The Confederate Wars in Kerry

More accurately, this entry refers to the Cromwellian campaign in the West from 1650, the campaign in North Cork, Kerry and Limerick at the end of the conflict begun by the insurrection in the North of Ireland in October 1641. Central to the war in West Munster was the fall of Ross Castle to General Ludlow in the summer of 1652, the articles of surrender of which are to be found in the Aphorismical Discovery of Treasonable Faction published by John J. Gilbert.

Ross Castle (Killarney)

A year previously, in the summer of 1651, Lord Muskerry (Donogh MacCarthy) set out from Kerry to assist the Irish forces atLimerickwhich was then under siege by Ireton, Cromwell’s son-in-law. En route, Muskerry encountered Lord Broghill (Roger Boyle) who defeated Muskerry at Knocknaclashy, near Banteer. In May of the previous year (1650) Broghill had been given charge of the war in the West as Cromwell laid siege to Clonmel. At that time Col. David Roche recruited heavily in Kerry to defend Kerry andCork. Broghill took Macroom and captured Boetius MacEgan, the Bishop of Ross. The Bishop was the principal ally of the uncompromising Catholic leader and Pope’s representative, Nuncio Rinuccini; Broghill took the bishop toCarrigadrohidCastle, a few miles from Macroom, where he had him hanged in front of the castle’s defenders.

After defeat by Broghill at Knocknaclashy in 1651, Muskerry retreated to Ross Castle. Ireton having died atLimerick, his successor General Ludlow prepared to besiege Ross. The terms of surrender at Ross were signed by Muskerry, among others.

The work of transplanting the Irish to Connaught and Clare, and transporting the poorer people toBarbados, came within the responsibility of Charles Fleetwood, Cromwell’s son-in-law, commander in chief inIrelandand from 1654 Lord Deputy. It is not generally known that Fleetwood was a distant cousin of the Dennys of Tralee Castle. Kerry’s suffering during this period may have been assuaged by this and other family connections with the conqueror, as the Dennys were at heart royalists. Among the defenders at Ross, and signatories to the surrender, were Colonels Edmund and Gerald/Garrett FitzMaurice of Lixnaw, half-brothers of Patrick FitzMaurice who was governor of Kerry at the beginning of the war. The most beneficial connection of all was surely Murrough O’Brien, Lord Inchiquin, the famous Murrough the Burner who perpetrated the massacre at the Rock of Cashel in 1647. Inchiquin’s mother was a sister of Patrick FitzMaurice’s wife and of the wife of O’Sullivan Mór; after crushing O’Sullivan Mór and Taaffe at Knocknanuss in November 1647, Inchiquin failed to follow up as he might, leaving South Kerry – and perhaps Kerry generally – a relatively safe haven for the Irish in which to regroup for the campaign led by Broghill to Macroom after Broghill superseded Inchiquin as head of the Cromwellian war.

Anarchy at Listowel Heritage in Tourism Conference, April 2012

The Heritage in Tourism conference in Listowel on 21 April demonstrated yet again the complete anarchy that currently exists in the related fields.

Glossy publications are everywhere – no doubt helped by Wikipedia – and they are supposed to distract and sidetrack the tourist. They cost a mint to produce, and the czars of tourism and heritage and grant organizations support them all with the taxpayers money. And all this is expected to bring tourists to the region and keep them there. It is all a disaster for those of us who address some kind of core curriculum.

And the biggest scandal is that the czars making the decisions are MBA qualified, who don’t know their core curriculum to start with and have the fashionable prejudice of the secular Left against what truly distinguishes Kerry, the Christian centuries. So they favour instead geology, archaeology, botany and lichens and molluscs, producing glossy brochures designed to send folk into bogs or up mountains or wade up to their knees in brine.

There were lots of pious aspirations, but they ignored the guiding imperative, which is paper and procedures and all the roadblocks put in place by officials to justify their fat-cat jobs; the  real genius of officialdom, including the offices of the czars, is to foil initiative and play at being ceos. Some of the participants tried to wring blood from a stone. Example: the B&Bs of Dingle – those outside the town – are making no money; what can we do? nothing, it’s all down to the drink driving laws.

Even if you solved the problem of heritage illiteracy among the heritage elite, or demoted some of them to subsidiary positions where they belong, there would still be the problem of clutter. The clutter arises from grants i.e. free money; politicians and community groups become involved because of grants, and the effect of this is that the fat-cat ceos get the opportunity to play God by turning applications into a game of management. I can tell you for one that none of them ever phones a writer, or hangs out with anybody but a politician or the leader of a community group.

King James I Grants Tralee Its Charter

The fact of two dates for Tralee’s Charter is explained by the necessary delay in giving effect to the King’s grant. King James I came to the throne of England on 24 March 1603. Tralee’s Charter was granted in September 1612. The date is contained in the Charter’s wording: “according to the intention and effect of our certain letters, signed with our own proper hand, and under our signet, given at our Honour of Hampton Court, the 26^th day of September, in the tenth year of our reign …”. To give effect to the grant, it had to be enrolled in Chancery. This transaction is mentioned at the very end of the Charter. Again the date is implied, the 31 March, 1613: “In Testimony whereof, we have caused these our Letters to be made Patent. Witness our aforesaid Deputy-general of our Kingdom of Ireland (earlier, Arthur Chichester,Belfast), at Dublin, the last day of March, in the eleventh year of our reign of England, France, Ireland, and of Scotland the forty-eighth.”

The 1613 date is confirmed in the Calendar of Irish Patent Rolls of James I, where the simple entry is: “Charter of Tralee, 31 March 11” (meaning 1613). It appears in slightly longer form in Abstract of Charters and Grants to Corporate Towns in Ireland from Henry II to Charles II (1154-1685): “Borough of Tralee, March 31, 1613, 11 Jas 1^st “ (microfilm copy, National Library of Ireland). Charles Smith’s Ancient History of the County of Kerry gives both dates. Finally, the Report of the Municipal Corporations in Ireland, compiled in the 1830s, gives the enrolment of the patent forTralee’s Charter in Chancery under Pat. 11 James I.

Tralee's Coat of Arms

Know ye that we, as well at the humble petition of the inhabitants of the village of Traly in our county of Kerry, within our province of Munster, in our kingdom of Ireland, as in order to inhabit and plant those parts in our same kingdom depopulated and wasted, according to the form of the public weal in our kingdom of England, excellently established by our special grace, and of our certain knowledge, and meer motion, by the assent of our right dearly beloved and faithful counsellor, Arthur, Lord Chichester, of Belfast, our deputy-general of our said kingdom of Ireland, and also according to the intention and effect of our certain letters, signed with our own proper hand, and under our signet, given at our Honour of Hampton Court, the 26^th day of September, in the tenth year of our reign of England, France, and Ireland, and of Scotland the forty-sixth, and now enrolled in the rolls of our Chancery in our said kingdom of Ireland, do decree, ordain, and declare by these presents, that the aforesaid village of Traly, and all and singular the Castles, Messuages, and Tofts, Mills, Houses, Edifices, Buildings, Backyards, Gardens, Waste, Closes, Waters, Rivulets, Tenements, and Hereditaments whatsoever, with their appurtenances, lying or being in or within the said village, or belonging to said village, or the precincts of the same, henceforward be, and at all times hereafter shall be one entire and free Burrough of itself, by the name of the Burrough of Traly, and henceforward be nominated, named, and called the Burrough of Traly, and all these into one entire and free Burrough, and of itself by the name of the Burrough of Traly, we do erect, constitute, make, and ordain, by these presents. And further, we will and ordain b these presents, that within the said Burrough there be one Body Corporate and Politic, consisting of one Provost, twelve Free Burgesses, and of a Community …

“The Greatest of the Celtologists, Whitley Stokes (1830-1909)”

Whitley Stokes. The portrait was familiar to visitors to the RIA.

This was the title to a lecture I attended in the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland in January 2012. The speaker was Professor Dáibhí O Croinín, of NUIG, author of Early Medieval Ireland and superbly equipped to talk about this subject from his background knowledge of German and Middle Irish. The German interest was key, for while working in Leipzig during a research furlough from NUIG, a transcription made by Whitley Stokes was brought to our lecturer’s attention by the university librarian, who later divulged the existence of an entire shelf of the same material in the possession of Leipzig University. Out of this has come O Croinín’s study of Whitley Stokes, recently published and consisting of a catalogue of the transcriptions and other research of the great palaeographer and celtologist.

Whitley’s father, George Stokes, was a surgeon with a Europe-wide reputation. Whitley’s grandfather, also Whitley, was a contemporary in TCD of Wolfe Tone and narrowly escaped being “lifted” by the state authorities of the time. Our subject, Whitley Stokes, was born in Merrion Square, at No. 5, now the School of Advanced Studies, and I think the former home of Judge Robert Day (1746-1851).

A more satisfying book, because a Life, is entitled A Tripartite Life, Whitley Stokes, the proceeds of a conference on the man and hinting at the three lives, England, India and Ireland, that informed his vast legacy. He was in India for ten years from 1862, acting as chief legal officer to the government, handling Sanskrit and codifying the Indian law. He trained in the Law in London in his early years. Whitley’s sister, Margaret Stokes, also became a famous antiquarian, with an important published legacy.

Whitley Stokes was the product of a rich tradition of Celtology begun by Johann Caspar Zeuss. Zeuss published Gramattica Celtica in 1853. That started it all. Other Germans followed: Rudolf Siegfried, Ernst Windische and Heinrich Zimmer included. Then there were the great Irish scholars with whom we are so familiar: Eoghan O Curry and John O’Donovan.

When the Psalter of Cashel Changed Hands After a Battle

Thomas ("Black Tom") Butler, 10th Earl of Ormond

One might be forgiven for thinking that the Anglo-Irish lords of the Middle Ages spoke no Irish, or that if they did they had no real interest in Irish culture. Well, think again. When King Richard II came to Ireland in 1394 the then Earl of Ormond (Butler) interpreted the Irish chiefs for him. This Earl was James, third Earl of Ormond; he was influential in bringing the Irish septs, most notably O’Brien, prince of Thomond, to Dublin to submit to Richard. King Richard used his visit to strengthen the loyalty of the Anglo-Irish community, Butlers and FitzGeralds included; but he was happy to receive submissions from the native Irish. He was well aware that the medieval lordship extended only to the Pale around Dublin and what is sometimes referred to as the Second Pale, the Butler (earls of Ormond) district of South Leinster and into Tipperary.

Edmund FitzRichard was a grandson of James, Earl of Ormond. (His father Richard was named after the King who came over in 1394.) This Edmund (FitzRichard) Butler caused the Psalter of Cashel to be made. The manuscript is a transcription of Fenian cycle material, saints lives, genealogies and much historical and theological material. The Psalter changed hands at the battle of Piltown, near the river Suir, in 1462, falling into the possession of Thomas FitzGerald, Earl of Desmond who defeated the Butlers under the leadership of the man who commissioned the book, Edmund FitzRichard. We have this information from what is written by both owners in the margins of the manuscript – and proof that Irish was the language they used in ordinary conversation. The ms is now in the Bodleian Library, Oxford.

The Ormond earls were absentees from the 1450s. They became allied with the Boleyns (the family of Henry VIII’s second wife), which sealed their English allegiance and their embrace of the religious revolution at a time when their great rivals to the west and south, the Geraldines, remained Catholic and defiantly Irish. The main Ormond line remained Protestant, but when James FitzMaurice FitzGerald raised the standard of Catholic counter-revolution in 1569 he was joined by the (Catholic) brothers of the current Earl of Ormond. This individual, Black Tom Butler, was a direct descendant of Edmund FitzRichard Butler.

James, third Earl of Ormond, mentioned at the beginning of this article, was the brother-in-law of that earl of Desmond the subject of the recent book from Maire Mhac an tSaoi: Gearóid Iarla. Gearóid is well known for the Gaelic poetry he wrote and the poetry written for him by Goffraidh Fionn O Dálaigh. The other language used was French: his father, the first Earl of Desmond, writes in French when corresponding with the Government (which we find in the printed State Papers). Gearóid is a legendary figure, said to sleep beneath the waters of Lough Gur, only to appear every seven years to ride his horse over the lake.

John O’Sullivan with Bonnie Prince Charlie to Scotland

Charles Edward Stuart

John O’Sullivan was a native of South Kerry – where,  we are not sure. He became the  favourite military organiser of Charles Edward Stuart (Bonnie Prince Charlie) during  the Prince’s invasion of Scotland in 1745, which is the subject of the contemporary document presented below. The ’45 was the third attempt, at least, to forward the Jacobite cause: to carry off a coup d’etat against the Georges, successors of William of Orange, remove them from the throne of England and restore the line of Bonnie Prince Charlie’s ancestors. The ’45 ended (despite rosy expectations)  in the disastrous defeat at Culloden in 1746 where Cumberland, son of King George II, carried the day. O’Sullivan was one of the famous “Seven Men of Moidart” who landed with Charles Stuart in Scotland. The Grand Monarch mentioned is King Louis XIV of France, sponsor of the invasion.

While the Preparations for the Scotch Expedition were going on, Mr Sullivan had the honour of conversing daily with Juba, who soon contracted such an esteem for him that he was never easy but when this agreeable Irishman was with him: Indeed, no one who knows Mr Sullivan can deny his being one of the best bred, genteelest, complaisant, engaging officers in all the French Troops, which, in these respects, are certainly inferior to none in Europe. To these external accomplishments were added (and Jubasoon perceiv’d them in Mr Sullivan) a sincerity of heart, and an honest freedom of both sentiment and speech, temper’d with so much good nature and politeness, as made his conversation and friendship equally useful and agreeable. 

But if Juba was highly pleas’d with Mr Sullivan, the latter thought himself no less happy in the regard paid him by the former, to whom, in return, he passionately desir’d to render all the service his abilities, strengthened by the favour of the Grand Monarch, were possibly capable of rendering: Of this Juba was well satisfied; and he, on the other hand, expected no small things from the good sense, the solid judgment, the political knowledge, and the military skill of Mr Sullivan. Nor was he deceiv’d, either in the prosecution, or the end of his famous expedition: For to the abilities of this gentleman we are chiefly to attribute the success with which the unexperienc’d Juba, with a handful of raw Highlanders, so long maintain’d a sharp, and, for some time, doubtful dispute with the whole force of his Britannick Majesty, in which he so surprisingly over-run, and (as far as he pleased) plunder’d not only the major part of the Kingdom of Scotland, but also a great part of the rich and powerful nation of England itself: a nation which is, or might be, the Terror and Arbitress of all Europe!

The Most Tragic Medieval Lordship

Perkin Warbeck in the Pillory

The alienation of the Geraldine earls of Desmond was guaranteed by the execution of Earl Thomas at Drogheda in 1468, but it was compounded by internal struggle over the succession to the earldom. King Richard, who succeeded his brother Edward IV in 1483, put out feelers to James FitzThomas, successor to Thomas Earl of Desmond executed at Drogheda, by means of a letter delivered by the Bishop of Annaghdown. In the letter Richard offered to choose a suitable wife for the new earl if only he would abandon his violence and adopt English ways. He sent him a collar of gold with the King’s insignia, presumably the Yorkist emblem of the boar. The letter is preserved in the King’s published correspondence. It proved all to no avail. Earl James was murdered at Rathkeale at the end of 1487. By then King Richard had been succeeded by Henry VII, the first of the Tudors, and the next earl, Maurice the Lame, welcomed the Yorkist pretender Perkin Warbeck and assisted his campaigns of 1491-97 to dethrone Henry.

The most dangerous of the earls was probably James (1520-29), a grandson of Thomas of Drogheda. We are now in the reign of Henry VIII. Earl James received the envoys of the Emperor Charles V (simultaneously King of Spain) at Dingle in 1529. Unfortunately, the new Earl was equally dangerous to the hopes of the Desmonds themselves. No sooner succeeded to the earldom in 1520, he waged a fierce campaign against the Muskerry MacCarthys, so fierce that his own uncle (and successor), Thomas the Bald, took the side of the MacCarthys, defeating Earl James at Móin Mór (Mourne Abbey). James left no male heir, and a change in outlook in respect of foreign conspiracy and attitudes to the English government is apparent in Earl Thomas, who was a very old man when he succeeded, ruling from 1529 to 1534. Unfortunately, Thomas the Bald’s successor was murdered by his cousins, leading to a break in the rightful succession and the transfer of the earldom to James FitzJohn, father of the unfortunate last reigning Earl, Gerald or Garrett.

Survivors of the Desmond Rebellions

In a talk I gave at Adare (December 2011) on the subject of the Earls of Desmond I traced the slow demise of the earldom from the great-grandfather of the “Rebel” Earl. There is a good general sense among Munster readers of the extent of the destruction wrought by the final suppression of the Desmonds, but few realise that their demise happened in a number of stages over the preceding generations.

In the two “rebellions”, beginning 1568 and 1579, the (English) loyalism of the McCarthy Muskerry is noteworthy, also the uneasy neutrality of the McCarthy Mór (Killarney).  McCarthy Mór, who had been raised to the earldom of Clancar by the Queen, was in rebellion in 1568 but made an abject submission. It is noteworthy also that the FitzMaurices (Barons Lixnaw) turned out with the Rebel Earl – as did the Imokilly FitzGeralds around Castlemartyr and Ballymaloe (though not Cloyne); the FitzGerald lineage of Dromana (on the Blackwater) stayed at home having previously (1565) aided Butler to defeat the Earl at Affane, in Waterford. The Earl’s half-brother Thomas of Conna (who should have inherited the earldom but that the “Rebel” father divorced his mother) played an ambiguous part: in the 1568 rebellion he seemed to play both sides; in the second rebellion he stayed out. The O’Briens of Pubblebrien (barony on the road to Askeaton/Rathkeale from Limerick City) stayed at home also, though in 1536, in Henry VIII’s revolution against the Pope, they were staunch rebels against Henry and allies of the then Earl of Desmond.

Catherine of Dromana, the famous Old Countess (pictured), married Earl Thomas (the Bald), and in 1529 he consigned that part of the Earl’s estate to her family. In early 1569 (a few years after Affane) the Queen raised Sir Maurice to Baron, then Viscount, Dromana, ensuring his support for the Crown and Butler against Desmond.

Folklore has the phrase To the Bend of the Road with the MacCarthys, to the End of the World with the FitzGeralds. I think you can see why: the Anglo-Irish families were more rebel than the Gaelic. The Anglo-Irish Roche, of Fermoy, and Barry, of Castlelyons and Buttevant, should be included with the Earl, for they took his side in the Rebellions.

After the Rebellions the Lixnaws were rehabilitated: I guess the monarchy wished to split the participants and do something to encourage rapprochement. Peerages and new charters were scattered like confetti by King James I. Fate took a hand also. The Muskerry (County Cork) MacCarthys retained their lordships but the death and exile of heirs interfered with the continuation of the line. The heir of McCarthy Mór (Killarney) died; the estate devolved on his sister who married the famous Florence MacCarthy of Carbery, who spent decades in the Tower of London, his father-in-law meanwhile mortgaging the Molahiffe district to Valentine Browne.

The “Rebel” Earl, on the other hand, left a large family: the blood of that unfortunate and unstable man coursed in the veins of the Viscounts Clare (O’Brien), who gave us the hero of Fontenoy against the English in 1745, and from them in the veins of the FitzGeralds, Knights of Kerry; also in the veins of the Barons Kerry (Lixnaw) – a sister of the “Rebel” becoming their ancestor, i.e. ancestor of all the Shelburne/Lansdownes. Indeed it is a remarkable fact that nearly all of the Protestant elite families of Kerry in the eighteenth century were able to boast his blood line, even the Dennys of Tralee becoming connected after the marriage of Judge Day’s daughter to Denny in 1795, the Judge’s mother being Lucy FitzGerald of the family of the Knights of Kerry. It was a far more integrated society than people today imagine.

Harman Blennerhassett

Harman Blennerhassett was a descendant of Killorglin’s “Black Jack” Blennerhassett. Revolution was in the blood. “Black Jack” participated in the Glorious Revolution which placed William of Orange on the throne of England after the Irish campaign of 1689-91. Later “Black Jack” wrote the most famous genealogy in Kerry history.

Harman’s revolutionary activities a century or so after “Black Jack” are shrouded in mystery, but all histories tell us that he sold the Killorglin Blennerhassett estate to Lord Ventry (Thomas Mullins, Burnham, near Dingle) in 1796 and departed for America. Respectable histories omit the scandal which surrounded his departure. Harman’s wife was his niece Margaret Agnew, daughter of Harman’s sister Catherine Blennerhassett and Capt. Robert Agnew. Both families were scandalised by the marriage and Margaret’s family disowned her. The couple departed England for New York to settle in the USA. For eight years they lived in their mansion (pictured below) on an island in the Ohio river, Blennerhassett Island.

Image via Wikipedia

Then, in the spring of 1805, Aaron Burr, former Vice-President, entered the scene and somehow influenced Harman to join the Burr conspiracy to create a Southwestern empire in what remains today a part of the United States. Opinion is still divided on Harman’s role, if any, in the Burr conspiracy, but he had to defend himself in court when the conspiracy failed. The episode features in all the biographies of Burr.

January 1689, Overthrow of Sir William Petty’s Settlement in South Kerry

Image via Wikipedia

In 1688 William of Orange overthrew King James II to assume the throne of England. But the Irish stood by the Catholic James and in January 1689 they drove out the English settlement of Sir William Petty in Kenmare.

Petty, who had functioned as Cromwell’s map maker, did not live to see the catastrophe that befell his Kenmare settlement. He died in 1687.

Petty’s widow and son were raised to the peerage by James II on the same day in 1688 as Baroness and Baron Shelburne, a name taken from one of the baronies in Wexford which was part of the Petty estate. Petty had been acutely conscious of the minority position of the new English in Ireland generally, but also of the scientific improvements which he, as a member of the Royal Society, could bring to remote regions like Kenmare. Fish exports and harvesting of the woods for wood products were among his achievements.

Though the settlement was overthrown, the Petty/Shelburne presence would remain. They became the Marquesses of Lansdowne.