Chapter 19.

Corduff,

the next locality on this route worthy of notice, was anciently a manor of the Ormond family, and for four centuries the residence of that of Stanyhurst, of whom the following notices may not seem irrelevant

The family of Stanyhurst.

In 1413 Henry Stanyhurst of Corduff, was secondary of the Exchequer chamber in Ireland.

In 1459 Richard Stanyhurst was Lord Mayor of Dublin, as was Nicholas Stanyhurst in 1542, of which latter Holinshed says, “he was so great and good a householder, that during his mayoralty the Lord Chancellor of the realm was his daily and ordinary guest.” This Nicholas, it would seem, was the author of some medical works.

In 1560, according to the learned Doctor John Lynch, Roman Catholic Archdeacon of Tuam, in his “Cambrensis Eversus,” the Statute of Uniformity was carried by the artifice of Mr. Stanyhurst of Corduff, then Speaker of the House of Commons, who, being in the reforming interest, privately got together, on a day when the house was not to sit, a few such members as he knew to be favourers of that interest, and passed the bill in the absence of all those, who he believed would give it opposition. This was James Stanyhurst, Recorder of Dublin, and one of its representatives in parliament. He was Speaker of the House of Commons in three parliaments, in 1557, 1560, and 1568, and published his three “orations” on these occasions. In 1570, on the re-meeting of the last Parliament, he opened it according to the custom in a speech, which Campion has fully set forth in his “Historie of Ireland.” “In particular;’ said he on this occasion, “the zeal which I have to the reformation of this realm, and to breed in the rudest of our people resolute English hearts, moveth me to pray your lordships’ helping hand for the practice, namely, of one statute which is for the erecting of grammar-schools within every diocese, the stipends [412] to be levied in such proportion as in the late act hath been devised, whereunto the royal assent is already granted, and yet, the point in no forwardness, nor in none is like to be, excepting by some good means the onset be given, and freshly followed.” This James also proposed and digested a plan for re-establishing and endowing the College of Dublin. He died in 1573, being then 51 years old. One of his sons, Walter Stanyhurst, translated into English, ‘“Innocent de contemptu mundi.”

About the year 1584 flourished Richard Stanyhurst, the son of James Stanyhurst, and uncle to Archbishop Usher, his sister Margaret being that prelate’s mother. He received the rudiments of his education in Ireland, under the celebrated schoolmaster, Peter White, from whose care he removed in 1563 to Oxford, where he took one degree, and thence retiring to London, studied the law in Furnival’s, and subsequently in Lincoln’s Inn. He afterwards returned to his own country, where he married and sojourned some time, but, being desirous of greater liberty in the enjoyment of his religion, which was Roman Catholic, he went into the Low Countries, where he acquired great fame for his learning. Afterwards, on the death of his wife, he took orders, and being eminent for his parts and learning, was made chaplain to Albert Archduke of Austria, then Governor of the Spanish Netherlands, where he died in 1618. During the latter interval of his life, he held a constant correspondence with his nephew, Archbishop Usher While a very young man, he wrote “Harmonia seu catena Dialectica in Porphyrium,” which was published in 1570, and is much commended by Doctor Campion, the Jesuit. His more celebrated production, “De Rebus in Hibernia Gestis,” was, with an appendix from Giraldus Cambrensis, and some annotations, published at Antwerp in 1584. Keating animadverts in strong terms upon this work, and his censures are well merited by the errors and malicious representations with which it abounds, seasoned with a few incontrovertible statements, and wilfully lavished on the calumniated Irish. Some idea of the credibility of his assertions may be formed, from his calling them an inhospitable nation, lamenting that their language was not extirpated, and denying that a country, whose armorial hearing is the harp, had any knowledge or character of music. Keating observes, that he was too young and unacquainted with the Irish language to undertake such a work, and asserts, that “he was prejudiced with the rewards and preferments which were promised him to blacken the nation, but that he lived to repent this injustice, and when he had entered into holy orders, promised to recant publicly all the falsehoods he had published, and that he (Keating) was credibly informed that a writing was drawn up for that purpose, in order to be printed in Ireland.” He further employs some pages in defending Ireland from the vituperations of this writer, not perceiving that the very style of the book is as injurious to its authority, as the extravagances of Keating himself have been to the credit of Irish history. It is, however, but justice to add, that Stanyhurst’s work contains much valuable information. He also wrote “de Vita S. Patricii,” printed at Antwerp in 1587, and some other religious works; likewise a translation, in heroic verse, of the first four books of the Aeneid, the first of which he dedicated to “Peter Plunkett, the learned Baron of Dunsany,” whom he style’s his brother. It may he mentioned, as this his translation is most rare, that the curious inquirer will find sufficient to acquaint him with its style, in the first volume of Sir Egerton Brydge’s “Censura Literaria.” To this he added translations of the four first psalms, the first in English iambics, though he confesses that “the iambical quantity relisheth somewhat unsavourly in our language, being, in truth, not altogether the toothsomest in the Latin.” At the end of the work is a Latin epitaph by himself on his wife Genet, daughter of Sir Christopher Barnewall, who died in childbirth at Knightsbridge, and who was buried at Chelsea. He also wrote in English, “a Description of Ireland,” dedicated to Sir Henry Sydney, then Lord Deputy of Ireland,, and published in Holinshed’s Chronicles. This “description” likewise received meet chastisement from an author of the name of Barnaby Rich, who drew up a new and improved account of this country in 1610. “Some of Richard’s Letters, also, are preserved in Burman’s Sylloge. He had a son named William, who was born at Brussels in 1601, and at the age of 16 entered into the Society of the Jesuits. He was a man endowed with excellent parts, and a writer of several treatises, of which Sotvellus in his Bibliotheca Sript. Soc. Jes. gives a catalogue. He died in 1663.

[414] The northern road from Corduff to Balrothery presents at Ballough a small Roman Catholic chapel of ease; and from a hill beyond that commands a magnificent panorama by land and sea, including the interesting ruins of Lusk and Baldungan, the villages of Rush and Malahide, the heights of Howth, Lambay, Hollywood, and Garristown, with countless other objects of interest. A short way beyond this the steeper eminence of the Man of War affords even more extensive prospects; while the ruins of a once comfortable and greatly frequented inn on its summit, and the immense Magog head, that was its sign and gave name to the locality, now fallen from its high estate, and smoking a prodigious pipe with wondrous disproportion over the entrance to a cabin, induce some salutary reminiscences of the many bridal groups and joyous parties that have partaken its festive fare, and, like it, sunk into oblivion.

The course, however, of this excursion, passes from Corduff, over one of the isolated districts which constitute the barony of Nethercross, into the interesting village of

Ch. 20. Lusk.