantism 12, 31, 34, 43, 61, 69, 134, 135–7, 167–8, 254, 305, 357, 481 and wardship 12, 137, 157–64 see also conformity Conway, Anne (née Finch), countess of Conway 179, 430, 449 Conway, Edward, 1st viscount Conway 46, 235, 583, 601 Conway, Edward, 2nd viscount Conway 46, 235, 583 death 456 debts 391 family 430 houses 407–9 income 364, 368–9, 372 and Irish Parliament 583 landholdings 91, 124, 373, 375 and poll tax 606 and textile industry 384–5 and Wars of the Three Kingdoms 257, 270, 272 Conway, Edward, 3rd viscount and 1st earl of Conway 445 and Church of Ireland 150, 153 English houses 350, 384 and English Parliament 235, 242, 350, 351 and Irish Parliament of 1661–6 339, 344, 370, 583, 610 landholdings 311, 313 marriages 179–80, 182 and military service 354, 444 and Restoration of Charles II 299, 615 will 450 Conway, Elizabeth (née Booth), countess of Conway 180, 413 Conway family: correspondence 17 extinction of line 59 Conway, Sir Fulke 46 Conway, Ursula (née Stawell), countess of Conway 180 Cook, Col. Edward 342 Coote, Sir Charles 366, 375–6 Coote, Charles, 1st earl of Mountrath 52, 53

3697_Index.indd 641

641

death and memorialization 455, 468–9 and industrialization 382 and Irish Parliament of 1661–6 338, 339, 583, 610 landholdings 91, 134, 288, 297, 381 as lord justice 219 as lord president of Connacht 220 marriage 517 n.92 and poll tax 606 and rebellion of 1641 258–60 Coote, Charles, 3rd earl of Mountrath 298, 584 Coote, Chidley 298 Coote, Richard, 1st baron Colooney (later earl of Bellamont) 52, 53, 176, 298 houses 409 and Irish Parliament of 1661–6 338, 584, 610 landholdings 91, 322, 371 and military service 354 and Restoration settlement 305, 307, 308, 312, 615 and transatlantic trade 386 Coote, Richard, 2nd earl of Mountrath: death 454 and Irish Parliament 583 landholdings 322, 328, 370 and Restoration settlement 305, 307, 312, 398, 616 wardship 158 Cork see Boyle of Cork Cosgrove, Art 170 court of castle chamber 142, 225, 228, 245 Court of Claims 19, 302, 322–4, 333, 380 and Antrim 309, 325–7, 344 commissioners 342–3, 405–6 first (1663) 165, 321, 324, 328, 331 second (1666) 165, 317, 329–30, 345 court, royal 12–13, 21, 22, 212–18 and Catholic peers 214–16, 310, 352 and education of peers 445–6, 447 in exile 280, 282, 357 and Irish peers 36, 40–1, 50–1, 52, 55, 70, 212 and Parliament 232 and Restoration settlement 302, 324 and weddings 177–8 see also wardship court of star chamber 230, 240 court of wards 225 courts baron xviii, 86, 99, 100, 109, 124, 225–6, 229 courts leet xviii, 86, 109, 124, 225–6 courtship 174–8

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642

Index

Covenanters 148, 256, 271 Coventry, Henry 342 Cranford, James, The teares of Ireland 262–3, Plate 12 creation fees 69 credit 361, 390 moneylending 362, 364, 374, 378–80 networks 19, 380, 388, 392–4, 477 see also statute staple Cromwell of Ardglass 59 Cromwell, Edward, 3rd baron Lecale 45–6, 122 Cromwell, Henry, lord deputy 285, 294–6, 297–8, 300 Cromwell, Oliver 8, 52, 386 and Confederate Wars 277, 280 and Cromwellian settlement 280–1, 284–91, 300, 302, 345–6 crown offered to 296 Cromwell, Richard 273 Cromwell, Thomas, 1st viscount Lecale and 1st earl of Ardglass 45–6, 51, 54, 122, 601 debts 391–2 and Irish Parliament 584, 610 landholdings 364, 370, 573 as military leader 253, 257, 391–2, 426 and Wars of the Three Kingdoms 270 wealth 368, 368 Cromwell, Thomas, 3rd earl of Ardglass 301, 584 landholdings 322, 323 Cromwell, Vere Essex, 4th earl of Ardglass: and Irish Parliament 584 and military service 355 Cromwell, Wingfield, 2nd earl of Ardglass: and Irish Parliament of 1661–6 338, 584 and poll tax 606 cuius regio, eius religio doctrine 23, 135–6 culture: English 30, 33, 105, 476 Gaelic 30–1 material 2, 30, 409–11 and patronage 15, 347, 349, 513 n.171 transformation 64–83 Cunningham, Bernadette 67, 71, 74, 141, 470 Cunningham, John 286, 288 currency 363 coin shortage 376, 379–80, 392 Cust, Richard 72–3 custos rotulurum xviii, 221

3697_Index.indd 642

Darcy, Oliver, bishop of Dromore 146 Darcy, Patrick (lawyer) 415, 416, 504 n.115, 528 n.90 Davies, Sir John (attorney general of Ireland) 30, 33, 35–6, 77, 116, 130, 212, 428–9 as speaker of parliament 233, 236 Davies, William (Chief Justice) 413 Dawny, John, viscount Downe 55 De Courcy, Almericus, 18th baron Courcy of Kinsale 446 education 162–3, 438 and Irish Parliament 584 landholdings 313, 368 De Courcy, Gerald, 14th baron Courcy of Kinsale 601 and Catholicism 214 death 159 and Irish Parliament 584 landholdings 88, 107 and Sarsfield 49, 77 De Courcy, John, 13th baron Courcy of Kinsale 36, 44, 159, 214, 584 De Courcy, John, 16th baron Courcy of Kinsale 455, 584 De Courcy, John, 18th baron Courcy of Kinsale, conversion to Protestantism 159 De Courcy of Kinsale 29, 60 De Courcy, Mary (née Fitzgerald), baroness Courcy of Kinsale 429–30 De Courcy, Patrick, 15th baron Courcy of Kinsale: children 429–30 and Confederation of Kilkenny 274 and Irish Parliament of 1661–6 340, 584, 610 and poll tax 606 De Courcy, Patrick, 17th baron Courcy of Kinsale 371, 584 De Courcy, Patrick, 20th baron Courcy of Kinsale, landholdings 574 death 14–15, 448–74 age at 452, 452, 456 causes 451–8 and childbirth 430–1 funerals 1–2, 14–15, 448, 458–66, 462 infant mortality 430, 431 and memorialization 461, 463, 466–73 preparation for 449–51 studies 21 and widowhood 181–2, 193 debenture, definition xviii

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Index

debt 113, 311, 326–7, 366–7, 379, 411, 414, 417, 446, 538 n.95 and borrowing 390–401, 417 and English aristocracy 389 depositions of 1641 19, 261–4, 270, 343 and aristocratic expenditure 411 and aristocratic incomes 361, 364–5, 374, 379, 381 Dering, Sir Edward 331, 342 derogation 71, 383 Des Granges, David (artist) 413, 428, Plate 6 Desmond family: reallocation of lands 101, 103 Tudor 30, 33 Desmond rebellion 29, 33, 36,100–1 Dickson, David 517 n.81 Digby, Kildare, 2nd baron of Geashill 181, 585, 607 Digby, Robert, 1st baron of Geashill 47, 48, 601 and Irish Parliament 242, 245, 246, 584 landholdings 573 marriage 196, 243 wardship of heirs 158 Digby, Robert, 3rd baron of Geashill: and Irish Parliament 585, 610 landholdings 322, 323, 371 Digby, Simon, 4th baron of Geashill 528 n.89, 585 Digby, William, 5th baron of Geashill 585 Dillon, Anne (née Nugent), viscountess Costello-Gallen 194 Dillon, Cary, 5th earl of Roscommon 205–6, 450, 585 Dillon, George 147 Dillon, Henry, 8th viscount Costello-Gallen 58, 586 Dillon, James, 1st earl of Roscommon 42, 44, 69, 80, 601 and Catholicism 143, 147 and Irish Parliament 585 landholdings 107, 378, 572 Dillon, James, 3rd earl of Roscommon: and Catholicism 166 death 454 and Irish Parliament 585 Dillon, Louis, bishop of Athenry 147 Dillon, Lucas, 2nd viscount Costello-Gallen 58, 161, 195, 445 and Irish Parliament 585 Dillon, Lucas, 6th viscount Costello-Gallen 58, 194, 586 Dillon, Robert, 2nd earl of Roscommon:

3697_Index.indd 643

643

and commerce 382 as lord justice 219, 585 Dillon, Robert, 4th earl of Roscommon, and Irish Parliament 585 Dillon of Roscommon, wardship of heirs 158 Dillon, Theobald, 1st viscount CostelloGallen 44, 54, 58 and Catholicism 147 and Irish Parliament 585 landholdings 572 Dillon, Theobald, 3rd viscount CostelloGallen, wardship 161–2 Dillon, Theobald, 7th viscount CostelloGallen 357, 451, 586 Dillon, Thomas, 4th viscount CostelloGallen 602 and Confederation of Kilkenny 275 debts 379, 380 and Irish Parliaments 246, 339, 340, 586, 610 landholdings 88, 304, 306, 308, 309, 311, 312, 320, 370, 373 as lord president of Connacht 220 and rebellion of 1641 257–8, 260, 261 and Restoration settlement 299, 323, 615 Dillon, Thomas, 5th viscount CostelloGallen 58 and Catholicism 167, 305 and Irish Parliament 586 Dillon, Wentworth, 4th earl of Roscommon: and Cromwellian settlement 287 debts 391 education 434, 441 and Irish Parliament 585, 611 landholdings 309, 312, 318, 370 and military service 354 and Restoration settlement 333, 345 Docwra of Culmore, extinction of line 59 Docwra, Henry, 1st baron Docwra 46, 49, 87, 378 office-holding 222, 586 and Wars of the Three Kingdoms 257 Docwra, Theodore, 2nd baron Docwra 586, 602 Dodson, William 98 Domville, Sir William 333 dower, definition xix dowry 41, 147, 171, 174, 193, 364, 414 and debt 392, 396 size 194 dress, English 5, 9, 27, 30, 31, 68, 105; see also fashion; mantle

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644

Index

Drogheda: siege (1641–2) 254, 263 synod (1614) 137 Drogheda see Moore, Charles, 2nd viscount; Moore of Drogheda; Moore, Garret, 1st viscount Dryden, John: Absalom and Achitophel 60, 75, 469, 472 Fables 76 Life of Plutarch 472–3 Dublin: articles of Dublin 294–5, 300, 337, 399 burials in 464, Plates 10, 11 Clancarthy house Plate 19 and early industrialization 384–5 population 346–7 post-Restoration 346–8, 387 synod (1614) 177 and William III 356 see also Trinity College, Dublin Dublin castle 165, 222, 336 in 1641 rebellion 130, 257, 270 and Col. Blood’s plot 343–4 as seat of government 347–8, 349, 372 as seat of judiciary 224–5 surrender to Parliament 273, 277, 472 Dublin, County, and landholding 86, 91, 94, 95–8, 96, 97 Ducie, William, 1st viscount Downe 55 duels 78, 79–80, 206, 351 Dunboyne see Butler of Dunboyne Dungan of Clane, forfeiture of title 496 n.195 Dungan of Clane and Limerick, extinction of line 59 Dungan, Thomas, 2nd earl of Limerick 354, 386 Dungan, William, 1st viscount Dungan of Clane (later 1st earl of Limerick) 53, 169, 195, 354 and Irish Parliament 338, 586, 610 landholdings 312, 322, 328, 371 marriage 185 and military service 355 Dungan’s Hill, battle (1647) 254, 273 Dungarvan, viscount see Boyle, Richard, 2nd earl of Cork Dunluce castle (seat of earls of Antrim) 119, 251, 292, 407, 409 Dunluce, viscountcy see Macdonnell, Randal, 1st earl Dunmore house (home of Lady Ormond) 152, 294, 311, 408

3697_Index.indd 644

Dunsany see Plunkett, Christopher; Plunkett of Dunsany; Plunkett, Patrick East India Company 387 economy: English control 385 growth 362–3, 383–5, 387–8 marketization 373, 417, 477 Edenduffcarrick castle 407, 410–11 education 14 and anglicization 420, 433–42 and Catholicism 141, 142, 433–5, 441–2, 447 and Church of Ireland 150–1 of eldest sons 436–7, 447 and expenditure 403, 405, 414 of girls 434–5 military 444–6 university 49, 104, 437–9 and wardship 157–62, 436–7 Edward VI, and Irish peers 31, 34 Edwards, David 21, 31, 113, 419 Elizabeth I, and Irish peers 33, 213, 214 English language 5, 9, 105, 170, 407, 476 imposition 27, 30, 31 entail xix, 10, 12, 69, 180, 478 and creation of large estates 84, 94 entrepreneurs, landed 361–2, 372–80, 383–5, 386, 476–7 Erskine, Sir James 45, 130 escheat xix, 70, 101, 104 Esmond, Laurence, 1st baron Limerick 602 death 451 and extinction of line 59, 87 and Irish Parliament 586 marriage 171 military service 43, 49, 273, 444 and Ormond 245 and Protestantism 45 and ward 437 Essex, Arthur Capel, 1st earl 19, 396 Essex, Walter Devereux, 1st earl 36, 100 Europe: education in 441–2, 447 and military academies 442–3 military service in 224, 252, 267, 271, 282–3, 353–4 Eustace, James, 3rd viscount Baltinglass 31 Eustace, Thomas, 1st viscount Baltinglass 31 Evelyn, John 355, 399–400, 411 Everard, Sir John 236 exclusion crisis 140, 472 executors 450–1 women as 202–3

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Index

exercise of arms 444–6 exile: and Irish peers 280, 281–3, 299–300, 310, 315, 319, 328, 330, 357 royal court 280, 282, 284, 357 expenditure 14, 389–418 and borrowing 389, 390–401, 417 capital 401, 405, 407–11 examples 394–407 funerary 461 legal 414–16 personal and domestic 401, 403, 405, 411–14 and public service 389, 401 taxation 389, 395, 404 see also consumption, conspicuous; dowry; great houses; jointure expropriation 2, 13, 84, 86, 100, 226, 302 under Cromwell 13, 280, 287, 417 under Wentworth 280 under William III 357, 482 families, size 429–30 Fanshawe, Thomas, 1st viscount Dromore 54 fashion, English 5, 68, 105, 406–7, 411–12 feasting 426–7, 446, 460, 461, 476 fee farm xix, 98–9, 121 fee simple 98, 106, 402 Fell, John (dean of Christ Church Oxford) 162–3, 202, 457 Fenlon, Jane 15 Fenton, Sir Geoffrey 104 Fermoy see Roche of Fermoy feudalism: feudal incidents xix, 70, 98, 162 opposition to 33–4, 112 see also tenure Fielding, George, earl of Desmond 40 Fielding, Robert 192 Finch, Sir Heneage (solicitor general) 179, 299, 321, 342, 415 Finch, Sir John 179–80 Fingal see Plunkett, Christopher, 2nd earl; Plunkett, Luke, 9th baron Killeen and 1st earl fisheries and fishing rights 35, 71, 120, 361, 364, 373, 375 Fitzgerald, Elizabeth, countess of Kildare 282, 532 n.67, 553 n.8 and Catholicism 143–4, 160–1 marriage 143 and moneylending 380 wealth 413

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645

Fitzgerald, George, 16th earl of Kildare 58, 113–14, 602 death and burial 465 debts 391, 446, 538 n.95 income 366 and Irish Parliament 586 landholdings 88, 107, 134, 160–1, 305, 306, 373, 572 legal disputes 43, 415 marriage 196, 197, 244 portrait 412, Plate 1 and rebellion of 1641 258–9, 261, 263 wardship and conversion 160–1, 217, 259, 438–9 Fitzgerald, Gerald, 14th earl of Kildare: death 58, 143, 159, 454, 465 and Irish Parliament 586 marriage 143, 380 Fitzgerald, Gerald, 15th earl of Kildare: death and burial 465 and Irish Parliament 586 wardship and conversion 159–60 Fitzgerald, Henry, 12th earl of Kildare 191 Fitzgerald, Joan (née Boyle), countess of Kildare 196, 197, 244, 259 Fitzgerald, John 247 Fitzgerald, John, 18th earl of Kildare: landholdings 91, 305, 307, 308, 320 marriage 194 Fitzgerald of Kildare 3, 4, 29, 30, 35 status 60, 62, 65 succession 58, 60 Fitzgerald, Lettice (née Digby; later baroness of Offaly) 87, 155, 586, 602 and litigation 35, 43, 415 and rebellion of 1641 262 Fitzgerald, Mabel (née Browne), countess of Kildare, and Catholicism 138, 142, 143 Fitzgerald, Robert, 19th earl of Kildare 58 Fitzgerald, Wentworth, 17th earl of Kildare: death 181, 295, 465 and Irish Parliament of 1661–6 341, 587, 611 landholdings 370 and poll tax 608 and Restoration settlement 323, 323, 368, 615 Fitzmaurice of Kerry and Lixnaw, creation 29 Fitzmaurice, Patrick, 18th baron of Kerry and Lixnaw 182, 602 education 436 and exile 281–2

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Index

Fitzmaurice, Patrick, 18th baron of Kerry and Lixnaw (cont...) and Irish Parliament 587 landholdings 88, 107, 573 and poll tax 607 and Protestantism 158, 244, 433, 436 Fitzmaurice, Thomas, 17th baron of Kerry and Lixnaw 587 Fitzmaurice, William, 20th baron of Kerry and Lixnaw 340 and Irish Parliament 587, 611 landholdings 322, 323, 371 Fitzpatrick, Barnaby, 6th baron of Upper Ossory 31, 43, 602 and Confederate Wars 277 income 369 and Irish Parliament of 1661–6 338, 344, 587, 611 landholdings 573 and military service 355 and rebellion of 1641 260–1, 262, 265, 532 n.67 and Restoration settlement 299, 330, 332, 615 Fitzpatrick, Barnaby (Bryan), 7th baron of Upper Ossory 587 Fitzpatrick, Brian, 1st baron of Upper Ossory 31 Fitzpatrick, Barnaby (Brian), 5th baron of Upper Ossory 422, 587 Fitzpatrick, Florence, 3rd baron of Upper Ossory 34, 587 Fitzpatrick, Mary, baroness of Upper Ossory 289 Fitzpatrick, Thady (Teige), 4th baron of Upper Ossory 587 Fitzpatrick of Upper Ossory, extinction of line 59, 62 Fitzwilliam, Eleanor (née Holles), viscountess FitzWilliam of Merrion 286, 322 FitzWilliam of Merrion, conspicuous consumption 98 FitzWilliam, Oliver, 2nd viscount Fitzwilliam and 1st earl of Tyrconnell 51, 81, 253 and Cromwellian settlement 286, 293 and Irish Parliament of 1661–6 340, 587, 611 and military service 353 and poll tax 607 and Restoration settlement 319, 322, 323, 332, 343, 615 FitzWilliam, Thomas, 1st viscount FitzWilliam of Merrion 602

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debts 378, 391 in exile 282 and Irish Parliament 587 landholdings 88, 97–8, 97 and rebellion of 1641 261, 272, 274 FitzWilliam, Thomas, 4th viscount FitzWilliam of Merrion 44, 49, 357 and Irish Parliament 588 landholdings 574 will 450–1 Fitzwilliam, William, 1st baron Fitzwilliam of Lifford 38 Fitzwilliam, William, 3rd viscount FitzWilliam of Merrion 97, 253, 587 Fleming, Anne (née MacDonnell), baroness of Slane 194, 289, 290, 322, 328 Fleming, archbishop of Dublin 146 Fleming, Charles, 15th baron Slane: and Confederate Wars 276, 277, 278 and Irish Parliament 588 Fleming, Christopher, 12th baron Slane 146, 588 Fleming, Christopher, 17th baron Slane 588 Fleming, Randal, 16th baron Slane: and Irish Parliament 588, 611 landholdings 322, 323, 369 as magistrate 349–50 and Restoration settlement 615 Fleming of Slane: creation 29 landholdings 88, 114 Fleming, Thomas, 13th baron Slane 146, 442, 588 Fleming, William, 11th baron Slane 36–7, 435–6, 588 Fleming, William, 14th baron Slane 146, 162, 194, 602 and Irish Parliament 588 landholdings 88, 572 and rebellion of 1641 246, 260, 532 n.67 Flight of the Earls (1607) 6, 36, 101, 462 Folliott of Ballyshannon, extinction of line 59, 62 Folliott, Henry, 1st baron of Ballyshannon 129 and Irish Parliament 588 landholdings 88, 127 Folliott, Thomas, 2nd baron Ballyshannon 46, 273, 603 and Irish Parliament 588, 611 landholdings 117, 370, 574 and military service 354 and poll tax 607 and Restoration settlement 323

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Index

Forbes, Arthur, 1st viscount (later earl) of Granard 18, 350 income 366 and Irish Parliament 588 landholdings 56, 132, 312, 371 as lord justice 219 and military service 354, 355 and Restoration 298, 615 Forbes, Arthur, 2nd earl of Granard, marriage 176 Forbes, Catherine (née Newcomen), countess of Granard 355 Forbes, Jane, viscountess of Granard 132, 588 fosterage 420, 432–3, 447 France, and Irish aristocracy 22 Franciscans, in Ireland 139, 141, 144–5, 146–7, 154, 167, 453 French, Nicholas, bishop of Ferns 284, 313, 315, 471 funerals 1–2, 14–15, 448, 458–66 Fytton, Alexander, 1st baron Fitton of Gosworth 56, 356 Galmoy see Butler of Galmoy Gamache, Cyprien de (confessor) 166–7 gambling 218, 395, 399, 446 gardens 408–9 gavelkind xix, 84–5, 131 Geashill castle 262, 409 gender, and power 16 gentry, landed 15–16, 62, 86, 362, 373 Catholic 334 and land speculation 296–7, 305 geography, political 85, 134, 166, 213, 477 Gillespie, Raymond 15, 83, 100, 151, 155, 165, 367, 473 Glenarm castle 119, 407, 409 glibs (fringes) 30 Goring, George 194, 196, 201, 217 and Army Plot 256, 529 n.114 Goring, Lettice (née Boyle) 173, 194, 196, 201 governors, county 221–2 Graces of 1628 38–9, 44, 70, 139, 237–8, 239, 246 grand tours 420, 441, 442–6, 447 great houses 5, 14, 20, 116, 119, 123–4, 311 cost 408 creation 98, 103, 105–6, 111–12, 128, 251–2, 317–18, 396, 407–11 destruction 22, 408 in Dublin 347–8, 411

3697_Index.indd 647

647

in London 350 modernization 407 see also hospitality growth, economic 362–3, 382 Habsburg empire, and nobility 133–4, 135, 231, 334, 479, 480–1 Hadsor, Robert (lawyer) 37–8, 415 Haicéad, Pádraigín (poet) 66, 80, 146, 159, 426, 469–70 Hamilton, Alice (née Moore), countess of Clanbrassil 204–5, 282, 380, 395, 450 Hamilton, Anne (née Carey), viscountess Clanbrassil 202, 412–13, 445, Plate 9 Hamilton, Claude, 2nd baron Strabane 127 and Catholicism 144–5 and Irish Parliament 588 Hamilton, Claude, 5th baron Strabane: death 451 and Irish Parliament 588 landholdings 371 royal service 352 Hamilton, George, 4th baron of Strabane: and Cromwellian land settlement 293 and Irish Parliament of 1661–6 339, 588, 611 memorialization 466 and poll tax 607 and Restoration settlement 299, 323, 615 Hamilton, George (nephew of duchess of Ormond) 372 Hamilton, Sir George (son of earl of Abercorn) 421, 422, 423 Hamilton of Glenawley, extinction of line 59 Hamilton, Henry, 2nd earl of Clanbrassil: death 454 debts 392 house 409 and Irish Parliament 589 landholdings 322, 323, 370 marriage 204 and Restoration settlement 307, 308, 615 Hamilton, Hugh, 1st baron of Glenawley 23, 53, 56, 589 Hamilton, James, 1st baron Strabane and 2nd earl of Abercorn 41, 47, 48 and Irish Parliaments 235, 236, 241 landholdings 126–7, 573 and wardships 162 Hamilton, James, 1st earl of Abercorn 126, 151

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Index

Hamilton, James, 1st viscount Claneboye 603 and Church of Ireland 150–1 death and burial 465 and Irish Parliament 589 landholdings 88, 89, 117, 375, 572 and military service 426 portrait 412 and Presbyterianism 148 and rebellion of 1641 258, 270 and Solemn League and Covenant 273 and Ulster plantation 50, 51, 122–3 wealth 123, 367, 368 will 202–3 Hamilton, James, 2nd viscount Claneboye and 1st earl of Clanbrassil 18, 59 and Church of Ireland 151 and Cromwellian court 282 and Cromwellian land settlement 296 debts 391 and Irish Parliament 589, 611 landholdings 305, 306, 373 marriage 202, 412, 445 and Solemn League and Covenant 273 and transplantion 281 Hamilton, James, 3rd baron Strabane 274, 603 death 454 and Irish Parliament 588 landholdings 117, 127 Hamilton, James, 3rd marquis of Hamilton 255–6 Hamilton, Jean (née Philips), viscountess Claneboye 202–3 Hamilton of Strabane 41, 48 forfeiture of title 496 n.195 wardship of heirs 158 Hamilton, William, 2nd baron of Glenawley 454, 589 Hastings, Ferdinando (later 6th earl of Huntingdon): marriage 116, 183 as non-resident 116–17 Hastings, Lucy (née Davies), countess of Huntingdon 116, 183 Hawley, Francis, 1st baron Hawley of Duncannon 54 heir general, definition xix Henrietta Maria, Queen 445 and Catholicism 187, 188 and Irish Catholic peers 51, 53, 166, 216, 270–1, 310, 326, 343 heraldry 73–4, 75, 467

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Herbert, Edward, 1st baron of Castle Herbert 39, 104, 527 n.65 Herbert, Sir William 433 heriot (tribute) 120 Herrup, Cynthia 73 Hervey, William, 1st baron Hervey of Rosse 38 Hibbard, Caroline 445 Holles, Denzil 322 Holles, John, 1st earl of Clare 322 homage xix honour 64–6, 215, 268–9, 278, 341, 482 collective 73, 76, 81, 83 and credit 388, 392, 400–1, 477 defence 73 disputes 32, 65, 76–82 English system 27, 68, 71, 72 female 73, 75, 172, 262 Gaelic system 68, 71–2 and hospitality 403, 419, 424, 426–7, 447, 461 and marriage 190 and military service 74–5, 223, 253, 353 and monarchy 11–12, 65, 68–9, 72–3, 77, 82, 211, 248–9, 281, 447 and religion 83, 155, 156, 165, 167 and scandal 82 and service 72–6 studies 21 and war crimes charges 283 honours: and control of Irish Parliament 238–9 inflation 2, 6, 9, 28, 37–41, 43–4, 50–1, 52–3, 62–3, 301 and social mobility 11, 62, 64, 190 Tudor 31–2 purchase 42–3, 45, 405 horse racing 427 hospitality 403, 419, 424, 426–7, 447, 461 household: godly 152–3 noble 14, 419–20, 424–5 royal 214, 222 hunting 409, 427–8, 434, 438 hunting rights 71, 375 Huntingdon see Hastings, Fernando Hussey, James 143 identity: aristocratic 14–15, 78, 83, 248, 341, 392, 482 English 7–8 and fashion 407 gender 16

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Index

Irish 6–8 and pastimes 427–8 and religion 136, 153, 166 Scottish 8, 184 Ikerrin see Butler, James, 3rd viscount Ikerrin; Butler, Pierce, 1st viscount; Butler, Pierce, 2nd viscount; Butler, Pierce, 4th viscount impeachment, and Irish Parliament 233, 246 imperialism, Stuart 9–11, 22, 28, 30, 37–8, 100, 234, 381, 385–6, 475–7 in capite tenure see knight’s service income 14, 361–8 and commerce 361, 362, 375, 381–5, 386, 387–8, 476–7 entrepreneurs and improving landlords 35–6, 361–2, 372–80, 383–5, 386, 388, 419, 476–7 from land 113, 363–4, 388, 390 impact of 1641 rebellion 125, 132, 263, 270, 295, 364–6, 374, 377, 397–8, 404–5 levels of wealth 361, 363–71 and natural resources 35, 71, 124, 361, 369, 373–5 and social status 361–2, 369 India, and colonialism 387 industrialization, early 372, 373, 375 inflation, levels 362–3 inheritance 57–61 by illegitimate males 95 and creation of large estates 93, 95 female 95 partible see gavelkind and strict settlement xix see also entail; primogeniture Inns of Court 49, 104, 191, 226, 433, 437, 439–41, 447 inquisition xix Ireland: anglicization 9–11, 31–3, 61, 133, 212, 475; see also civility; education; marriage; plantation; Protestantism as English colony 479–80 population 4, 346–7, 363 Ireton, Henry 283, 284–5, 296, 300 Irish language 7–8, 30, 34 ironworks 35, 375–6, 382 Italy, and Irish aristrocracy 22 Iveagh see Magennis, Arthur, 1st viscount Iveagh; Magennis, Hugh, 2nd viscount Iveagh; Magennis of Iveagh

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649

Jackson, Donald 170 James, Francis 452 James, Mervyn 72 James VI and I: Basilikon Doron 113 and Catholicism 137–8 and civilization of Ireland 27, 101 and direct rule of Ireland 9 favourites 40, 45, 48 and inflation of honours 28, 37–41, 301 and intermarriage 187 Irish genealogy 137 and Irish Parliament 233–4, 235–7 and Irish peers 34, 37, 211 and land tenure 101 and law and order 212, 218–19, 225, 230–1 and patronage 213–14 and plantation of Ulster 130–1 Trew Law of Free Monarchies 212 James VII and II 29, 355–7 and Catholics 337 defeat and abdication 57, 356–7 as duke of York 301, 310, 352 and exclusion crisis 140, 472 favourites 335, 352 and inflation of honours 56–7 and Patriot Parliament 233, 356 and re-catholicizing 11, 13–14, 28 and Restoration settlement 335 and William of Orange 356 Jenkins, Leoline (secretary of state) 163 Jermyn, Henry, 1st earl of St Albans 310, 327, 343 Jerome, Stephen (chaplain) 153 Jesuits 141, 142–4, 145, 380, 435 jointures xx, 174, 176, 181, 193, 367 as burden on estates 161, 310 and Cromwellian settlement 285, 286, 290, 300 and debt 391, 392, 413–14 disputes 205 and female landholding 87, 194 and Restoration settlement 322, 324, 327–30 royal respect for 162, 477 size 194–5 Jones, Arthur, 2nd viscount Ranelagh 181, 549 n.44 and Irish Parliament 272, 589 and landholdings 288, 370 marriage 194, 196, 204, 244 and Restoration settlement 307, 308, 310, 312, 318, 616

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Index

Jones, Katherine (née Boyle), viscountess Ranelagh 259, 282, 430, 564 n.155 marriage 196, 201, 204, 244 Jones, Michael 273 Jones of Ranelagh 3, 59, 62 funeral monument 467–8, Plate 10 Jones, Richard, 1st earl of Ranelagh 430 death and burial 463 and Irish Parliament 344, 589, 611 landholdings 305 and royal service 352 will 151, 413 Jones, Richard, 2nd earl of Ranelagh, debts 554 n.23 Jones, Roger, 1st viscount Ranelagh 46, 50, 78–9, 131, 604 death and burial 463, 467–8, Plate 10 landholdings 89, 91, 97, 98, 219, 306, 572 and the law 230 as lord president of Connacht 220, 589 and rebellion of 1641 261 Jones, Sir Theophilus 331 Jones, Thomas, archbishop of Dublin 46, 78–9, 467 Joymount (seat of Chichester of Donegal) 128, 407, Plate 16 judiciary: and Catholics 27, 349–50 and Irish peers 71, 224–6 Kane, Brendan 68, 71–2, 82 Kearney, Hugh 21 Kearney, Michael 68, 470 Keating, Geoffrey 141 Foras feasa ar Éirinn 68, 137, 470 Kelly, Cornelius 228 Kelly, James 71 Kenmare see Browne, Valentine, 1st viscount Kildare see Fitzgerald of Kildare Kilkenny: and Catholicism 144, 435 confederation 145, 146, 186, 269, 272, 274–6, 325 in rebellion of 1641 264, 268 synod (1614) 137, 144 Kilkenny castle (seat of earl of Ormond) 111, 178, 251, 264, 311, 318, 408, 409–10, 460 Killyleagh castle (seat of Montgomery of the Ards) 123, 409 Kilrush, battle (1642) 255, 258 king of arms, Ulster 73, 449, 458 King, Gregory 452

3697_Index.indd 650

King, John, 1st baron Kingston: income 369 and Irish Parliament of 1661–6 338, 339, 589, 611 landholdings 91, 297, 322, 371 as lord president of Connacht 220, 589 marriage 190 and military service 53 and Restoration settlement 52, 305, 307, 308, 309, 311–13, 312, 615 King, Ralph 291, 292 King, Sir Robert 294 King, Robert, 2nd baron Kingston 335, 589 Kingship Act (1541) 10, 30, 57, 72, 234 Kinsale see de Courcy of Kinsale kinship links 108, 187, 197, 215, 420–8 and politics 248, 256, 477 in Scotland 420–1 see also marriage Knatchbell, Mary, abbess of Ghent 148 knight’s service tenure xix, xx, 98 and native Irish peers 32, 70, 121 and Old English peers 109, 157 Knocknanuss, battle (1647) 267 laity, Catholic 142–6, 166 Lambert, Charles, 2nd baron and 1st earl Cavan 604 debts 378, 391 income 365, 368–9 and Irish Parliament 589 landholdings 572 and military service 46, 49, 51 and poll tax 608 and rebellion of 1641 257, 263 Lambert, Charles, 3rd earl of Cavan 288, 406, 437, 589 Lambert, Oliver, 1st baron Cavan: funeral 461 and Irish Parliament 236, 242, 244, 246, 589 landholdings 88, 91, 117, 127 and military service 46, 129 Lambert, Richard, 2nd earl of Cavan: education of heir 437 expenditure 405 and Irish Parliament 589, 611 landholdings 322, 331, 371 and Restoration settlement 309, 313, 615 Lambert, Sheila 528 n.85 land: enclosure 105, 120, 133, 373 and legal disputes 415 see also speculators

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Index

land settlement, Cromwellian 280–1, 284–97, 300, 302, 345–6 land settlement, Restoration 98, 299–300, 301–35, 614–17 and Catholics 301–5, 303, 304, 308–9, 309–10, 314–21, 322–4, 330–3, 332, 334–5, 336–7, 340–1, 343–6 and Irish Parliament 337–8, 341–6 and legal costs 416 losers 330–3, 332, 367 and politics 341–6 and Protestants 297, 298–9, 301, 305–9, 306–9, 310–11, 322–3, 334, 337, 343, 346 repeal 334–5, 356 survivors 322–30, 323, 369, 417–18, 477–8 winners 310–22, 312–13, 367 land settlement, Williamite 335, 357, 478 landholding 2–3, 5, 12, 69–70, 84–134 in 1641 and c.1670 87–95, 302–10, 303, 304, 306, 307, 478–9 by women 87–8, 91, 95, 309n. Catholic 62, 86, 87, 88, 91–3, 98, 113–14, 137–9, 146–8, 301–5, 303, 304, 308–9, 309, 311, 478 in Co. Dublin 86, 91, 94, 95–8, 96, 97 and dissolution of the monasteries 84, 93–4 in England 185 English reforms 10, 50 and Englishness 8, 286–7 grants 2, 11, 69–70, 94, 101 and land forfeiture 3, 60, 162, 305, 335 and land improvement 35–6, 361–2, 372–80, 388, 397, 419 land transfers 23, 27, 64, 275, 301–9, 336 and land values 89–91, 104–5 and marriage 93, 104, 109–11, 193–4, 195–6, 316–17, 324 and Nine Years War 36, 47 and peerage 3, 5, 12, 69–70, 84–134, 361 and plantations 106–8, 114, 134, 374 Protestant 11, 44–5, 46, 61, 64, 87, 98, 134, 301, 305–9, 306–9, 310–11 records 19–20 and Restoration settlement 133, 228, 300, 301–35, 336–7, 338 reversion to Crown 69 and role of aristocracy 66 and status 46, 48–9, 65, 68, 71, 74, 83, 361

3697_Index.indd 651

651

and succession 35 surrender and regrant 31–3, 34, 61, 64, 72, 106, 130, 158, 163, 225, 476 and Williamite settlement 335, 478 see also agriculture; expropriation; income; plantation; tenants; tenure landlords, improving 35–6, 361–2, 372–80, 388, 397, 476 landscape, anglicization 133, 477 Lane, Dorcas (née Brabazon), marriage 191, 194 Lane, George (1st viscount Lanesborough): and Irish Parliament 590 landholdings 91, 312, 371 marriages 191, 194 and Ormond 55–6 and Restoration settlement 616 Lane, James, 2nd viscount Lanesborough 590 Lane of Lanesborough, extinction of line 59 Laud, William, archbishop of Canterbury 150, 216, 438, 439 law 224–30 abuses 228–30 and anglicization of Ireland 212 English 33–4, 212, 224, 226, 275 Gaelic customary law 225 and legal expenditure 414–16 martial law 223, 257 and trial by peers 70, 80–2 Lawrence, Richard 55, 66, 68, 76, 368, 383–4, 416–17 lawyers 15, 46–7, 48, 52–3, 226–7, 415–16, 441 and Parliament of 1640–1 244 see also Inns of Court Le Power see Power, Richard, 6th baron Le Power; Power of Tyrone leases xx, 98–9 length 105, 112, 116, 120–1, 294–5, 294, 377 upgrading 415 Lecale see Cromwell, Edward, 3rd baron Lecale; Cromwell, Thomas, 1st viscount Lecale and 1st earl of Ardglass Leerssen, Joep 68 Leinster: articles of Leinster 288, 290, 300 landholdings in 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 109, 305 and rebellion of 1641 261, 271, 285 urban settlement 381 Lely, Sir Peter 252, 412, Plate 5

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652

Index

Lennox see Stuart, James, 1st duke Leslie, Henry, archdeacon of Down 155–6, 189 letters patent xx, 31, 69, 74, 86, 106, 129, 132, 214, 333 life expectancy 452 lifestyles 361, 389 Limerick, Treaty (1691) 357 lineage 14, 21, 49–50, 85, 419–47 cadet branches 35, 48, 53, 62, 95, 109–11, 378, 420–1 and children 420, 428–33, 447 and family trees 73–4 and honour 72–3, 83 kinship and clientage networks 419, 420–8 and memorialization 467 and obligation 112, 136, 193, 225, 420, 432 see also lordship Liscarroll, battle (1642) 255, 266–7, 451 Lismore castle (seat of earl of Cork) 105, 264, 265–6, 403, 407, Plate 19 litigation by peers 123, 182, 225, 228, 415–16 by baroness of Offaly 35, 43, 415 Little, Patrick 75, 156, 171, 197, 244 Locke, John 439 Lodge, John 16 Loftus, Adam, 1st viscount Lisburn 451, 590 Loftus, Adam, 1st viscount Loftus of Ely 50, 603 education 440 income 364, 375–6 and industrialization 382 and Irish Parliament 590 landholdings 88, 381, 572 as lawyer 46, 49, 226–7 legal expenditure 414–15 as lord justice 219, 226 and rebellion of 1641 263, 273 and Wentworth 227, 240, 241, 243 Loftus, Adam, Archbishop of Armagh 46, 226, 564 n.155 Loftus, Arthur 196 Loftus, Arthur, 3rd viscount Loftus of Ely 590 Loftus, Dorothy (née Boyle) 196, 259 Loftus, Edward, 2nd viscount Loftus of Ely: and Irish Parliament 590, 611 landholdings 371 as military leader 253 and poll tax 608

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Loftus of Ely, extinction of line 59 Loftus, Jane, viscountess Loftus of Ely 205 Lombard, Peter 137 London: great houses 350 growth 362 predominance 336, 350 as trading centre 383 see also court, royal; Parliament, English Londonderry see Ridgeway of Londonderry; Ridgeway, Robert, 2nd earl; Ridgeway, Thomas, 1st earl Londonderry, as plantation town 119, 382 Longford see Aungier of Longford lord deputies of Ireland, status 77, 218–19 lord presidents 220, 349 lords justices 219, 222, 226, 230, 246–8 and 1641 rebellion 257–8, 260, 365, 366 and Restoration settlement 327 lords of the Pale 36–7, 138, 143, 197, 224, 236, 244, 246 and Confederation of Kilkenny 276 and landholdings 305 and rebellion of 1641 257, 259–60, 365 lordship: and anglicization 31–3 Ireland as 31–3, 234 medieval 21, 85, 108, 134, 136, 362, 419, 425, 446–7, 476 and private armies 29–30, 425–6 as service nobility 49–50 see also clientage; hospitality; lineage; patronage Louth see Plunkett, Mathew; Plunkett, Oliver love, and marriage 173, 201 Lowther, Sir Gerald (lawyer) 294, 416 Loyal Formulary (1661) 139 Lucas, Thomas (architect) 409 Lynch, Roebuck (lawyer) 415, 528 n.90 Lynne, William (agent) 126–7 Lynnegar, Charles (historian) 473 Mac an Bhaird, Eoghan Ruadh (poet) 137 Mac Bruaideadha, Tadhg (poet) 469 McCartan, Phelim 122 MacCarthy, Callaghan, 3rd earl of Clancarthy 162, 192, 590 MacCarthy, Charles, 1st viscount Muskerry 48 death 162 household 425 and Irish Parliament 590 kinship links 108

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Index

landholdings 88, 107, 302 marriage 108, 192–3 and religion 43, 166 MacCarthy, Charles James, 2nd earl of Clancarthy 315, 367, 445, 590, 611 MacCarthy of Clancarthy 3, 33, 54, 62 forfeiture of title 496 n.195 MacCarthy, Cormac, Lord Muskerry 469 MacCarthy, Donagh, 2nd viscount Muskerry (later 1st earl of Clancarthy) 603 and Catholicism 144, 154, 158, 265, 315 and Confederation of Kilkenny 275, 276, 278, 328 death 456, 469 debts 378 in exile 282–3, 315 income 366–7, 368 and Irish Parliament of 1640–1 242, 245, 246 and Irish Parliament of 1661–6 339, 340–1, 346, 590, 611 kinship links 56 landholdings 302, 303, 304, 308, 309, 311, 312, 315–16, 370, 373, 572 leadership 265 marriage 366, 421, 422 and military service 354 portrait 252, Plate 7 and rebellion of 1641 250, 253–4, 260, 262, 264, 265–6 and Restoration settlement 299, 314–16, 328, 346, 367, 616 and war crimes charges 81, 83, 283–4 will 451 MacCarthy, Donough, 4th earl of Clancarthy 590 landholdings 93 royal service 352, 356, 357 MacCarthy, Ellen (Helena; née Butler), viscountess Muskerry 144, 265, 367, 421–4, 422, 423, 424, 463 MacCarthy, Ellen (née Roche), viscountess Muskerry 289 MacCarthy, Helen 148 MacCarthy, Justin, 1st viscount Mountcashel 56–7, 162, 188, 355, 356, 591 MacCarthy, Margaret (née O’Brien), viscountess Muskerry 108, 265, 367 MacColla, Alasdair 271 MacCurtain, Margaret 155 MacDonnell of Antrim 3, 4, 69 MacDonnell, Alexander, 3rd earl of Antrim:

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653

and Catholicism 357 and Confederation of Kilkenny 275 death 463 and Irish Parliament 591 longevity 456 marriage 189, 198, 200, 327 and William of Orange 356 MacDonnell, Alice, countess of Antrim 263, 264, 365 MacDonnell, Elizabeth (née Annesley), countess of Antrim 189, 198, 200, 309n., 327 MacDonnell, James 205 MacDonnell, Katherine (née Manners), duchess of Buckingham: and Catholicism 147, 155 and marriage 203, 216 miscarriages 430 and royal court 51, 216, 326 MacDonnell, Randal, 1st earl of Antrim 5, 41–2, 603 as Catholic 117, 139, 145, 153, 154–5 death and burial 458 and dynastic marriages 185–6, 188, 194–5, 394 and education 434 expenditure 394–5, 406, 416 household 425 and Irish Parliament 591 and knight’s service 69–70 landholdings 89, 118–20, 134 and local justice 228 marriage 191, 203 and military service 224, 252, 425 and moneylending 394 portrait 252 Scottish heritage 7, 48, 85 status 62 and Ulster plantation 47, 118–20 and wardships 161–2 wealth 120, 367, 394 see also Dunluce castle MacDonnell, Randal, 2nd earl of Antrim (later 1st marquis) 460 and Confederation of Kilkenny 275, 276–7, 325 and Cromwellian land settlement 280, 291–3 and Cromwellians 282, 284–5, 325 debts 326–7, 390–1, 392, 395, 416, 446 education 436 and family history 18, 473 income 365, 368, 372, 390–1

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654

Index

MacDonnell, Randal, 2nd earl of Antrim (cont...) and Irish Parliament of 1661–6 339, 591, 611 landholdings 88–9, 93, 118, 120–1, 122, 134, 216, 285, 291–3, 302, 303, 304, 308, 309, 370, 572 improvement 372, 375 marriages 189, 216 and poll tax 607 and rebellion of 1641 250, 252, 253–6, 257–8, 261, 263–4, 270–1 and Restoration settlement 324–7, 344, 368, 616 revenues 292 and royal court 51 and royal service 445 status 54 see also Dunluce castle; Glenarm castle MacDonnell, Rose (née O’Neil), marchioness of Antrim: death 456 education 155, 434 as landowner 289, 290 marriage 189, 410 personal piety 155–6, 189 and Restoration land settlement 325–6 and running of estate 201–2 McGrath, Bríd 527 n.63 MacHardy, Karin 22, 480 McKenny, Kevin 87, 301 Macroom castle (seat of MacCarthy viscounts) 108, 316 McTeig, Brian (priest) 145 Magennis, Arthur, 1st viscount Iveagh 48 and Irish Parliament 236, 591 landholdings 121–2, 572 purchase of title 43, 121 wardship of heir 121–2, 158, 438 will 451 Magennis, Arthur, 3rd viscount Iveagh 603 and Confederation of Kilkenny 275, 277, 278 debts 391, 417 and Irish Parliament 591, 612 landholdings 88, 117, 303, 305 and rebellion of 1641 122, 261, 270, 532 n.67 and Restoration settlement 299, 330, 331–2, 332, 344, 416, 616 Magennis, bishop of Down and Connor 145, 146 Magennis, Brian, 5th viscount Iveagh 591 Magennis, Sir Hugh 121

3697_Index.indd 654

Magennis, Hugh, 2nd viscount Iveagh 162, 591 education 121–2, 438 landholdings 368–9, 368 Magennis, Hugh, 4th viscount Iveagh 591 Magennis of Iveagh, forfeiture of title 496 n.195 Magennis, Mary (née Bellew), viscountess Iveagh 87, 270 Magennis, Sarah (née O’Neill), viscountess Iveagh 87, 122, 331 Maguire of Enniskillen, and Catholicism 145 Maguire, Brian Roe, 1st baron Enniskillen 43, 130, 591 Maguire, Connor, 2nd baron Enniskillen 591, 603 and 1641 rebellion 54, 70, 130–1, 246, 257, 261, 270, 438, 532 n.67 and Confederate Wars 277 debts 130, 391, 405–6, 417 education 435, 438 execution 131, 453 exile 357 and Irish Parliament 591 landholdings 88, 117, 303, 305, 572 marriage 130 and military service 355 Maguire, Rory 130, 270 Malcolmson, Anthony 171 Manning, Roger 223 manors 99 mantles 30, 406, 412 markets and fairs 124, 382 marriage 169–207 age at 182–4, 429 contracts 171, 414 and conversion 188 and courtship 174–8 economic importance 172, 193–201, 206, 421, 447 as feudal incident xix, 70 frequency 178–82, 179 Gaelic customs 171–2 geographical origin of brides 184–6, 184, 477 and honour 190 and inflation of honours 41, 44, 68, 190 intermarriage 54, 65, 83, 170, 184–5, 190, 195–7, 217, 340–1, 351, 482 and landholding 93, 104, 109–11, 206–7, 316–17, 324 as means of anglicization 12, 171–2 mixed 176–7, 187–9

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Index

and relationships 201–6 social status of brides 190–3, 190, 192 studies 21 see also children; women marriage settlements: and Cromwellian settlement 286, 300 and expenditure 413–14 and legal expenditure 414 and Restoration land settlement 310 threats to 202 and younger sons 180–1, 182, 195, 414 Martin, Richard (lawyer) 415, 528 n.90 Massareene see Clotworthy, John, 1st viscount; Clotworthy-Skeffington, John, 2nd viscount Massari, Dionysius (papal envoy) 443 Mathew, Eleanor (née Butler) 372 Mathew, George 372, 423, 424 Mathews, Toby, of Thurles 441, 454 Maynooth castle 161, 259, 407, 408, 409 Mayo see Bourke, Theobald Meath see Brabazon merchants 15, see also commerce Meredith, Sir Robert 240 Mervyn, Sir Audley 333 Middleton, Geoffrey (chaplain) 150 military revolution 74, 252–3, 272 Milton, John 434 mistresses 172, 201, 203–5 mobility, social 461 and credit 393–4 and government office 218 and land 84, 134, 280, 300, 334, 479 and the law 226, 227–8 and marriage 190–1 and military service 253, 353, 420 and title 3, 11, 49, 54, 62, 64 monarchy see Stuart monarchy monasteries, dissolution 84, 93–4, 109 Monck, Gen. George, 1st duke of Albemarle 298, 301 moneylending 362, 364, 374–5, 378–81 by women 380 Monro, Robert (Scottish commander) 270–1, 272, 273 Montgomery, Catherine (née Jones), countess Mount Alexander 149, 549 n.44 Montgomery, Elizabeth (née Shaw), viscountess Montgomery of the Ards 201 Montgomery, Hugh, 1st viscount Montgomery of the Ards 53 death and burial 466 education of children 443

3697_Index.indd 655

655

and Irish Parliament 236, 592 landholdings 573 marriage 201 and military service 426 and Presbyterianism 148 Scottish origins 47, 50 and Ulster plantation 122–3 wealth 367, 368 Montgomery, Hugh, 2nd earl of Mount Alexander: death 451 debts 392, 394 and Irish Parliament 592 and Restoration settlement 308, 310, 312, 316, 615 Montgomery, Hugh, 2nd viscount Montgomery of the Ards 603 and Cromwellian court 282 and Cromwellian land settlement 296 and Irish Parliament 592 landholdings 88, 117, 373 marriage 201 and poll tax 607 as poll-tax commissioner 296 and rebellion of 1641 258, 270 and restoration of Charles II 298 and Solemn League and Covenant 273 and transplantation 281, 287 Montgomery, Hugh, 3rd viscount Montgomery of the Ards (later earl of Mount Alexander) 51 children 432 death and burial 181, 316, 454, 466, 470 debts 391 education 443 income 368 and Irish Parliament of 1661–6 339, 341, 592, 612 landholdings 91, 371 and Presbyterianism 148–9 Montgomery, Jean (née Alexander), viscountess Montgomery 201 Montgomery of Mount Alexander: extinction of title 59 family history 8, 18, 473 wardship of heirs 158 Montgomery, Sir William 181, 466 Montrose, marquis 271 Moore, Charles, 2nd earl of Drogheda 414, 592 Moore, Charles, 2nd viscount Drogheda 603 and Cromwellian land settlement 295–6 death 451 debts 414

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656

Index

Moore, Charles, 2nd viscount Drogheda (cont...) income 366 and Irish Parliament of 1640–1 245, 592 landholdings 45, 88, 91, 97, 98, 573 and Wars of the Three Kingdoms 257, 258–9 Moore, Garret, 1st viscount Drogheda 42, 50 and Chichester 78–9, 219 and Irish Parliament 592 landholdings 53 marriage 183 and military service 45, 49, 114 Moore, Henry, 1st earl of Drogheda 54, 517 n.92 and Catholicism 140 and Irish Parliament of 1661–6 339, 340, 592, 612 landholdings 370 and military service 354 and poll tax 607 and Restoration settlement 323 Moore, Roger 141, 248 Moore, Sarah (née Boyle) 183, 196, 244, 430 Moore, Thomas 183, 196, 455 Moore-Hamilton, Henry, 3rd earl of Drogheda 413–14, 592 Morris (Morrice), Thomas (chaplain) 152–3, 349, 455, 470–1, 567 n.59 Morris, Sir William 310, 327, 343 mortgages xx and alienation of land 106–7 and credit system 380, 392, 394 defaults on 405–6 and earl of Cork 104, 378 and entails 94 and Restoration settlement 310, 323, 399, 477 Moryson, Fynes 33–4, 225 Mountgarret, viscountcy see Butler of Mountgarret Mountjoy castle 257 Mountjoy Fort, baron (later 1st earl of Newport) 39 Mountnorris see Annesley, Francis, 1st baron Munster: and Church of Ireland 151 commerce 381 and Confederate Wars 273, 276 Desmond rebellions 100–1 landholdings in 86, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 102, 107, 109–13, 305 lords president and council 220–1, 222–3, 227, 267, 349

3697_Index.indd 656

and plantation 12, 19, 33, 100, 101–4, 106, 125 and rebellion of 1641 261, 264–8, 271, 273, 404 Navigation Act (1663) 346, 351, 385 Needham, Robert, 1st viscount Kilmorey 38 Netterville, Elizabeth (née Weston), viscountess 44, 180–1, 286, 364 Netterville, John, 2nd viscount Netterville of Dowth 592 landholdings 91, 286 marriage 180–1, 286, 329, 364 Netterville, John, 4th viscount Netterville of Dowth 593 Netterville, Mary, viscountess 263, 364, 374 Netterville, Nicholas, 1st viscount Netterville of Dowth 162, 169, 604 and Catholicism 143 and Confederation of Kilkenny 275 education 441 in exile 282 income 364 and Irish Parliament of 1640–1 246, 592 and Irish Parliament of 1661–6 338, 343, 612 landholdings 44, 91, 97, 98, 373, 374, 573 and military service 355, 523 n.81 provision for children 180–1 and rebellion of 1641 260, 532 n.67 Netterville, Nicholas, 3rd viscount Netterville of Dowth: and Irish Parliament 593 and Restoration settlement 299, 324, 329–30, 369, 615 Netterville, Robert (priest) 142–3 New British history 22 Nicholas, Edward (secretary of state) 282 Nicholls, Kenneth 19 Nine Years War (1594–1603) 6, 444 and Irish loyalists 36, 43–6 and native Irish peers 9, 31, 34, 253 and New English loyalists 49 and Old English loyalists 106, 114, 222 and plantations 100–1, 125–6 nobility: and government 4, 12–13, 274–5 and honour 11–12 origins 4 size 4–5 see also peerage; service nobility Nugent of Delvin and Westmeath 3, 29, 60, 114

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Index

Nugent, Christopher, 3rd baron Delvin 143 Nugent, Gilbertus Fulgentius 139 Nugent, Jane, countess of Westmeath 263, 364, 425 Nugent, Nicholas (priest) 142 Nugent, Richard, 1st earl of Westmeath 36, 44, 593, 604 and Catholicism 138–9, 142, 425 and children 435 and family marriages 194 household 424–5 income 364 and Irish Parliament 593 landholdings 88, 97, 98, 131, 303, 305, 373, 572 and military service 224, 253, 523 n.81 and Old English peers 237–8, 239 purchase of title 36, 44 and rebellion of 1641 263, 273 Nugent, Richard, 2nd earl of Westmeath: and arms 426 and Confederation of Kilkenny 274, 276, 277–8 and Cromwellian settlement 285–6 household 425 income 367 and Irish Parliament of 1641–7 272 and Irish Parliament of 1661–6 339, 341, 344, 593, 612 landholdings 91, 97, 286, 288, 308 and Restoration settlement 299, 324, 330, 344, 367, 615 and transplantation 289 Nugent, Richard, 3rd earl of Westmeath 357, 593 Nugent, Richard (friar) 146 Nugent, Robert (Jesuit priest) 143 Nugent, Thomas, 1st baron Nugent of Riverston 56, 356 Nugent, Thomas, 4th earl of Westmeath 593 Ó Bruadair, Daibhí (poet) 67, 68, 313–14, 469, 475 Ó Buachalla, Breandán 6, 137 Ó Ceallacháin, Dónall (poet) 426–7 Ó Gnímh, Fear Flatha (poet) 70, 410–11, 475 Ó Siochrú, Micheál 276 oath of association 145, 275–6 oath of supremacy 5, 49, 70, 125, 136, 211 obligation 112, 136, 193, 225, 420, 432 O’Brien, Barnabas, 6th earl of Thomond 265, 604

3697_Index.indd 657

657

burial 463 income 365–6, 368 and Irish Parliament of 1640–1 237, 593 landholdings 88, 91, 93, 98, 107, 113, 134, 288, 305, 306, 373, 572 marriage 175, 185 and rebellion of 1641 267–8 O’Brien of Clare, forfeiture of title 496 n.195 O’Brien, Connor, 2nd viscount Clare 594 O’Brien, Connor, 3rd earl of Thomond 52 O’Brien, Daniel, 1st viscount Clare 305 and Catholicism 165–6, 299, 352–3 as confederate 52, 230 and Irish Parliament of 1661–6 338, 594, 612 O’Brien, Daniel, 3rd viscount Clare and Irish Parliament 594 landholdings 53, 304, 322, 370 and Protestantism 352–3 and Restoration settlement 308, 309, 312, 615 O’Brien, Dermot, 5th baron Inchiquin 34, 159, 229, 593 and Catholicism 142 O’Brien, Donough, 4th earl of Thomond 34, 175 death 465, 469 household 425 and the law 230 as lord president of Munster 220–1, 593 marriage 186 and Munster plantation 103, 158, 374 as Protestant 32, 158, 425, 465 O’Brien, Henry, 5th earl of Thomond: education 436 household 425 and Irish Parliament 593 landholdings 305 marriage 41 and Protestantism 43 wealth 230, 366 will 366, 466–7 O’Brien, Henry, 7th earl of Thomond: English houses 350 and Irish Parliament of 1661–6 340, 593, 612 landholdings 97, 306, 308, 312, 370 and textile industry 384 O’Brien of Inchiquin 3, 60, 62 O’Brien, James (son of 2nd earl of Inchiquin) 386 O’Brien, Margaret (née Boyle), countess of Inchiquin 198, 199, 318, 340, 445

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658

Index

O’Brien, Murrough, 1st earl of Thomond 32 and wardship 158, 159 O’Brien, Murrough, 6th baron and 1st earl of Inchiquin 445, 604 and Confederate Wars 146, 273, 277, 287 and Cromwellian settlement 287 and earl of Orrery 318–19, 341 in exile 282, 283 income 369 and Irish Parliament of 1661–6 339, 593, 612 landholdings 85, 88, 107, 304, 371, 572 as lord president of Munster 220, 267, 385 and military service 354 portrait 252, 428, Plate 8 and Protestantism 43, 54 and rebellion of 1641 266–7 and Restoration settlement 306, 308, 309, 311, 312, 319, 615 reversion to Catholicism 166–7, 189, 287, 305, 319, 385 and trade 385–6 O’Brien of Thomond 3, 4, 61, 73, 85 and Protestantism 7, 151 status 62, 65, 77 O’Brien, William, 2nd earl of Inchiquin 403, 445 and Irish Parliament 593 marriage 198, 199, 318 and military service 354, 386 as Protestant 386, 444 and trade 385–6 O’Brien, William, 3rd earl of Inchiquin 198, 386 O’Cahan, Margaret (servant) 190 O’Cleary, Michael (scholar) 145 O’Connell, Robert 159 O’Dempsey, bishop of Leighlin 146 O’Dempsey, Brian 205 O’Dempsey of Clanmalier, forfeiture of title 496 n.195 O’Dempsey, Lewis, 2nd viscount Clanmalier 604 and Confederate Association 277, 278 income 369 and Irish Parliament 594, 610 landholdings 88, 303, 305, 572 and rebellion of 1641 261, 262 and Restoration settlement 332, 333, 345–6, 615

3697_Index.indd 658

and war-crimes charges 284 O’Dempsey, Maximilian, 3rd viscount Clanmalier 594 O’Dempsey, Terence, 1st viscount Clanmalier 43, 48, 594 O’Dogherty, Sir Cahir, revolt (1608) 101, 222 O’Doherty, Lady 142 O’Donnell, Rory, 1st earl of Tyrconnell 34 O’Donnell of Tyrconnell 3, 30 O’Ferrall, Richard 67, 68, 146 O’Flaherty, Morrough 171 O’Keeffe, Eleanor 171, 419 Old Ross, battle (1643) 258 Oliver, Isaac (miniaturist) 412, Plate 4 O’Mallun, Dermot, 1st baron Glanmullen 38 O’Neill, Con, 1st earl of Tyrone 32, 122 O’Neill, Daniel 206, 309, 310, 326, 329, 344 O’Neill, Henry 344, 394, 410 O’Neill, Hugh, 2nd earl of Tyrone 23 O’Neill, Hugh, 3rd earl of Tyrone 23, 34, 74, 251, 271 O’Neill, Matthew, 1st baron Dungannon 32 O’Neill, Owen Roe 255, 271, 278, 286 O’Neill, Sir Phelim 130, 257 O’Neill of Tyrone 3, 30, 32, 43, 55 orders, religious 141, 143–5, 146–7, 154 Ormond, earls and dukes of see Butler Orrery, earls see Boyle, Lionel, 3rd earl; Boyle Roger, 2nd earl; Boyle, Roger, baron Broghill Ossory, earl see Butler, Thomas, 6th earl Oxford University 437–9, 447 Pairlement Chloinne Tomais 68, 190 Palmer, William 71 Parliament, English: House of Commons 350–1 and Irish peers 13, 31, 56, 64, 217, 235, 242, 246–7, 281, 351–2 and Irish trade 351–2 Jacobite (1689) 335 Protectorate 297–8 supremacy 234, 336, 340 and Wars of the Three Kingdoms 272–3 Parliament, Irish 70, 232–49 1613–15 28, 76–7, 222–3, 226, 233, 235–7, 477 1634–5 227, 233–4, 238–9, 451 1640–1 227, 233–4, 239–45, 260, 338, 404 1641–7 272–4

3/6/12 4:13 PM



Index

1661–6 13, 227–8, 233–4, 336, 337–41, 350 1689 (Patriot Parliament) 56, 57, 233, 356 absentee peers 38–9, 237, 238–9, 243, 340 and Catholic peers 232, 235–6, 242, 246 committee of privileges 339 and Confederate General Assembly 274–5 historiography 21 House of Commons 235, 248 1634–5 238 1640–1 243, 247 1661–6 337, 339, 343–4 House of Lords 234–5, 237, 248 1634–5 238–9 1640–1 242, 247 1641–7 272 1661–6 302, 337–9, 341–6, 608–13 and income 362 and inflation of honours 238–9 and opposition peers 235–6, 240, 243–4, 245–8 and Restoration 298–9 speaker 233, 236, 333 see also proxies Parrat, William (craftsman) 119 Parsons, Laurence 493 n.103 Parsons, Sir William 34, 128, 161, 247 pastoralism 85 patent rolls 86 patronage: cultural 15, 80, 347, 349, 513 n.171 domestic 424 political 219–20, 222, 227, 235, 301–35, 342, 417–18, 419, 421, 439 religious 142–6, 166 royal 213–17, 219, 477, 479 see also clientage Payne, Valentine (factor) 161 peerage, English: and children 429 and debt 389, 391 incomes 366 inflation of honours 37–9 peerage, Irish: absentee 6, 37–41, 50, 54, 243, 340 Catholic 2, 4, 6–7, 10–11, 12, 27, 34, 42–3, 417–18 native Irish 138–9, 146–8, 186, 417 Old English 62, 137–9, 146–8, 299, 417 and common European culture 22–3 definitions 3–5, 66–7

3697_Index.indd 659

659

elevations 38–9, 41–3, 50–1, 55, 57, 62, 355 and English titles 36, 54, 68–9 exiles 280, 281–3, 299–300, 310, 315, 319, 328, 330, 357 extinctions 31, 33, 43, 47, 53–7, 59–60, 61, 95, 479, 482 forfeiture of titles 60, 62 and government 4, 12–13, 218–24 historiography 20–3, 475–6, 479–80 and knight’s service tenure 32, 70, 109, 121, 157 and military service 27–8, 49, 57, 224, 251–5, 278, 353–4, 420, 444–5 native Irish 2, 4–8, 29, 42–3, 48, 50, 64 and honour 72 households 425 and inflation of honours 34 and intermarriage 184, 187, 190, 195–7 landholdings 85, 88–9, 108, 130, 134, 311, 478 and Parliament 232, 235, 356 and royal court 214–16 New English 2, 4–5, 45–8, 49–50, 52, 72 and administration 220 and Englishness 8, 474 and inflation of honours 2 and Irish Parliament 238–9 landholdings 88, 89 and marriage 187, 190 and Nine Years War 47 and parliament 232, 237 and Presbyterianism 135, 148–50, 156 and role of aristocracy 66 and royal court 216–18 social status 46, 48–9, 65, 68, 71, 74 Old English 2, 4, 47–8, 49–50, 52, 72 as Anglo-Norman 6–8, 29–30, 32, 35 elevations 42, 62 and honour and status 65, 74, 83 inflation of honours 43–4 and Irish Parliament 11, 21, 64, 66, 70, 232–3, 235–6, 239, 240, 243, 248, 356 landholdings 85, 88, 95, 98, 311, 478 and local office 218 and marriage 184, 187, 191 as military leaders 255, 278 and Nine Years War 36 and rebellion of 1641 260 and Restoration 299, 311 and royal court 214–15, 237 and succession 35 and transplantations 288

3/6/12 4:13 PM

660

Index

peerage, Irish: Old English (cont...) privileges 71 process of ennoblement 69–70 Protestant 2–3, 4, 7, 12, 21, 38 native Irish converts 157–8 New English 11, 46, 61, 64, 134 Old English 44–5, 64, 311 old Protestant 281, 294–300, 334 and religion: church attendance 151 personal piety 153–7 see also Catholic and Protestant, above resident 6, 39, 361, 372 in 1603 34–7 in 1628 41–7 in 1641 47–50 in 1670 and 1685 54–7 royalist 272–3, 277–8, 280 and self-aggrandizement 3 and society 66–71 stratification 62 and succession 31, 35, 57–61, 69, 206 Tudor 29–34, 72 in Ulster 117–21 see also honours, inflation; income; landholding; nobility; precedence; service nobility peerage, Scottish 2–3, 4, 8–9, 56, 85, 417, 479 age at death 452 and Covenanters 148, 256 extinctions 59–60, 61 incomes 366 and inflation of honours 37, 50 landholdings 89, 122 and marriage 183, 185, 191 military peers 223 and parliament 232 and plantation 132, 134 pensions, royal 214, 222, 364 Pepys, Samuel 325, 351 Percival, Sir Philip 240 Petty, Sir William 170, 205, 206, 331, 469 and Dublin 347 surveys 19, 297 Philip III of Spain 157 Philip, Sir Thomas, drawing of Carrickfergus Plate 15 Philips, Katherine 75, 178, 432 Philpott, Anthony 82 physicians 15 piety, personal 153–7 plantation 9–10, 38, 100–33, 301, 476 formal 125–31 informal 101, 113, 121–5

3697_Index.indd 660

in Munster 12, 19, 33, 101–4, 106, 125, 215, 374 and native freeholders 125–6 of Scottish Protestants 118, 122–3, 126–7, 132–3 in Ulster 12, 19, 28, 39, 47, 100, 101, 113–17, 122, 125–9, 382, 407–8 see also servitors; transplantation; undertakers plantation acres xviii, 20, 39, 56, 129, 160, 329–30, 496 n.175 plantation towns: development 119–20, 123, 126–8, 132, 133, 382 and parliament 235 Plunkett, Anne (née Hamilton), baroness of Louth 188 Plunkett archives 17 Plunkett, bishop of Ardagh 146 Plunkett, Christopher, 2nd earl of Fingal 595, 604 death 451 and Irish Parliament 595 landholdings 303, 305, 572 marriage 142 Plunkett, Christopher, 8th baron Dunsany 37 Plunkett, Christopher, 8th baron Killeen 594 Plunkett, Christopher, 10th baron Dunsany 357, 594 Plunkett of Dunsany 29, 60 landholdings 91, 97, 98, 114 Plunkett, James (vicar general) 143 Plunkett of Killeen 29, 60, 440–1 Plunkett of Louth 62, 114 Plunkett, Luke, 3rd earl of Fingal: and Confederate Wars 277 debts 411 and Irish Parliament 338, 595, 612 landholdings 88, 97, 308 marriage 204 and rebellion of 1641 254, 260, 261–2, 365 and Restoration settlement 299, 314, 324, 327–8, 616 travels 445 Plunkett, Luke, 9th baron Killeen and 1st earl of Fingal 441, 523 n.81 elevation 42 and Irish Parliament 594 landholdings 98 marriage 188

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Index

Plunkett, Mabel (née Barnewall), countess of Fingal 290 Plunkett, Mary (née MacCarthy), countess of Fingal 204 Plunkett, Mary (née MacDonnell), baroness Louth 194–5, 290, 330 Plunkett, Mathew, 5th baron Louth: and Catholicism 154 and Irish Parliament 594 Plunkett, Mathew, 7th baron Louth: and Catholicism 154, 188 and Irish Parliament 594 and Restoration settlement 330 will 461 Plunkett, Sir Nicholas 289, 441 Plunkett, Oliver, 1st baron Louth 31 landholdings 573 Plunkett, Oliver, 4th baron Louth 138, 594 Plunkett, Oliver, 6th baron Louth 604 and Confederate Wars 277 debts 379 education 442 and Irish Parliament 338, 594, 612 landholdings 88 marriage 194–5 and military service 355 and rebellion of 1641 260, 532 n.67 and Restoration settlement 330, 369, 616 Plunkett, Oliver, 8th baron Louth: and Catholicism 154 death 454 and debt 390 and Irish Parliament 594 Plunkett, Oliver, archbishop of Armagh 140, 147, 198, 229, 321, 434 Plunkett, Patrick, 9th baron Dunsany 594, 605 and Confederate Wars 277 debts 411 and Irish Parliament 594, 614 landholdings 88, 573 and post-war estates 293 and rebellion of 1641 260, 261, 263, 274 and Restoration settlement 299, 330–1, 332, 343, 355, 369, 616 Plunkett, Peter, 4th earl of Fingal 357, 595 pluralism, religious 136 poetry: bardic 7, 21, 64, 66–8, 70, 71–2, 410–11, 469–70 Latin 159 politics: and Catholic peers 337 and land 302

3697_Index.indd 661

661

and patronage 219–20, 301–35, 342, 417–18, 419, 421, 439 political careers 234, 241–2, 575–98 post-Restoration 336–57 and power 211 and Restoration land settlement 341–6 see also court, royal; Kilkenny, confederation; parliament, English; parliament, Irish poll tax (1660) 290, 293, 606–7 commissioners 296 Pollock, Linda 73, 78, 82 Pope, William, 1st earl of Downe 39 popish plots 55, 82, 140, 164, 198, 230, 270, 352–4, 471–2 Portmore House (seat of Viscount Conway) 408–9 portraits 412–13, 428 Portumna castle (seat of earl of Clanricarde) 192, 215, 240, 251, 396, 408, Plate 14 power, and gender 16 Power, Catherine (née Fitzgerald) 183–4 Power, Dorothy (née Annesley), baroness Le Power 198, 317 Power, Henry, viscount Valentia 604 and Irish Parliament 595 landholdings 95–7, 97, 107, 114, 116, 573 military service 45 and textile industry 384 Power, John, 5th baron Le Power 32, 604 education 440 and Irish Parliament 595 landholdings 88, 293, 574 marriage 317 mental incapacity 241, 274 and poll tax 607 Power, John, Lord Decies 183–4, 198, 200 Power, Richard, 4th baron Le Power 36, 595 Power, Richard, 6th baron Le Power and 1st earl of Tyrone: and earl of Anglesey 55, 198, 317, 353, 463 and Irish Parliament 595, 612 and the law 229–30 marriage 200 and military service 354 and Popish plots 353 and Restoration settlement 345 Power of Tyrone, extinction of line 59 Powerscourt see Wingfield, Folliott, 1st viscount; Wingfield, Richard, 1st viscount

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662

Index

Poynings’ Law 39, 233–4, 356 precedence 32, 45, 47, 65, 76–7, 80, 219, 236 in Confederate General Assembly 274 in Irish Parliament 340 Prendergast, James 80 Presbyterianism: and native Irish peers 288 and New English peers 135, 148–50, 156 and transplantation 296 Prest, Wilfred 439 Preston, Anthony, 2nd viscount Tara 595 Preston of Gormanston 29, 60 Preston, Christopher, 4th viscount Gormanston 52, 271 Preston, Elizabeth (née Butler) 213, 422, 423 Preston, Frances (née Leake), viscountess Gormanston 329 Preston, Jenico, 5th viscount Gormanston: and Catholicism 36, 138, 143, 154 and Irish Parliament 595 private army 223–4 will 437, 461 Preston, Jenico, 7th viscount Gormanston: and Confederate Wars 277, 365 death 276 debts 411 education 435 in exile 282, 328 and Irish Parliament of 1640–1 242–3, 246, 595 and Irish Parliament of 1661–6 338, 612 landholdings 88 as magistrate 349–50 and military service 355, 357, 450 and Restoration settlement 299, 324, 328–9, 369, 616 Preston, Nicholas, 6th viscount Gormanston 271, 523 n.81, 604 expenditure 412 and Irish Parliament 237, 595 landholdings 97, 98, 573 and rebellion of 1641 258, 260, 261 Preston, Richard, baron Dingwall (later earl of Desmond) 40, 175, 213, 397, 422 Preston of Tara, extinction of line 59, 62 Preston, Thomas, 1st viscount Tara: death 453–4 education 442 in exile 282 and Irish Parliament 595 marriage 184–5, 202

3697_Index.indd 662

military service 52, 146, 271 Preston, Thomas, 3rd viscount Tara: education 442 and Irish Parliament 595, 612 and Restoration settlement 332, 338, 616 primogeniture xx, 10, 12, 14, 420, 478 in Bohemia 133, 479 and creation of large estates 84, 94 imposition 31, 32, 69 and legitimacy 171, 172 Privy Council, English 247, 349 Privy Council, Irish: and judiciary 225 members 220, 222–3, 349 Protestantism: and anglicization of Ireland 9–10, 27, 32, 38, 100, 433 and education 433–5, 441, 447 and extinction of lines 59–60, 61 and gentry 62 and honour 83 and inflation of honours 42–3, 54–5, 63 see also conversion Protestants: and Confederate Wars 272–3, 277 and English Civil War 8 and English peers 351 in exile 282 and Irish Parliament 231–2, 235–7, 238–9, 240–3, 245–6, 272, 337 and landholding 87, 88, 98, 301, 305–9, 306, 307, 308–9, 310–11 and military service 224, 253, 257–9, 353–5 old Protestant peers 281, 294–300, 334 and personal piety 155–7 and rebellion of 1641 250–1, 253–9, 262–70, 278 and Restoration settlement 297, 298–9, 301, 305–9, 306, 307, 308–9, 310–11, 322–3, 334, 337, 343, 346 and service nobility 5, 7–8, 11–12, 21, 27, 45, 50, 61, 64, 75, 218, 221 sincerity of conversions 164–7 and wardship 12, 136–7, 157–64 providentialism 153, 167 proxies: and 1613–15 Parliament 237 and 1634–5 Parliament 239 and 1640–1 Parliament 242–3, 247, 258 and 1661–6 Parliament 337, 340–1 Purcell, Elizabeth (née Butler) 421 Purcell, James, baron Loghmoe 421, 422 Purcell, Theobald, baron Loghmoe 254, 422

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Index

Purcell, Toby 372 Pynnar, Nicholas 129 Queries on Wentworth’s government 241, 243, 245, 247 quit-rent xx, 20, 295, 327, 345 Rainsford, Sir Richard 342 Rathmines, battle (1649) 254, 277, 388, 451 Raven, Thomas (cartographer) 123 Rawdon, Mary 176 Rawdon, Sir George 124, 331–2, 351, 372, 384–5, 394, 415–16, 481 Rawson, John, 1st viscount Clontarff 31 rebellion of 1641 257–61, 342, 481 and 12th earl of Ormond 112–13, 257–9, 365, 397–8 and Catholic aristocracy 5, 28, 54, 72, 122, 130–1, 166, 230–1, 253–4, 257–66 ceasefire of 1643 272 and destruction of property 365 history 471–2 impact 261–4, 279 and exile 281–2 on incomes 125, 132, 263, 270, 295, 364–6, 374, 377, 397–8, 404–5 on landholding 28–9, 50, 281, 294–5, 396 and transplantation 287–91 on urban development 382–3 and leadership 66, 252–4, 265, 267, 276–8, 438 and politics 272–4 and Restoration pardon 299 and war-crimes tribunals 264, 280, 283–4 see also depositions of 1641 rebellions, 16th-century 29, 31, 33, 36, 100 Reeve, George (secretary to Lord Inchiquin) 386 relief xix, 70 religion 135–68 and honour 83, 155, 156, 165, 167 and mixed marriages 176–7, 187–9 and personal piety 153–7 and pluralism 136 see also Catholicism; Church of England; Church of Ireland; Protestantism Remonstrance of 1661 (Loyal Formulary) 139, 340 rents: arrears 376–7 cash 363, 373, 401, 477

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663

Repeal Act (1689) 334–5 Restoration: and duke of Ormond 282, 302, 372 and inflation of honours 29, 51, 52–3, 54–5, 62 and Irish Catholics 139, 310, 337 and Irish Protestants 297, 298–9, 322 see also land settlement Rich, Charles, earl of Warwick, marriage 194, 196 Rich, Mary (née Boyle), countess of Warwick 173, 194, 196, 404, 432 Ridgeway, Elizabeth (née Weston), countess of Londonderry 44, 180, 204, 286, 364 Ridgeway of Londonderry, extinction of line 59 Ridgeway, Robert, 2nd earl of Londonderry 595 debts 391 landholdings 323, 573 marriage 204 Ridgeway, Robert, 4th earl of Londonderry 595 Ridgeway, Thomas, 1st earl of Londonderry 42, 45 daughter 177 and Irish Parliament 595 and marriage 172 offices 222 and plantation of Ulster 129–39, 381–2 Ridgeway, Weston, 3rd earl of Londonderry 371, 605 and Irish Parliament of 1661–6 338, 595, 612 landholdings 91, 127, 323, 371, 375 and rebellion of 1641 263 and Restoration settlement 322, 323 Rinuccini, GianBattista (papal nuncio) 142, 144–6, 277, 286 Roche, Col. David 333 Roche of Fermoy: creation 29 extinction of line 59, 62 Roche of Fermoy, David, 7th viscount, and Irish Parliament 236, 240, 241–2, 596 Roche of Fermoy, David, 9th viscount: education 434 income 369 and Irish Parliament of 1661–6 338, 596, 612 and Restoration settlement 332, 333 Roche of Fermoy, Ellen, viscountess 284

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Index

Roche of Fermoy, Joan, viscountess 182 Roche of Fermoy, John, 10th viscount 451, 596 Roche of Fermoy, Maurice, 8th viscount 572, 605 and Confederation of Kilkenny 275 and honour 182 and Irish Parliament of 1640–1 240, 241–2, 596 landholdings 90, 106–8, 107, 303, 305, 572 military service 36 mortgages 106–7, 380 and rebellion of 1641 262, 265–6, 532 n.67 and Restoration settlement 616 Roche of Fermoy, Ulick 104 Roper of Baltinglass, extinction of line 59 Roper, Cary, 3rd viscount Baltinglass: income 369 and Irish Parliament 596 and Restoration settlement 313 Roper, Thomas, 2nd viscount Baltinglass 46, 50, 436, 605 and commercial development 375, 384 and exile 281 and Irish Parliament of 1640–1 242, 246, 596 and Irish Parliament of 1661–6 596, 612, 616 landholdings 103–4, 573 military service 49 and Wars of the Three Kingdoms 257 Roper, Thomas, 1st viscount Baltinglass, and Irish Parliament 104, 384, 596 Rothe, David, bishop of Ossory 144 Rushworth, John 320 Rust, George, Dean of Connor 148, 466, 470 St John, Oliver, 1st viscount Grandison of Limerick, and inflation of honours 38, 39–40 St Lawrence of Howth 29, 60, 158, 185, 465 St Lawrence, Christopher, 9th baron Howth: and Irish Parliament 597 landholdings 95, 97, 114, 115 military service 444–5 and Moore of Drogheda 78–9 and Protestantism 164, 168 St Lawrence, Elizabeth (née Wentworth), baroness Howth 79, 182

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St Lawrence, Nicholas, 8th baron Howth 182, 523 n.81, 597 disgrace 36 and Irish Parliament 597 landholdings 573 St Lawrence, Nicholas, 10th baron Howth 597, 606 landholdings 88, 97 St Lawrence, Thomas, 11th baron Howth 597 St Lawrence, Thomas, 13th baron Howth 322–3, 323, 597 and Patriot Parliament 356 St Lawrence, William, 12th baron Howth: and commerce 383 and Irish Parliament of 1661–6 339, 597, 609, 611, 612 landholdings 371 and poll tax 607 St Leger, Anthony, lord deputy of Ireland 31, 72 St Leger, Sir William 43, 159 Sarsfield of Kilmallock, forfeiture of title 496 n.195 Sarsfield, David, 3rd viscount Kilmallock: exile 357 income 369 and Irish Parliament of 1661–6 341, 596, 613 landholdings 288, 290, 290 and poll tax 608 and Restoration settlement 332 Sarsfield, Dominic, 1st viscount Kilmallock 42 conversion 164 death 451 debts 378 and Irish Parliament 242–3, 246–7, 596 landholdings 102, 103 as lawyer 226, 227, 230, 523 n.108 and patronage 219 and viscountcy of Kinsale 43–4, 49, 77 wealth 68 Sarsfield, Dominic, 4th viscount Kilmallock 452, 596 Sarsfield, Patrick, 1st earl Lucan 57 Sarsfield, William, 2nd viscount Kilmallock 535 n.171, 605 and Catholicism 143 education 442 and Irish Parliament 596 landholdings 107, 573 scandal, and honour 82 Scotland:

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and Catholic orders 145 colonization of islands 113, 118, 125, 127 confederate invasion plans 270–1 and kinship links 420–1 nobility 4, 37, 47, 48, 50, 429 see also Bishops’ Wars; Covenanters Scott, Hamish 22, 94, 352, 353, 479 seisin xix, 70 sept xx and landholding 84 sermons, funeral 466, 470–1 service nobility 27–8, 474 and Catholics 2, 4, 5, 6–7, 10–11, 12, 23, 62, 73, 136 European 480 and honour 72–6 and New English peers 74 and Protestants 5, 7–8, 11–12, 21, 27, 45, 50, 61, 64, 75, 218, 221 see also administration; army; lawyers servitors 45, 131–2 in Ulster 114, 117, 125, 127–30 sex: in marriage 204–5 pre-marital 177 Shannon see Boyle, Francis, 1st viscount Shannon Sharpe, Kevin 232 Shepard, Alexandra 16 Shrule Bridge murders 269, 284 Simms, J. G. 87 slander cases 81 Slane see Fleming, Christopher; Fleming of Slane; Fleming, William smallpox 162, 175, 179, 339, 430, 432, 454, 455, 469 Smith, Sir Edward 342 Smith, Sir Thomas 33, 100 Snell, William (chaplain) 151 socage xx, 70, 98, 106, 122, 127, 131, 315 society: and aristocracy 66–71 Gaelic 172, 251 Solemn League and Covenant 48, 251, 267, 272, 273–4 Somerset, Thomas, 1st viscount Cashel 41, 159 sources, documentary 16–20, 21, 86–7 Southwell, Robert (secretary to 1st duke of Ormond) 456–7, 471 Spain: and Irish aristocracy 22, 138, 139, 205 threat of invasion from 139, 237

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665

speculators 84–6, 99, 134, 287, 291, 310, 396 and 1st earl of Cork 104–6, 476 gentry 296–7, 305 and New English peers 106–8, 125 Spenser, Edmund 33–4, 100, 228–9, 280 Stafford, Sir Thomas 177, 217, 403, 412 Stanihurst, Richard 433 State Papers Office 16 status, social: and conspicuous consumption 71, 361, 388, 389, 400 and land 46, 48–9, 65, 68, 71, 74, 83, 361 and wealth 361–2, 369 of women 190–3 statute staple xx, 378–80, 393–4 and marriage 195 records 19, 379, 393 staple bonds 116, 395, 397, 437 staple towns xx, 19, 380 Stewart of Castle Stewart, extinction of line 56, 59, 62 Stewart, Andrew, 1st baron of Castle Stewart: and industrial development 381 and Irish Parliament 235, 597 landholdings 88, 117, 127, 574 Scots origin 47, 126, 127 Stewart, Andrew, 2nd baron of Castle Stewart 148, 597 Stewart, Andrew, 3rd baron of Castle Stewart 605 and Irish Parliament 597 and Solemn League and Covenant 273 and Wars of the Three Kingdoms 273 Stewart, John, 5th baron of Castle Stewart and Irish Parliament 597, 613 and Restoration settlement 323 Stewart, Josias, 4th baron of Castle Stewart 597 Stewart, Sir William 56, 408 Stewart, William, 1st viscount Mountjoy 355, 408, 449, 451–2, 597 Stone, Lawrence 20–1, 22, 37, 366, 389, 431, 479, 517 n.81 Storrs, Christopher and Scott, Hamish 252 Strabane see Hamilton, James, 1st baron Strabane; Hamilton of Strabane Strafford, earl of see Wentworth, Thomas, 1st earl of Strafford Stuart, Esmé, 3rd duke of Lennox 160 Stuart, James, 4th duke of Richmond and Lennox 1–2, 185, 215–16, 246, 459

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Stuart monarchy: and anglicanism 12 and anglicization of Ireland 5, 9–11, 476–7 and Catholic aristocracy 5, 27, 34, 137–40, 334 and feudal incidents 70 and honour 68–9, 72–3, 77, 82 and the law 230–1 and political power of aristocracy 213 and Protestant aristocracy 27, 296, 298–9, 334 see also Charles I; Charles II; court, royal; James VI and I; James VII and II; Parliament, Irish subsidy assessments 361, 367–9, 368, 370 unpaid 395, 404 Suckling, Sir John 178 Taaffe of Carlingford, extinction of line 59 Taaffe, Francis, 3rd earl of Carlingford 442, 597 Taaffe, John, 1st viscount Taaffe of Corren 54, 67–8, 605 and Catholicism 146–7 and Confederation of Kilkenny 275, 276 debts 379, 380 in exile 282 and Irish Parliament 597 landholdings 44, 88, 573 and Wars of the Three Kingdoms 253, 255, 267 Taaffe, Nicholas, 2nd earl of Carlingford 357, 451, 597 Taaffe, Theobald, 1st earl of Carlingford 347, 597 income 366 and Irish Parliament of 1661–6 338, 340, 597, 613 landholdings 304, 305, 308, 309, 311, 312, 321, 370 and military service 355 and Restoration settlement 299, 302, 314, 320–2 and royal court 216, 319, 352 tail xx male 32, 59, 69, 324 Tait, Clodagh 71, 75, 448, 458, 468 Talbot, Col. Gilbert 327, 332 Talbot, Richard, 1st earl (later duke) of Tyrconnell 53 and Irish Parliament 598 as lord deputy 55, 219, 356 and military service 355

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and royal court 216, 319 Talbot, Sir William (lawyer) 55, 161 Tate, Nahum 75, 469 taxation see expenditure; poll tax Temple, Sir John 187, 397 tenants 111–12, 116, 361, 372, 377–8 English and Scottish 373, 374, 395 tenure 70, 98–100, 101 security 238 see also knight’s service; socage Tenures Abolition Act (1662) 70 textile industry 201, 364, 375, 381, 384–5 Thomond see O’Brien of Thomond Thurles, Lady Elizabeth 87, 164, 236–7, 422, 423, 424 timber, as resource 71, 124, 129, 131, 361–2, 364, 375 Tirry, William, bishop of Cork 144 toleration, of Catholicism 136, 138–40, 156, 276 Touchet, George, 11th baron Audley and 1st earl of Castlehaven: and Irish Parliament 235, 242, 598 landholdings 88, 104, 114, 116 tenants 116 Touchet, James, 3rd earl of Castlehaven 139, 314, 606 and Confederation of Kilkenny 275, 276, 471 and duke of Ormond 471–2 in exile 282–3 income 365, 368–9, 371 and Irish Parliaments 232, 343, 531 n.33, 598, 613 landholdings 107, 312, 371, 402, 574 and military service 253, 353, 354 and rebellion of 1641 253, 255, 259, 260, 261, 263–4, 471–2 and Restoration settlement 314, 343, 616 Touchet, James, 5th earl of Castlehaven 314, 598 landholdings 312 Touchet, Mervyn, 2nd earl of Castlehaven 48, 407, 408, 415 execution 453, 570 n.166 and Irish Parliament 598 military service 45, 69 Touchet, Mervyn, 4th earl of Castlehaven 598 towns: staple towns xx, 19, 380 see also plantation towns; urbanization trade, Irish 351, 362–3, 381–5

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English restrictions on 346, 351–2, 362–3, 385 overseas 381, 385–7 transhumance 85 transplantation: of peers 280–1, 287–91, 289 of Ulster Presbyterians 296 Treadwell, Victor 9, 38 Trevor of Dungannon, extinction of line 59 Trevor, Anne (née Owen), viscountess Dungannon 152, 178, 432 Trevor, Lewis, 2nd viscount Dungannon 598 education 152 landholdings 312, 370 Trevor, Mark, 1st viscount Dungannon 53, 531 n.44 and Irish Parliament of 1661–6 338, 598, 613 marriage 178 and military service 52, 354 and Restoration 298, 332, 616 treason accusations 81–2 Trevor, Mark, 3rd viscount Dungannon 453, 598 tribute: in Stuart Ireland 120, 131, 212 in Tudor Ireland 29–30, 33 Trinity College, Dublin 162, 166, 227, 347, 348, 409, 436–7, 447 tuberculosis 454–5 Tyrone, earldom see O’Neill, Con, 1st earl of Tyrone; O’Neill, Hugh, 3rd earl of Tyrone; O’Neill of Tyrone Ulster: and Antrim estates 291–3 Catholicism in 113–14, 117, 145, 270, 305 and Covenanters 148, 272, 391 and early industrialization 384–5 landholdings in 86, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 115, 117–21, 305 and plantation 12, 19, 28, 39, 47, 100, 101, 113–17, 122, 125–9, 273, 382, 407–8 Presbyterianism in 149 rebellion of 1641 and Confederate Wars 257–60, 261, 270, 272, 276–8 Scottish Jesuits in 143 and Scottish mercenaries 251 undertakers: in Munster 101, 103 in Ulster 117, 125–7, 292

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Union of the Crowns (1603) 28 universities 49, 104, 437–9 urbanization 85, 99–100, 109, 374 and commerce 362–3, 381–5, 388, 477 and plantation towns 119–20, 123, 126–8, 132, 133, 382 Ussher, James, archbishop of Armagh 412, 434, 441 usury see moneylending Vallancey, Charles 207 Van Dyck, Sir Anthony 395, 412–13, Plate 8 Vaughan, John, 1st baron Vaughan of Mullingar 39–40 Villiers, Edward 183–4 Villiers, Robert, viscount Purbeck 192 Villiers, William 40 violence: and honour system 78–80, 81, 353 and judicial system 225 in rebellion of 1641 261–3, 266–7, 269–70, 278 and warlord culture 223 virtue, and honour 65–6, 72, 74–6, 83, 278 Walker, Sir Edward 40 Walsh, Peter 139 Wandesford, Sir Christopher 112 war-crimes tribunals 264, 280, 283–4 wardship 70, 98, 113, 122, 202, 436–7 and conversion 12, 137, 157–64 definition xix Warren, Henry 198, 200 Wars of the Three Kingdoms (1639–52) 5, 13, 250–79, 451 and Antrim 250, 252, 253–6 and Englishness 8 and inflation of honours 54–5 and loyalty to Charles I 51, 52, 139, 268, 272–4, 277, 278, 296 and loyalty to Parliament 286 in Scotland 255–7 and supporters of Parliament 52–3, 272–3, 280 see also rebellion of 1641 Watts, Christopher 75 wealth: and land 361–2 levels 361, 363–71 Wemyss, Sir Patrick 175, 299 Wentworth, Thomas, 1st earl of Strafford 10, 39, 40, 99, 112

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Wentworth, Thomas, 1st earl of Strafford (cont...) campaign against (1640–1) 235, 240–4, 245–8, 477 and court of castle chamber 227, 228 and expropriation of lands 280 and Irish Parliament 234, 238–45, 248 and justice 227–9 and plantations 100, 106, 122, 215, 246 trial 242, 243 and wardships 159, 160 and Wars of the Three Kingdoms 256–7, 404 Wentworth, William, 2nd earl of Strafford 301 West Indies, and Irish peers 386 Westmeath see Nugent of Delvin and Westmeath; Nugent, Richard Westminster Abbey, burials in 462–3, 474 Weston, Sir Richard (later earl of Portland) 44, 180, 364 Wexford, plantation 131–2 White, Stephen (Jesuit scholar) 143 widows 181–2, 193, 380 William III: and Protestant peers 356, 481 see also land settlement, Williamite Williams, Daniel (Presbyterian minister) 149 Williams, Henry 132 Williamson, Joseph 310, 321, 327, 329, 332 Willoughby, Sir Francis 177 wills 202–3, 366–7, 386, 411, 433, 449–51, 458 of women 413, 449 Wilmot, Charles, 1st viscount Wilmot of Athlone 45, 80, 161, 605 and Irish Parliament 598 landholdings 88, 375, 574 as lord president of Connacht 220 military service 444 and rebellion of 1641 257, 261 and Wentworth 240, 243, 245 Wilmot, Henry, 2nd viscount Wilmot of Athlone 598

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Wilson, John 75, 469 Wingfield, Elizabeth (née Boyle of Orrery), viscountess Powerscourt 199 Wingfield, Folliott, 1st viscount Powerscourt (2nd creation) 53 and Church of Ireland 151 and Irish Parliament 598 landholdings 318 marriage 199 Wingfield, Richard, 1st viscount Powerscourt (1st creation) 45, 47 and Irish Parliament of 1661–6 338, 340, 598, 613 landholdings 131, 371 military service 444 public offices 219, 222–3 women: and business 201–2 Catholic 262 and childbirth 429–31 and education 434–5 as executors 202–3 in Gaelic society 172 and honour 73, 75, 172, 262 and jewels 413 as landholders 87–8, 91, 95 as moneylenders 380 and personal piety 155–6 portraits 412–13 and Presbyterianism 148–9 Protestant 262 and rebellion of 1641 262–3, 270, 284 and religious orders 146–8 and sex 204–5 social status 190–3, 190, 192 in Stuart society 171–4 and wealth 369, 413 wills 413, 449 see also marriage Wright, John Michael (painter) 252, Plate 2 Zouche, Beatrice 156

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