Parishes of Donnybrook,

Parishes of Donnybrook, Booterstown, & St Bartholomew,

AND PART OF THE

Parish of St. Mark Dublin.

Formerly the Parish of Donnybrook-i.e., Domhnach-Broc or the Church of St. Broc, and part of the Parish of St. Kevin.

The Parish of Donnybrook in the seventeenth century appears to have consisted of the Townlands of Merrion, Booterstown, Simmonscourt, Donnybrook, Forty Acres, and Baggotrath.

These Townlands with an addition from the Parish of St. Kevin, are now represented by the modern Townlands of Annefield, Baggotrath, Baggotrath East; Ballsbridge, Beggarsbush, Blackrock, Booterstown *(i.e., *Baile-an-bhothair, or the Town of the Road), Clonskeagh (i.e., Cloonske, or the Meadow of the White Thorn Bushes), Donnybrook East and West, Fortyacres, Irishtown, Merrion, **Priesthouse, Ringsend *(i.e., *Rinn-Aun, the Point of the Tide, or more probably the end of the Rinn or point), Sallymount, Sandymount, Simmonscourt, Smotscourt and Williamstown.

The small portion of the County Dublin, in the Parish of St. Mark, was reclaimed from the foreshore, and is known as the Townland of the South Lots.

Merrion and its Castle.

Merrion, now a suburb of Dublin, lying about three miles to the south-east of the city, on the coast and intersected by the road to Blackrock and by the Dublin and Kingstown Railway, contains no building of earlier date than the eighteenth century. It was, however, for many generations the home of a family foremost amongst the landed proprietors in the metropolitan county, and the ground now occupied by the Asylum for the Female Blind, opposite Merrion Railway gates, was for several centuries the site of one of the principal mediaeval castles in the neighbourhood of Dublin, the ruins of which were removed more than a hundred years ago.

The Fitzwilliams of Merrion, now represented by the Earl of Pembroke and Montgomery (their descendant in the female line and the owner of their estates), were a family amongst whose members the sovereigns of England found many of their most valiant liegemen and faithful adherents, and are also remarkable as being one of the few families in Ireland descended from early settlers which retained their property through all the troublous periods.

The first of the house to come to Ireland are said to have arrived in the reign of King John, and to have been members of the great English family to which Earl Fitzwilliam, the inheritor of the Earl of Strafford’s estates in Yorkshire and the County Wicklow, belongs

• a statement which led the Fitzwilliams of Merrion in the seventeenth century to cease to use distinctive arms and to adopt those which Earl Fitzwilliam bears.

The fourteenth century saw the Fitzwilliam family firmly established in the southern portion of the County Dublin, and before long they rivalled in the extent of their possessions the monastic owners of Monkstown and Kill-of-the-Grange. In the fifteenth century they had acquired no less than four manors - those of Merrion, Thorncastle, Dundrum, and Baggotrath. The three former manors included the lands now known under the denominations of Merrion, Booterstown, Mount Merrion, Kilmacud, Dun-drum, Ballinteer, Donnybrook, Ringsend, Irishtown, Sandymount and Sidney Parade, while the manor of Baggotrath embraced the lands on which Merrion Square, Fitzwilliam Square, and the adjoining streets now stand, as well as those forming a great portion of the Pembroke Township.

Speaking in general terms, the property of the Fitzwilliams, which has come down in its entirety to the Earl of Pembroke, extended from Blackrock and Kilmacud, where it joined the lands of the Abbey of the Blessed Virgin Mary and of the Priory of the Holy Trinity, to Trinity College then the Priory of All Saints, and to St. Stephen’s Green, formerly portion of the estate of the Corporation of Dublin.

It was not until the beginning of the fifteenth century that the lands of Merrion, which then constituted a manor came into the possession of the Fitzwilliams. These lands which lie within the franchises of the city of Dublin, and over which the Corporation had certain rights, appear to have been originally portion of the lands of Donnybrook, and to have been always held in conjunction with the adjoining manor of Thorncastle, which included the lands lying between Merrion and Blackrock.

The first owner of Donnybrook and Thorncastle after the Anglo-Norman Invasion was Walter de Rideleford, Lord of Bray, who was given the greater portion of such of the lands to the south of Dublin as were not in the possession of ecclesiastical establishments. He was a bravo and noble warrior, who is said to have slain the leader of the Norwegian army which came to the assistance of the Irish when they were investing Strongbow’s forces in Dublin, and in addition to the grant of lands to the south of Dublin, he was also given a large tract at Castledermot in the County Kildare.

This warrior was succeeded by another owner of the same name and it was not until 1244 that a Waiter de Rideleford ceased to be identified with Thorncastle. By marriage with an illegitimate descendant of Henry I., the de Ridelefords had become connected with the reigning house, and also through the same alliance with many of the leading Anglo-Norman invaders, the founders of the houses of Fitzgerald, Fitzmaurice, and Carew.

The last Walter do Rideleford connected with Thorncastle had two daughters. One was twice married, first to Hugh do Lacy, Earl of Ulster, and, secondly, to. Stephen de Longespee sometime Justiciary or Viceroy of Ireland. The other married Robert do Marisco, who was son or brother of a successor of Stephen do Longespee in the chief governorship. Robert do Marisco and his wife predeceased her father, and on the latter’s death in 1244 his Dublin estates passed to their only child, Christiana do Marisco, who was then an infant. As an heiress she became a ward of the Crown, and the King, as was then customary, gave the custody of her lands and bestowal of her hand in marriage to a guardian, in her case one Fulk, of Newcastle; declaring, although she was then but two years old, that it was his intention she should become the wife of her protector. The royal decree was not infallible. Five years later she was under the care of Ebulo do Geneve, and described as his wife.

Again man proposed but Providence disposed, and she escaped from the care of Ebulo do Geneve to retain her maiden name through life. She was on terms of intimacy with Eleanor of Provence, the widowed Queen of Henry III.; and, as she accompanied her royal mistress abroad after the Queen had taken the veil, she probably followed the example of her royal mistress in joining a religious community. This lady was possessed of great wealth, which she freely spent in the service of Queen Eleanor and her son, Edward I., and on being granted lands in England she assigned her Irish property to the Crown.

At the close of the thirteenth century the manor of Thorncastle was held from the King by William le Deveneis, who became one of the judges of Ireland, and was knighted. He began his official career in Ireland as Remembrancer of the Exchequer, and, subsequently, it was alleged, through the goodwill of an ecclesiastical viceroy whom he had placated by gifts of land near Coolock, obtained other offices.

The custody of the King’s demesnes in Ireland was committed to him, and he was given a grant of lands in the mountainous country adjoining the royal forest of Glencree. The profit from these he did not long enjoy. Until about the year 1290 the Irish and the Anglo-Norman invaders lived in comparative concord, but from that time constant warfare was carried on between the inhabitants of the hills, and those of the low lands.

In a petition to the Crown William le Deveneis set forth that his tenants had fled, and although he was given authority to compel them to return, and to enclose his lands for the preservation of game, the lands near Glencree had to be given up as valueless, and he was obliged to fall back upon lands like those of Thorncastle nearer to the seat of government.

From William le Deveneis the lands of Thorncastle passed to Walter de Islip probably a kinsman of the Archbishop of Canterbury of that name, who flourished about the same time. Walter de Islip was an ecclesiastical pluralist who held amongst his benefices and dignities a cure of souls in the diocese of Norwich, the parish of Trim in the diocese of Meath, a canonry in St Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, a prebend in the diocese of Ossory, and the precentorship of Ferns Cathedral, as well as the lay offices of Chief Baron and Treasurer of the Irish Exchequer.

From him the lands of Thorncastle passed, about the year 1320, to Robert de Nottingham, one of the wealthiest citizens or Dublin, and mayor of that city.

The earliest indication of the existence of a castle at Merrion is in 1334, when Thomas Bagod, a member of the family from which the district of Baggotrath derived its name, signed there a deed relating to the lands lying to the north-west of Merrion, now known as Simmonscourt. The lands of Thorncastle and Merrion had before that time. come into Bagod’s occupation, through his marriage to Eglantine, widow of Robert de Nottingham, and after his death a year or two later they passed to John, son of Matthew de Bathe, of the County Meath, who married a daughter of Robert de Nottingham. By John de Bathe the lands of Thorncastle and Merrion were in 1366 assigned to Sir John Cruise, the distinguished soldier and diplomatist, already mentioned as owner of the adjacent lands of Stillorgan, and from the fact that he is described as of Merrion, and dated a deed there, Cruise appears to have resided sometimes in the castle.

From him, at the beginning of the fifteenth century, the lands passed to the Fitzwilliams. The first of the Fitzwilliams to become owner of the lands and manors of Merrion and Thorncastle was James, son of Hugh Fitzwilliam, whose near relatives were then seated at Dundrum and Swords, and his succession to them arose like that of the Derpatricks to Stillorgan, from his marriage to a daughter of Sir John Cruise.

About the year 1420 they passed to his son, Philip Fitzwilliam, and as the latter was then a minor the custody of his property and. guardianship of his person was entrusted, after having been for a short time held by Hugh de Burgh, to James Cornwalsh, Chief Baron of the Irish Exchequer; who is stated to have met his death in the Castle of Baggotrath at the hands of a kinsman of Philip Fitzwilliam.

On attaining to years of discretion Philip Fitzwilliam became involved in the events which preceded the Wars of the Roses, and took the side of the White Rose or Yorkist party. In 1446 he is described as one of the counsellors of Henry VI., and a servant of Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York, the father of Edward IV. and Richard III., and is said to have rendered good service to the Crown, not only in Ireland against the enemies of the Pale, but also in England against the house of Lancaster.

Philip Fitzwilliam was succeeded by his son Stephen, who in 1464, when residing at Merrion, entered into a contract with Dame Elizabeth Fleming, doubtless one of the Slane family, to marry her daughter by a previous marriage, Anne Cruise, on condition that the Cruises relinquished any right which they might have to his property.

On Stephen Fitzwilliam’s death his lands passed to his son James, charged with a jointure to his widow, who married, secondly, Robert Cusack; and as James Fitzwilliam was a minor they were for a time in the custody of guardians appointed by the Crown.

At the end of the fifteenth century the manor of Merrion came into the possession of the branch of the Fitzwilliam family seated on the lands or Dundrum. The latter lands had been assigned in 1365 to William, son of Richard Fitzwilliam, and were at the end of the fifteenth century owned by Thomas Fitzwilliam, the fifth in direct descent from him.

In Thomas Fitzwilliam were combined the possession of large property, a liberal education, and high connections. When he had come of age in 1486, he had succeeded in addition to the manor of Dundrum to the manor of Baggotrath, and to other lands in the Counties of Dublin and Meath; and in order to fit himself for the caret of his estates he went three years later to London to study law.

His immediate ancestors had married into the houses of Perrers, Bellow, and Holywood - all families of importance in the Pale and to the position and possessions which he inherited he added by his own marriage. His wife, Eleanor, daughter of John Dowdall, was, on her mother’s side, a grand-daughter of Sir Jenico Dartasse, a wealthy native of Gascony, at country which in his time passed from English to French rule, who had settled in Ireland and married into one of the old Anglo-Norman families, the Plunketts of Killeen, and ultimately the Fitzwilliams inherited the greater portion of the Dartasse property.

There is a curious tale told of their succession to it. Thomas Fitzwilliam’s mother-in-law married three times, her first husband being Thomas Barnewall, her second John Dowdall, and her third Rowland Eustace, Baron of Portlester, sometime Lord Chancellor and Treasurer of Ireland. She had by her last husband, amongst other children, three daughters, who married respectively Sir Maurice Eustace, Sir John Plunket, and Sir Walter do la Hyde.

On a certain occasion while these ladies, with their husbands, and Thomas Fitzwilliam and his wife were searching in a house in Dublin for papers concerning their mother’s estate, Sir Maurice Eustace discovered a deed by which their mother had settled her property on her heirs by her marriage to John Dowdall.

This deed Sir Maurice Eustace secretly took away with him, and, as soon as they had parted from the Fitzwilliams, told the others its purport. Its provisions were considered unjust and it was proposed that the deed should be burned. To such a course Sir Walter de la Hyde, in whose chamber in the White Friars’ Monastery, near the modern Aungier Street they were assembled, would not agree, but on the bell in the White Friars’ Church beginning to toll he, being a pious man, went off to his devotions, and during his absence the deed was consigned to the flames. Of this his wife told him on his return, much to his sorrow and discontent. The next Lent, “being sore moved in their conscience,” the de la Hydes disclosed what had been done, and enabled the Fitzwilliams to obtain possession of the whole property-a service which the Fitzwilliams rewarded by allowing the de la Hydes to retain the portion then held by them

Although sometimes described as of Merrion, both Thomas Fitzwilliam and his eldest son, Richard, who succeeded him on his death in 1517, appear to have made Baggotrath Castle their principal residence. The only record concerning Merrion in their time is a lease made in 1519 by Richard Fitzwilliam on his going to England of all his messuages and lands within that manor to a physician called Owen Albanagh. The lease reserves a rent of twelve marks besides the payment of an annual custom of herrings and other fish, and provides for the resumption of possession by the landlord on his return to Ireland.

Richard Fitzwilliam, who succeeded Thomas Fitzwilliam as his eldest son, and who married one of the do Bathes, was a most trusted adherent of Gerald, ninth Earl of Kildare, the father of Silken Thomas, who was connected with both the Fitzwilliams and the Eustaces-, and acted as intermediary in the dispute concerning the Dartasse property.

When the Earl was summoned to England to render an account of his government as Lord Deputy, Richard Fitzwilliam went in his train. To the Earl’s influence was doubtless due the offices of honour and emolument which Richard Fitzwilliam held, including those of groom of the chamber to Henry VIII., seneschal of the royal manors near Dublin, and gentleman usher of the Irish Exchequer.

His death took place in 1528, when he was still but a young man. His will shows him to have been a devoted son of the Church, and a man whose object it was to establish and perpetuate the position to which his family had attained. To the White Friars’ Monastery in Dublin Fitzwilliam bequeathed an endowment for a priest to pray for him daily for over, a legacy to repair the monastic buildings, the rent of certain lands until his heir came of age, and a gown of satin and a doublet of green velvet to make vestments; to the Church of’ Merrion (the site of which is indicated by the disused burial ground on the Blackrock Road) he left also a gown of camlet and a- doublet of satin; and to his ghostly father his finest black hose. On his tomb in the Church of the White Friars he directed that a great marble stone should be laid with a brass engraved with representations of himself, his wife, and his children “after the custom of England.” For his children and for his brothers and sisters, including William, who rose to high favour at the English Court, Nicholas, who was in holy orders and held the dignity of Treasurer of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Alison, who married Christopher Ussher, a great grand-uncle of Archbishop James Ussher, and Margaret, who married William Walsh, of Carrickmines, he made ample provision.

The value of the Fitzwilliams property was then vastly different to what it is in the present day. The only source of income, besides agriculture and the sale of rabbits, which abounded in the sandy lands, was the tribute from the fisheries along the shore from Blackrock to Ringsend; and probably as lay owners the Fitzwilliams did not derive so much profit from their property as their neighbours, the monastic owners of Monkstown and Kill-of-the-Grange, while their lands were equally liable to devastating raids from the hillsmen.

They were, however, the principal residents and the largest lay landowners on the southern side of Dublin, and they acquired in the sixteenth century additional property which added to their importance and influence. Their loyalty to the Crown was conspicuous, and when the Reformation came they adopted the tenets of the Established Church, though in some instances their compliance with its teaching was formal.

In the reign of Edward VI. it was found necessary to remind Nicholas Fitzwilliam, the Treasurer of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, of the King’s injunctions for godly and true order in the Church, and before the seventeenth century all the members of the family had reverted to the Church of Rome.

Thomas Fitzwilliam, who succeeded, when about nine years old, his father, Richard Fitzwilliam, and who made the Castle of Merrion his principal residence, was one of the most illustrious members of his family, and finally established the greatness of his house. Archbishop Loftus speaks of him as a man eminent in Ireland for his services to Church and State; and, for his bearing in the field against Shane O’Neill, Sir Henry Sidney, in the autumn of 1566, conferred on him at Drogheda the honour of knighthood.

His father had committed the guardianship of his son’s estates and person to his cousin, Patrick Finglas, sometime Chief Justice of the King’s Bench, and to his father-in-law, Robert de Bathe, who was afterwards replaced by Christopher de la Hyde, one of the puisne judges in Finglas’s Court, and though some self-interest is indicated in the fact that Finglas secured the hand of his ward for his daughter, the faithful discharge of the trust is apparent from Sir Thomas Fitzwilliam’s successful career.

Like other proprietors of the Pale, he led a life in which the occupations of war were blended with those of peace. In compliance with the conditions under which he held his manor of Merrion, we find him serving in person with two mounted soldiers, and contributing towards the supply of carts in the expedition in 1556 against the Scottish invaders, and in those of 1560 and 1566 against Shane O’Neill.

He also acted in 1560 as a commissioner for the muster of the Militia in Balrothery Barony, where he had acquired property, and in later years as constable of the Castle of Wicklow, which lay in the midst of the enemies of the Pale, whom it was then sought to subdue. Meantime civil affairs were not neglected by him; in 1559 he was returned to Parliament as one of the Knights of the Shire for the County Dublin, and in the same year appointed Vice-Treasurer of Ireland.

He was also prothonotary of the Queen’s’ Bench, Sheriff and Chief Guardian of the Peace in the metropolitan county (where he was granted in 1564 power to exercise martial law), seneschal of the border lands inhabited by the Walshes, Harolds, and Archbolds; and on Wicklow being constituted a county he was appointed a commissioner to determine its limits.

To the English Court Sir Thomas Fitzwilliam made at least one visit, and the success which attended his petitions was probably largely due to the reputation of his uncle William. This uncle, who was reared in the house of one of the Fitzwilliams’ tenants near Dundrum, was taken into the service of the great William Fitzwilliam, Earl of Southampton, then Lord Admiral of England, who appears to have acknowledged the Irish Fitzwilliams as kinsmen, and, as has been already mentioned, under Monkstown, in connection with Sir John Travers, whose sister he married, he became the Earl’s trusted attendant.

After the death of the Earl he became attached to the Court. He was appointed a member of the Privy Council and knighted by Edward VI., and is spoken of by Queen Elizabeth as a person who stood high in her esteem. His principal residence was at Windsor, where he was buried, but he kept up a connection with Ireland, where, while holding the office of Clerk of the Crown and Hanaper, he was given in 1537 the Manor of Celbridge in the county Kildare. In 1559, shortly before his death, he was returned to Parliament as one of the Knights of the Shire for the County Carlow.

For some time after he came of age Sir Thomas Fitzwilliam occupied, like his father and grandfather, Baggotrath Castle, and also the dissolved monastery of Holmpatrick, which he held by lease from the Crown and lent to the Earl of Sussex during his Viceroyalty. But in later life Merrion Castle became his constant residence. From Merrion in 1566 Sir Henry Sidney, after landing at Dalkey and spending the previous night in Monkstown Castle, made his entry as Lord Deputy into Dublin.

A large portion of his lands was kept by Sir Thomas Fitzwilliam in his own hands, and in his will he bequeaths to his son, corn on the lands of Merrion, Booterstown, and Simmonscourt as well as at Holmpatrick. Besides the monastic lands of Holmpatrick he acquired also others at Kilternan belonging to St. Mary’s Abbey. During his time the Fitzwilliam family became closely allied with the Prestons., ennobled under the title of Gormanston; Sir Thomas Fitzwilliam being connected with Christopher, fourth Viscount Gormanston, in the most extraordinary manner. First his cousin, a daughter of Sir William Fitzwilliam, of Windsor, married Lord Gormanston, and his brother, Michael Fitzwilliam, of Donore, in the County Meath, Surveyor-General of the Crown lands, married Lord Gormanston’s sister, then his eldest son married a daughter of Lord Gormanston, and finally his daughter, who had been previously married to a son of Sir John Plunkett married Lord Gormanston as his second wife.

Besides this son and daughter Sir Thomas Fitzwilliam had a son Nicholas; who settled at Baldungan, and a son Thomas, who was’ educated at Oxford, and who settled at Moylagh in the County Meath.

After Sir Thomas Fitzwilliam’s death in 1591 his eldest son, Richard Fitzwilliam, occupied Merrion for five short years. He took an equally active part in defence of the Pale. For some time he was Constable of Wicklow Castle, and Warden of the Marches; and after he had succeeded to Merrion, in accordance with the terms of his tenure, he attended in person a great assembly of the Militia at Tara, accompanied by two armed men.

His own outlying lands were still liable to the devastating raids of the hillsmen. For their protection he rebuilt the Castle of Dundrum, and, doubtless, the host of retainers, who appear in his will as recipients of such tokens of his remembrance as his best sorrel horse, his sorrel colt, and his dun nag, could be relied on to guard when necessary the property of their master. Besides the Castle of Merrion he had a house in Dublin, but he died in the former place, and desired to be buried in the parish church of Donnybrook, directing that in the Chapel there belonging to his family a tomb or monument should be erected to their memory.

Thomas Fitzwilliam, who succeeded on the death of Richard Fitzwilliam, as the latter’s eldest son, was destined to obtain the hereditary honours which his ancestors hard earned by their valour and devotion to the throne, and was raised to the peerage by Charles I. as Baron Fitzwilliam of Thorncastle and Viscount Fitzwilliam of Merrion. When his father’s death took place he was still a minor. About the time he came of age in 1602, he went to complete his education in London and entered as a law student at Gray’s Inn. Three years later he married Margaret, daughter of Oliver Plunkett, fourth Baron of Louth, whose mother was one of the Bagenalls, then a most powerful family; and in the same year he was knighted by the Lord Deputy, Sir Arthur Chichester

Some glimpses of life at Merrion are afforded us at this period. There we see Lord Fitzwilliam’s mother, two years after her husband’s death, in 1597, on a November day, declaring her last will by word of mouth and leaving all she had to her trusted brother-in-law, Thomas Fitzwilliam, of Moylagh. There in 1605, just about the time of Lord Fitzwilliam’s marriage, William Fitzwilliam, of Jobstown, near Tallaght, where a branch of the family had settled, succumbed to the plague when himself only a few weeks married.

And in 1608 the Lord Deputy’s messenger for the conveyance of letters relates how he delivered to Lord Fitzwilliam’s brother; at the hall door of Merrion Castle, an order requiring Lord Fitzwilliam to produce the body of Sir Cahir O’Dogherty, who was married to a sister of Lord Fitzwilliam’s mother, and for whom Lord Fitzwilliam was a surety; and how on returning to town he met Lord Fitzwilliam at the cross roads at St Stephen’s Green riding home with his wife and eight attendants, and told him the mission on which he had been engaged.

Lord Fitzwilliam’s father had broken an entail made by his father, Sir Thomas Fitzwilliam, and in consequence Lord Fitzwilliam, during a great part of his life, was involved in litigation with his brothers and sisters. These included William, who married the widow of Primate Henry Ussher, and lived in the Castle of Dundrum; Christopher, who was the principal litigant; Patrick, who was in the army, and was killed in 1628 in a quarrel with Sir Robert Newcomen; Richard, who is described as of the Rock; Catherine, who married Henry Cheevers, of Monkstown; Mary, who married Lord Fitzwilliam’s brother-in-law, the fifth Baron of Louth, and, secondly, Gerald Aylmer; and a sister; who married Patrick Cusack, of Rathaldron. The outlay which this litigation required was large, and was added to expenditure caused by his devotion to the throne. After his creation as a peer in 1629, money began to be lavished in the royal cause, and his lands in all directions became heavily encumbered, the mortgagees including the great money lender of the time, the Earl of Cork, who lent under the names of his relatives and friends, the Lord Chancellor Viscount Loftus, the Attorney-General Sir William Ryves, and the Solicitor General Sir William Samback.

The rebellion of 1641 and the years which followed were for Lord Fitzwilliam a critical time; and the claims of family affection and loyalty to the King did not always indicate similar paths. The Prestons, who were amongst his dearest and closest relations, as a ring inscribed with the words “Remember Gormanston” reminded him, were prominent in the affairs of the Confederation at Kilkenny. But Lord Fitzwilliam kept himself free from the entanglements into which so many other Roman Catholic lords of the Pale fell; and, though it was not always possible for him to restrain his unruly dependents, he ever retained the esteem of that most loyal servant of the Crown, the great Duke of Ormonde, who speaks of him as being, by chance or situation of his fortune, a man in every way faithful in his allegiance to his sovereign.

When some weeks after the outbreak of the Rebellion the Government found themselves in danger of being attacked before reinforcements arrived from England, Lord Fitzwilliam was one of the three lords of the Pale who ventured to obey the summons of the Lords Justices to consult on measures for the protection of the city of Dublin; and subsequently his Castle of Merrion was garrisoned by a company of soldiers. Thither in the following March, Sir Simon Harcourt was conveyed after he had received his mortal wound at the storming of Carrickmines Castle, and thence his body was carried for interment next day to Christ Church Cathedral.

A few months later, in June, the Castle was betrayed by the treachery of some of the garrison to a party of the rebels, and three hundred of them got in at a window before they were discovered. Owing to the rebels’ want of ammunition the soldiers, some forty in number, were able to make good their escape by boat to Dublin, but the Castle was left completely at the mercy of its uninvited occupants.

It was probably guests of a similar kind, or followers over whom Lord Fitzwilliam had no control, that three years afterwards despoiled and dismantled a barque laden with corn which was driven ashore at Merrion, and not, as the master alleged, persons acting under the direction of Lord Fitzwilliam’s two youngest sons. Lord Fitzwilliam, who was occasionally to be seen attended by a tall young servant in a red cloak riding through his devastated estates, had no means of protecting his property or of restraining the excesses of his retainers. He went to England and tendered his services to the Icing, but they were not accepted. His only resource was a policy of inactivity, and when his own home was invaded he sought refuge at Howth with his eldest son, familiarly known as Dickie Fitzwilliam, and his son’s wife.

The year 1645 saw the appearance in Irish affairs of Lord Fitzwilliam’s second son, Oliver, who succeeded him in his titles, and was created by Charles II. Earl of Tyrconnel. After completing his education in London, where, with his eldest brother, he had in 1628, like his father, entered at Gray’s Inn as a law student Oliver Fitzwilliam obtained, with the help of the Duke of Ormonde, about the year 1638, a commission as Colonel in the French Army, and took out to that country under his command 3,000 men recruited principally from amongst his own countrymen, with whom he was most popular.

He came back to England in 1642 seeking four hundred more recruits, and, though he found it impossible to raise them in Ireland, he secured the required number and returned to France with them and with his younger brother, William, eventually his successor in the titles, whom he appointed his lieutenant-colonel.

When Charles I.’s position became desperate, Oliver Fitzwilliam proposed to Queen Henrietta Maria, who was then in Paris, to go to his assistance, expressing a confident opinion that he would be able to induce the Kilkenny Confederates, provided their demands respecting the Roman Catholic religion were satisfied, to send 10,000 men to England to reinforce the royalist ranks.

He had gained a great reputation as a brave soldier in the French wars, and the Queen, who would gladly have seen the privileges which the Confederates sought conceded, agreed to the terms which he placed before her, and recommended him to the King as a man deserving of every encouragement and zealously affected to the King’s cause.

He arrived in England shortly before the battle of Naseby, and there, under Prince Rupert, gave proof of his valour and martial skill. What the King” said to him is not known, but he set out from Oxford, where the Court then was, in June, 1645, for Ireland, bearing a letter to the Duke of Ormonde, in which the King, while leaving everything to Ormonde’s discretion, expressed the wish that Oliver Fitzwilliam’s services should be accepted, and that Lord Fitzwilliam, although a Roman Catholic, should be appointed to the Irish Privy Council. It is said that the King promised also at that time to confer an English Earldom on Oliver Fitzwilliam’s father.

When he arrived in Ireland Oliver Fitzwilliam found that the Duke of Ormonde had no authority to grant the concessions which the Confederates desired; and as he believed that by these means alone could reinforcements be obtained, he became an active agent in the negotiations carried on by Lord Glamorgan and Lord Digby.

In the summer of 1646 he served under his uncle, General Thomas Preston, in the expedition of the Confederate Army against the Parliament forces in Connaught, where he is said to have particularly distinguished himself in the successful assault on Roscommon Castle; but, on the Confederates determining to advance on Dublin, and to compel the King’s Government to concede their terms by force of arms, he resigned his commission, and determined to return to Paris.

As a Roman Catholic Fitzwilliam was anxious that the fullest privileges should be granted to his Church, but he had repeatedly expressed his intention of living and dying in the King’s service, and was not willing to assist his co-religionists except in the paths of diplomacy. Before leaving Ireland he addressed two letters to the Duke of Ormonde urging him to agree to the terms which Lord Glamorgan had proposed; he told him that General Preston was preparing to advance against Dublin with an overwhelming army, and warned him that if he attempted to compel the inhabitants round Dublin to adhere to him and come into the city his possessions at Kilkenny would be burned, and all found in Dublin, men, women, and children, put to the sword.

Lord Fitzwilliam had before that time returned to Merrion Castle, for the protection of which his son had been given, soon after his arrival from England, ten muskets out of the ordnance store, but when General Preston’s advance upon Dublin was expected he received permission, as did also his son Richard, and his son William, who was then living at Dundrum, to seek neutral quarters at Leixlip, Luttrellstown, Howth, or Turvey, and to take with him all his retinue and goods. Lord Fitzwilliam was then reduced to a state of the most dire poverty.

When the Duke of Ormonde was about to give up Dublin to the Parliament, in the following year, 1647, Lord Fitzwilliam wrote to him from Louth begging for payment of a small sum of £15 due to him for hay supplied for the army.

Again in 1648, after the Duke of Ormonde had returned to Ireland, a proclamation calling upon all liege subjects to withdraw from the neighbourhood of Dublin, was made the ground of a petition from Lord Fitzwilliam for assistance, and, as he had no means of stocking lands if assigned to him, he was promised a pension of £100 a year. He had probably left his castle at Merrion, however, before that time, for it had been garrisoned by the Parliament, and in 1648 three officers, Major Cary Dillon, Lieutenant John Withers, and Ensign Thomas Davis, seven non-commissioned officers, and forty-seven soldiers, were quartered there.

Several of Lord Fitzwilliam’s near relatives took a more active part than himself or his sons on the side of the Confederation. In the year 1650 his brother, Christopher, being then a sojourner in Carlow and on his death-bed, declared his last will, leaving all he possessed to the children of his brother, Richard, who had died before him. He had been actively engaged in trade between the Irish and English quarters during those troublous times, and probably sometimes used, on behalf of the Confederation, a sword, which he had obtained from Gormanston Castle and which he desired his relatives, Robert Preston and Robert Finglas, a priest to return.

Oliver Fitzwilliam, after his arrival in Paris, had written to the Council of the Confederation, in February, 1647, in the most sanguine terms of the prospects of the royal cause, owing to dissensions which it was hoped would rend the Parliament, and recommended the Council to persist in the demand which they had made for the control of the churches, only advising them, as a matter of policy, to allow one church to be open in Dublin for the English religion.

As a consequence of the middle course, which he adopted, he was the victim of much misrepresentation. The English said he was promising freely the offices of State to Roman Catholics, and giving out that the Confederation was so powerful that he wished there were 40,000 English and Scots in Dublin for them to defeat, while the Irish said he was a friend to the Duke of Ormonde’s policy, and not faithful to his Church.

During the two following years he doubtless exerted himself to uphold the failing royal cause, until the establishment of the Commonwealth and the arrival of Cromwell in Ireland rendered it hopeless.

His second marriage-for he was twice married-had an important bearing on his position during the Commonwealth. His first wife, one of the Breretons of Malpas, in Cheshire, a relative of Sir William Brereton, who was created Baron Brereton of Leighlin, belonged to a royalist family; but his second wife, Eleanor, daughter of the first Earl of Clare, of the Holles creation, whom he married before 1647, belonged to a family identified with the Parliament cause, and through the influence of her brothers, John, second Earl of Clare and Denzil Holles, her husband received more considerate treatment at the hands of the authorities than he would otherwise have met with. He owned property in Nottinghamshire** **and Staffordshire and had an interest in a charge, held by his first wife’s mother (who had married, as her second husband, his uncle, Silvester Plunkett), on the Brereton estate in Cheshire.

In November, 1649, he came to London, probably in order to look after these properties. He was then arrested by order of the Council of State, and all his books and papers seized; but after a few days’ detention he was released, on undertaking to leave England in eight days.

Two years later, when residing in France, he was given permission to return to England, and in consequence of exertions on the part of his wife was allowed to remain there on entering into a bond to be of good behaviour, for which his brother-in-law, the Earl of Clare, became surety.

Fitzwilliam ingratiated himself subsequently with Oliver Cromwell, and was said to be the only man of his nation in request in London. After the death of his father and of his eldest brother he was given, about 1655, a grant of their estates and permission to come over to Ireland to recover them.

A great portion of the estates had been seized by the authorities of the Parliament and leased to their friends, including Merrion, which was held by a Mr. John Hughes; and for their recovery Oliver Fitzwilliam became a suitor to Henry Cromwell, the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. In a letter to Henry Cromwell, written from London in 1657, Oliver Fitzwilliam refers to the great obligations which he had conferred upon him, and, while declaring himself and his wife to be his Excellency’s most faithful servants, offers to bring him a present of dogs and hawks on his return to Ireland.

After the death of Oliver Cromwell he became an object of suspicion; and it is probable that with the improved prospects of the royalist cause, he was an active agent for the Restoration. In 1659 he was arrested, but on his giving his parole he was released, and his arms and horses restored to him, and during that winter he attended the meetings of a debating club established in London by James Harrington, the well-known author of *Oceana, *and took part in the discussions without interference.

Immediately after the Restoration, Charles II. conferred upon Fitzwilliam the title of Earl of Tyrconnel - a title afterwards taken also by James II.’s favourite, Richard Talbot

• and was urgent that his estates should be given back to him without delay.

The Earl was not, however, without enemies, and a letter calculated to do him injury was produced before the Commissioners under the Act of Settlement. It caused them to hesitate, and in 1663 the King indited a letter to the Duke of Ormonde, recommending the Earl of Tyrconnel to his care, and ordering that if it could not be effected by the ordinary course of procedure, some other way should be found of restoring the Earl to his property. As a result of this letter he was given a confirmation of his estates described under the denominations of Merrion, Ringsend, Baggotrath, Donnybrook, Simmonscourt, Dundrum, Ballinteer or Cheeverstown, Ticknock, Owenstown, Little Bray, Glencullen and the adjoining mountain townland of Ballybrack, Kilternan and Ballybetagh, Kilmacud, Thorncastle and Booterstown.

Merrion Castle, though much injured by the military occupation, still remained a substantial dwelling; and after additions and improvements had been effected by the Earl of Tyrconnel, it was assessed as a house containing sixteen hearths-a number which shows it to have been one of the largest dwellings in the County Dublin.

On the second storey the arms of the family were engraved in stone, and the walls of the rooms were hung with tapestry, some of which belonged to Lady Tyrconnel’s niece, the wife of the seventeenth Earl of Kildare, and was bequeathed by her to her aunt as a token of her love.

It was in the castle that the Earl of Tyrconnel, who did not long enjoy his honours and possessions, died, and thence that his body was carried to the family burying place in Donnybrook Church, where a black marble tomb inscribed with his full titles was afterwards raised.

The Countess of Tyrconnel survived her husband. She seems to have taken an active part in the management of her husband’s estate; the names of her family are preserved in the names of the streets known as Clare Street, Denzille Street and Holles Street, and there is a letter extant from the Duke of Ormonde, while he was Lord Lieutenant, asking her to allow the Corporation of Dublin to cut sods on the lands of Merrion for a bowling green which it was intended to make at Oxmantown.

As no children survived him, the Earldom of Tyrconnel became extinct on the death of Oliver Fitzwilliam in 1067, but his brother, William, succeeded to the Viscounty of Fitzwilliam. In addition to performing the military service already mentioned, the third Viscount is said to have been Governor of Whitchurch and Lieutenant-General of Shropshire during the Civil War. He married one of the Luttrells, and his daughters, of whom he had five, married into Roman Catholic families, including the Brownes of Clongowes Wood, the Mapases of Rochestown, and the Nettervilles of Cruicerath. After the Restoration, during his brother’s lifetime, he had resided in the Castle of Simmonscourt, and his death, which occurred in 1075, took place in Dublin in the parish of St. Nicholas Within.

An account of his funeral expenses tells that on his death-bed he was attended by a doctor, apothecary, and surgeon, and ministered to by Roman Catholic clergymen, that rosemary and frankincense perfumed the chamber, and that his body was carried at night, while the bells of Christ Church Cathedral tolled, to Donnybrook Church, and there interred with all the pageantry that heralds could provide.

William’s only son, Thomas, succeeded as fourth Viscount Fitzwilliam. He also was an earnest member of the Roman Catholic Church. During the rule of James 11. he was given a seat on that monarch’s Privy Council, and appointed a Commissioner of the Treasury, and at the time of the siege of Limerick was in command of a troop of horse which displayed considerable bravery in an encounter in Kerry with King William’s forces. He was subsequently attainted, but the attainder was afterwards reversed, and in 1695 he appeared to take his seat in the Irish House of Lords. Although he took the oath of fealty, he was not willing to take the oath of adherence to the Established Church, and was obliged to withdraw.

In the’ two marriages which he contracted freedom of opinion is displayed; his first wife being Mary, daughter of Sir Philip Stapleton, a distinguished officer under the Parliament, and his second wife a sister of the first Lord Rivers.

The beginning of the eighteenth century saw the removal of the seat of the Fitzwilliams to Mount Merrion, the Irish residence of the Earl of Pembroke, and under that place the remaining history of the family will be found. Thenceforward Merrion Castle fell more and more into decay, and the neighbourhood rapidly dwindled in importance.

So deserted was it about the year 1729 that one of the leading Dublin journals of that day, *The Flying Post, *told a credulous public that Merrion was completely at the mercy of rats of an extraordinary size, as large as cats or rabbits, said to be partly indigenous and partly imported in foreign ships, which moved about in droves; and assured its readers that these outlandish animals had killed a woman and a child.

The ruins of the Castle were visited by Austin Cooper, the painstaking antiquary, to whom reference has so often been made, in May, 1780, when he formed the opinion that the structure had been a piece of patchwork, part of it very old and part more modern, with limestone casements to the windows. The ground floor, used as a cowhouse, and some outlying buildings, used as a stable, were then standing.

Two surly mastiffs prevented his making a sketch and on returning some months later for that purpose he found to his surprise that the ruins were being removed, a work of no little difficulty, proving, as he remarks, the excellence of old Irish masonry.

Booterstown and the Blackrock Road

The lands of Booterstown, or “The Town of the Road,” lying to the south-east of Merrion, formed portion of the ancient manor of Thorncastle, which, as has been mentioned in the history of Merrion, was always held by the owners of that place.

The original name of the lands appears to have been Cnocro or the Red Hill, a designation which also embraced portion of the demesne of Mount Merrion, but this, as early as the thirteenth century, gave place to the name of Thorncastle. At that period Thorncastle was a more important manor than Merrion, and in the time of Walter do Rideleford a castle stood upon the lands. This castle, which probably gave rise to the name of Thorncastle from its having been originally a rampart of earth protected by a thorn fence, was approached from Dublin by a bridge across the Dodder and by a highway which led directly from the bridge to the castle.

It most likely stood near the town of Blackrock, as in the eighteenth century a bridge across the stream at the entrance to the town bore the name of Thorncastle Bridge.

Sir William le Deveneis, after he had succeeded Christiana do Marisco, the granddaughter of Walter de Rideleford, in the possession of Thorncastle, petitioned the Crown in 1297 to grant him the fee of the lands which he then held on lease, and on the recommendation of a jury empanelled by the Treasurer and Barons of the Exchequer, as it was found the Crown would thus have greater security for the rent, and the power of disposing of the wardship of the heir, if a minor, his request was complied with.

A further application was made in 1306 by Sir William le Deveneis, who had meantime been appointed a judge, for privileges exercised by Christiana de Marisco and her ancestors of seizing wreck from the sea, and escheats found on the rocks, and also for the ownership of pools which possibly were artificially constructed fish ponds, on the coast from Black-rock to the river Dodder.

But the jury to whom the question was referred expressed the opinion that only such persons as were licensed by Christiana de Marisco and her ancestors should of right enjoy these privileges, and said that as yet they had seen no pools. During Sir John Cruise’s ownership of Merrion and Thorncastle, the latter manor suffered so much from the incursions of the inhabitants of the Wicklow mountains that he was allowed by the Crown to hold it rent free for his life, but in James Fitzwilliam’s time it was liable to a head rent of £5 8s. 8d., which in 1409 was assigned by the King to William de Marny and his son John, and in 1418 to John Coringham, Clerk of the Works and guardian of the King’s Palace in Dublin.

The modern Booterstown occupies the site of the village in which the tenants on Thorncastle resided in the’ fifteenth century. After James Fitzwilliam’s son, Philip, had succeeded to the property, during a severe incursion from the Irish enemies of the King, this village was completely destroyed and the tenants killed.

A remission of rent from the Crown was then sought by Philip Fitzwilliam, in order not only to rebuild the village but also to erect a fortified castle for its defence and that of the surrounding country. In his petition, which was lodged in 1435, he points out that until the village was rebuilt there would be loss to the Crown of the rent as well as to himself of the profits of the lands. On condition that the castle was completed with4n four years, and that it was placed under the supervision of the Treasurer of Ireland, the prayer of his petition was granted.

The building did not progress rapidly, and in 1449, when Philip Fitzwilliam was given a remission of all arrears of rent and permission to hold rent free for life, it had only been begun. It was, however, subsequently completed, and vaults belonging to it are said to be incorporated in the house which stands upon its site, as indicated on the Ordnance Map. It is described in the seventeenth century as being in good repair, and a garden plot and grove of ash trees “set for ornament,” then surrounded it.

The lands of Booterstown were amongst the property mortgaged by the first Viscount Fitzwilliam, and were assigned to Sir William Ryves, then Attorney-General for Ireland. The latter; with his brother, an ecclesiastical lawyer of note, had been brought from England by the well-known Sir John Davis, to whom he was related, and after a long tenure of the Attorney-Generalship, during which lie represented in Parliament for some years the borough of Belturbet, he was appointed a Justice of the King’s Bench-an office which he held until his death in 1648 - and acted for a time in the high position of Speaker of the House of Lords.

It was before him that Mr. Wolverston, of Stillorgan, was brought for examination in connection with the murder of Mr. Smithson; and he was on terms of intimacy with the Earl of Cork, his first loan to Viscount Fitzwilliam being made on the same day as one from his noble friend.

The principal resident in Booterstown at the time of the Rebellion of 1641 was Mr. Thomas Fox, a gentleman farmer In December of that year his stock was driven off by a party of the rebels, headed, as he alleged, by the Goodmans of Loughlinstown and the Rochforts of Kilbogget, and owing to the state of the country he was unable to pursue his avocation. In his deposition he set forth that he had lost 60 cows of English breed, valued at £360; and 15 horses, valued at £60; besides brass, pewter and other household stuff, and that the yearly profit from his farm was £100, and the value of the buildings and improvements £1,000.

Subsequently, as appears from a deposition made in 1646, Fox was murdered near his own house. About the time of the Restoration the population of Booterstown was returned as 41 persons of Irish descent, inhabiting nine houses. With the exception of one occupied by Thomas Reyley, which had two chimneys, and another occupied by the smith, to which a forge was attached, these had only one fireplace each.

In the beginning of the eighteenth century Mr. Richard Colby, who afterwards assumed the name of Wesley, and was created Lord Mornington, the grandfather of the great Duke of Wellington, had a small residence at Booterstown, which on succeeding to the Wesley property ho assigned to Mr. Christopher Ussher; his first cousin, already mentioned as tenant under Christ Church Cathedral for the lands of Tipperstown.

Mrs. Delany, who much admired the situation of Booterstown, describes a collation with every variety of wine, and the best of sillibub, of which she partook one afternoon in the spring of 1732 in the Ussher’s house, and tells bow she afterwards went to a dance, which lasted until an early hour next morning, at Mr. Wesley’s, where she had more “peck and booze,” as meat and drink were called in the fashionable slang of that day. About this time part of the lands of Booterstown were cultivated by a farmer called Isaiah Yeates, who grew corn of such superlative excellence that in two successive years a premium for the best wheat given by the Dublin Society - a body then in its infancy - was paid down on the nail to him, an(1 in one of those years he sold in the public market 400 barrels of his wheat for 20s. a barrel, when the ordinary supply fetched from 14s. to 18s.

The middle of the eighteenth century saw the transition of the neighbourhood from an agricultural to a residential locality. Bishop Pococke, the great traveller, mentions that in 1752 Lord Fitzwilliam was letting the lands. of Booterstown in small parcels for building country houses.

Bishop Pococke considered Booterstown to have a most glorious situation. It was at this time that Merrion Avenue, which leads from Blackrock to the gates of Mount Merrion on the Stillorgan Road, and is unequalled in the metropolitan county for noble proportion and fine timber, and Cross Avenue, which connects Booterstown with Merrion Avenue were constructed.

St. Helen’s, formerly called Seamount now the handsome residence of Sir John Nutting, Baronet, was one of the first houses erected. It was built by Mr. Thomas Cooley, a popular barrister, and representative in Parliament for the borough of Duleek, who died in 1754, when the house was only a few years completed.

In the nineteenth century it had several distinguished occupants, including the Right Hon. John Doherty, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, and General Lord Viscount Gough.

Sans Souci, the fine old residence of Mr. Joseph P. O’Reilly, D.L., was erected about the same time by the Lanesborough family, and was originally approached by the noble gateway in rustic work, which now forms the entrance of St. Helen’s’. The grounds of Sans Souci were laid out by a landscape gardener called Gabriel Griffin, who in 1769 mentioned a shrubbery and a wall for fruit trees, which he had constructed there, as proof of his capabilities.

To Sans Souci, in 1781, Robert, third Earl of Lanesborough, brought his bride - a daughter of the Right Hon. David La Touche - the greatest beauty of her time, and there in 1806, having lived for many years in seclusion, owing to grief for her untimely decease, he died. Subsequently Sans Souci was occupied by Mr. James Digges La Touche, a man of singular piety.

Amongst other residents in Booterstown we find John, first Baron Knapton, ancestor of Viscount de Vesci, who was living there in 1746; Lady Anne Doyne, widow of Mr. Philip Doyne, of Wells, and a daughter of the first Earl of Arran, whose house at Booterstown was sold in 1766; the Venerable Edward Wight, Archdeacon of Limerick, who was placed in 1771 on the Commission of the Peace for the County Dublin when living at Villa Wight, near Booterstown; the Countess of Brandon, a peeress in her own right, admired for “genuine wit elegance of taste, dignity of manners, and superior understanding,” who died in 1789 in her house in Booterstown Avenue; Sir Samuel Bradstreet a Baronet, Recorder of Dublin, and subsequently a Justice of the King’s Bench, who entertained the Lord Lieutenant and a distinguished party in 1788 at. his villa near Booterstown; the Earl of Roscommon, who was living at Booterstown in 1804; and the Right Hon. James Fitzgerald, the silver-tongued Prime Serjeant, well known for his part in the Union debates, who died in 1835 at Cherbury.

The Blackrock Road was during part of the eighteenth century in a dangerous state, and had an unenviable reputation as the resort of highwaymen. Owing to the absence of a protecting wall the Rev. Thomas Heany, soon after his appointment as Curate of Monkstown, narrowly escaped meeting his death owing to his horse backing his gig over a precipice at the edge of the road near Booterstown, and the Hon. Colonel Loftus’ coachman, when proceeding home to Killiney, was attacked near there by no less than four footpads.

About 1781 horse races, which were held near Booterstown, were a source of annoyance to the inhabitants, and in that year they were stopped by the Lord Mayor of Dublin, who sent the Sheriffs, “with a proper guard,” to take down the tents and to prevent the horses running.

The popularity of Blackrock led to the erection of many villas between Booterstown and that place. Amongst these was Willow Park, which at the time of the Union was the residence of Hugh Viscount Carleton, Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, already, mentioned in connection with Brenanstown, and afterwards of the first Viscount Mountmorres.

Williamstown, a small group of houses, principally known through its occupation by the French College, assumed its present appearance about 1780 under the improving hand of Counsellor William Vavasour, whose name is still preserved in the Beggar’s Bush district. One of the houses occupied by the French College, originally called Castle Dawson, was then the residence of the Hon. James Massy Dawson, second son of the first Baron Massy, whose descendants, until lately, continued to own it; and at the time of the Rebellion of 1798, when the inhabitants of Williamstown displayed great loyalty, Lieutenant-General James Stewart, to whose memory there is a tablet in Monkstown Church, was a resident.

(The Viscounts Mountmorres are buried in Monkstown graveyard, and there is in Monkstown Church a mural tablet to Lieutenant-General Stewart bearing the following inscription :- “Inscribed to the memory of Lieut.-General James Stewart late Lt. Col. of His Majesty’s 5th or Royal Irish Regiment of Dragoons, who departed this life in Dublin 1st May, 1798, aged 58 years, much beloved and lamented by Miss Jane Stewart his beloved daughter. This monument is erected by Major Maxwell of the 7th Dragoon Guards, the nephew and late aide-de-camp to the General, in token of their love and regard”)

Near Merrion Avenue, on what was then part of the lands of Booterstown, three villas worthy of notice were erected in the latter half of the eighteenth century. These were known as Lisaniskea, Fort Lisle, and Frescati. Lisaniskea, which is still to be seen, was the home of Lady Arabella Denny, widow of Mr. Arthur Denny, M.P. for the County Kerry, and daughter of the first Earl of Kerry, the foundress of the Magdalen Asylum in Leeson Street. She has been described as a most agreeable and extraordinary woman, and spent her means in the alleviation of distress and suffering. At Lisaniskea her nephew, the Earl of Shelburne, sometime’s sought repose from the cares of State, and there a few years before the close of her Tong life, Lady Arabella Denny was visited in 1783 by John Wesley, who speaks of Lisaniskea as an earthly paradise.

Fort Lisle, which stood where the upper bank of the People’s Park now lies, was then the residence of John, first Lord Lisle, whose penurious habits gave great opportunity to the satirists of his time. After his death in 1781 the house was occupied by his widow, whose brother, Admiral Matthew Moore, died in 1787 at Blackrock, ordering his body to be interred at low-water mark in the strand, and by his son-in-law, Mr. John Travers.

In 1793 the house and grounds were turned into a place of public recreation under the name of Vauxhall Gardens, which were said, in the language of that period, to have crowned “the fascinating vicinity of Blackrock with a resistless charm”.

Frescati, which remains, but in an altered form, was built as the seaside residence of the Leinster family, and was said to be one of the best mansions in Ireland. There Lord Edward FitzGerald exercised his taste for horticulture, there the Dowager Duchess of Leinster gave splendid entertainments, and there, amongst temporary residents, we find Sir Henry Cavendish, who, while a member of the English House of Commons, reported for his amusement the speeches made during an entire Parliament and his wife, who was created a peeress as Baroness Waterpark.

Simmonscourt

Simmonscourt, a district to the north-west (or opposite side to Booterstown) of Merrion, forming portion of the populous Pembroke Township, exhibits as the only relic of its ancient state a fragment of a fortified building in the grounds of the modern Simmonscourt Castle. The ruins were in the eighteenth century much more considerable, and when visited by Austin Cooper in 1780 a staircase of 38 steps was intact.

During the days of invasion by the Black Danes and their Scottish allies, the lands within the confines of Simmonscourt were the scene of a fearful massacre. This was proved by the discovery, more than twenty years ago, on the southern side of the modern Ailesbury Road, near Seaview Terrace, of a vast quantity of human remains which the late Dr. William Frazer, in an exhaustive paper read before the Royal Irish Academy, describes at length. Those slain included men, women, and children to the number of six hundred persons, and from the condition of the remains Dr. Frazer was of opinion that they had been killed in cold blood, and not in battle. Only one of the invaders, a chief, who was found buried apart with a Danish sword by his side, and two women at his feet, appears to have fallen, his death being due to a sword wound on his head.

Dr. Frazer conjectured that the remains were those of inhabitants of the coast who had fled before the fierce invaders by a road which led from Merrion to the ford at Donnybrook, and that, possibly stopped by floods, they had been overtaken, and, after making feeble resistance, had been ruthlessly slaughtered.

The lands of Simmonscourt, as originally constituted in the thirteenth century, divided the lands of Merrion from those of Donnybrook and Baggotrath, and were described as a carucate of land in Donnybrook near the highway from Dublin to Thorncastle, extending from the Dodder Bridge to the meadow of Merrion.

The lands then belonged, like those of Merrion and Booterstown, to Walter de Rideleford, and by him they were granted in 1238 to Frambald FitzBoydekyn, who is described as a resident on the de Ridelefords’ property in the County Kildare. Twenty years later John Frambald, son of the original lessee, conveyed the lands at the rent of a pair of gloves to Richard de St. Olof, a citizen of Dublin, and from the latter they passed, through the marriage of his daughter, Margery to one of the house, into the possession of a family called Morville. In their time a charge was executed on the lands in favour of Thomas Bagod, then the owner of Merrion, and later on his successor in Merrion, Sir John Cruise, exercised some right over them.

The name Simmonscourt, or, as it was formerly spelled, Smothescourt, is derived from a family called Smothe, who appear in the fourteenth century as the successors of the Morvilles. There were two owners, father and son, called Thomas Smothe, and the lands afterwards passed through the hands of several other persons.

We find amongst those dealing with them, in 1379, John Mynagh, a chaplain; in 1382 Robert Serjeant; in 1386 Roger Kilmore, who leased to three carpenters his lands in Donnybrook, excepting a little park, a dovecote, and an acre of meadow; and in 1391 John Drake, who was Mayor of Dublin, and displayed during his term of office great valour as leader of an expedition against the Irish enemies of the King in the wilds of the Wicklow Hills. By John Drake the lands were assigned, on condition that prayers should be offered for himself and his relations, to the Priory of the Holy Trinity, and from that time until the nineteenth century the lands remained ecclesiastical property, and were held under the Priory and its successor, the Cathedral of Christ Church, by the Fitzwilliams’ of Merrion.

Places for public amusements stood upon the lands; and in a sixteenth century lease to the Fitzwilliams, the keeping and profits of the courts are reserved to the landlords.

On Easter Monday, or Black Monday, as it was called on account of the dreadful slaughter of the citizens which had taken place on that day at Cullenswood, the Dean of Christ Church Cathedral and his servants came to Simmonscourt for an annual outing and the tenant was bound to receive them in the chief house, occupied about that time by one Gerald Long, described as a gentleman, and to extend hospitality to them. A rabbit warren planted with ash and aspen trees is mentioned in the lease, and also a dovecote, which the tenant was bound to stock with pigeons, and of which the landlords, who were to share the stock with the tenant, were to have a key.

With the lands of Simmonscourt were held lands called Colcot, which had been released in 1336 by Sir Elias Ashbonrne to’ Thomas Smothe.

A bridge across the Dodder known as the bridge of Simmons-court existed in the beginning of the seventeenth century, but was much out of repair in 1640, when the sum of £10 was voted by the Corporation of Dublin for its restoration.

At the time of the rebellion of 1641 the lands of Simmonscourt, then occupied by George Hill, were spoiled and laid waste by, as was alleged, dependants and tenants of Viscount Fitzwilliam. The widow of George Hill, who appears to have lost his life in the hardship of those times, deposed that thirty cows of English breed, seven heifers, and eight horses, besides a quantity of corn, had been carried off, and that some of the cattle were taken to Kilternan and there killed on lands owned by Viscount Fitzwilliam.

During the Commonwealth the lands of Simmonscourt, which were returned as occupied by seven English and fifteen Irish inhabitants, were held by a Mr. John Weaver. After the Restoration the Earl of Tyrconnel’s brother and successor, William Fitzwilliam, resided in the castle, which had four chimneys, the only other householders being one Thomas Parker, a poor widow, and James the carman.

At the close of the seventeenth century the Castle of Simmonscourt was in ruin, and the lands were held under Christ Church by the Mossoms, already mentioned as tenants under the Cathedral for Tipperstown.

The beginning of the eighteenth century saw a house at Simmons-court, which was the residence at the time of his death, in 1734, of Arthur Forbes, second Earl of Granard, the father of the distinguished naval commander and diplomatist., who succeeded him in the title as third Earl, and which possibly had been previously occupied by Mr. Samuel Adams, who in 1720 was placed on the Commission of the Peace for the County Dublin, and was described as of Simmonscourt Subsequently the Honble. Richard Mountney, one of the Barons of the Exchequer, had a house there.

In 1791 a bridge of three arches was erected across the Dodder on the site of the present Ball’s Bridge, and known by that name; it was replaced in 1835 by the existing structure. Towards the close of the eighteenth century Counsellor Whittingham and Mr. Trulock are mentioned as the chief residents at Simmonscourt.

Sandymount

The land, on which the suburb of Sandymount stands, lying between Simmonscourt and the sea, was in the sixteenth century a rabbit warren called the Scallet Hill, which was covered with furze. It had belonged to Richard de St. Olof, the original owner of Simmonscourt, and after passing through the hands of the owners of Baggotrath, the Bagods, and the Fitzwilliams, it came, at the same time as Simmonscourt, into the possession of the Priory of the Holy Trinity.

Subsequently this area, together with the land along the shore, now covered by Strand Road and Sidney Parade, and then described as the great pasture by the sea, or the rabbit warren, became the property of the Fitzwilliams of Merrion.

The blind rabbit warren and the marsh near Simmonscourt are at the same time mentioned, and in the seventeenth century the upper and lower marsh are referred to, as well as places in the neighbourhood known then as the court or the sallies, the ridge of the brambles, the little field, and the furze park.

A herring fishery occupied the shore from Merrion to Ringsend, and from it the Fitzwilliams received a toll of 500 choice herrings.

During the early part of the eighteenth century the soil was found suitable for the manufacture of bricks, and the sea border from Merrion to where Sandymount now liess, was occupied by what were known as Lord Merrion’s brickfields. A village called Brickfield Town sprang up, and not far from it by the sea, there was a pretty thatched inn called the Conniving House, kept by one Johnny Macklean, renowned for its fish dinners and excellent ale. These at the close of the eighteenth century gave place to the modern Sandymount, which has now become almost merged in the metropolis.

Ringsend

Ringsend, or the end of the point, came into notice in the seventeenth century as a landing place for passengers bound for Dublin. As has been already related, Dalkey was from the time of the Anglo-Norman conquest until the sixteenth century the port of the metropolis for merchandise as well as passengers, but with the increasing traffic of the Elizabethan period the Dublin merchants found it more convenient, notwithstanding the difficulties and delay attendant on the navigation of the Liffey, to discharge their ships near their places of business.

With the merchandise came the passengers, for vessels then served alike for both purposes, and as the ships had often to lie for days at anchor close to Ringsend before the tide permitted of their coming up the river, it became the custom to put passengers on shore and to take them on board at Ringsend.

Although exigencies of weather and convenience caused Dunleary, Howth, and Skerries to be occasionally used, Ringsend was, from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century, when the construction of Howth Harbour and Kingstown Harbour caused another diversion, the chief place of embarkation and disembarkation for passenger traffic.

The increasing traffic to Dublin in the reign of Queen Elizabeth led the Corporation in the year 1582 to take steps for the erection of a fort at Ringsend, in order to secure the dues which they charged ships using the port.

In the reign of James I. violations of the revenue laws had become so frequent, owing to the distance of the Custom House, then situated on Merchants’ Quay, from Ringsend, that it was decided in 1620, on the advice of a customs officer called Thomas Cave, to station a revenue surveyor permanently at Ringsend. A house was built there for his accommodation, and as a reward for his assiduity in this and other business, Thomas Cave became its first occupant.

The number of ships which lay near Ringsend, even in the early part of the seventeenth century, may be estimated from the fact that during a great storm in the winter of 1637, in one night, no less than ten barques “of the most part whereof never no news hath been heard since” were carried away from their anchorage’ there.

Needless to say, Ringsend soon became a busy village. At the time the surveyor’s house was built so worthless was the land considered that the permission of the lord of the soil was not obtained before its erection, and it was not for some years that Viscount Fitzwilliam made an application for compensation, but when the Restoration came Ringsend had a population of 59 persons of English and 21 persons of Irish descent, and the adjoining village of Irishtown one of 23 persons of English and 75 persons of Irish descent.

At the time of the establishment of the Commonwealth, Rings-end was almost surrounded with water, which spread on its western side over the low ground between Irishtown and Beggar’s Bush, at that time a wood, and a great resort of robbers. It could only be approached from Dublin at low tide by means of a ford across the Dodder, but a bridge was then constructed across that river and measures were taken to keep the water within its channel.

This bridge was afterwards demolished, as the erratic John Dunton tells us in connection with a ramble he took to “that dear place,” Ringsend, and in order to cross the river it was necessary to employ vehicles known as Ringsend cars - the predecessors of those described under the history of Blackrock - which consisted of a seat suspended on a leather strap between two shafts, and were remarkable for the creaking which the leather made.

Shortly after the Restoration in 1665, while the Earl of Ossory was acting as Lord Deputy for his father, the Duke of Ormonde, races for these cars were held on the strand, and in presence of 5,000 spectators twenty-five of them competed for prizes offered by the Lord Deputy.

Of the great historical events of the seventeenth century Rings-end saw its share. From it set out for England in 1614 Lord Deputy Chichester, and to it rode in 1626 Robert, first Earl of Westmeath, erstwhile rebel but then a royal favourite, to embark for the English Court.

There landed in 1646 the soldiers who accompanied the Commissioners sent by the Parliament to treat with the Duke of Ormonde, then holding Dublin for the royal cause, and there and in the neighbouring villages of Lazar Hill and Baggotrath they remained in neutral quarters until on the unsuccessful termination of the negotiations they re-embarked for the North of Ireland.

In Ringsend in 1648 was stationed a company of the Parliament army, including Lieutenant-Colonel Philip Ferneley, Lieutenant Francis Tour, Ensign Robert Walsh, seven non-commissioned officers, and sixty-eight privates, and there in the following year, before the Battle of Rathmines, a detachment of royal soldiers from the Duke of Ormonde’s camp at Finglas defeated the garrison.

At its port later in the year 1649 landed Oliver Cromwell with his conquering army, and to it came in 1655, rowed up in boats from Dunleary, where the men-of-war lay, Henry Cromwell and his retinue on his arrival to assume the Chief Governorship of Ireland.

There after the Restoration in 1670 landed Lord Berkeley on his appointment as Viceroy, and in 1671 waited for a favourable wind to cross to England some officers of the Irish Guards ordered to answer at court a charge of mutinous conduct.

Thence escaped in 1683, after lying concealed there for some days in a tavern called the King’s Head, the famous gang of robbers, the Brennans, who are said to have carried off property to the value of £12,000.

There arrived in 1689 officers and soldiers of the English army to join the standard of James II., and there in the following year, that monarch on riding down from Dublin, saw his ships driven ashore by a sea force of William III. under the command of Sir Cloudesley Shovel.

And thence sailed in 1691, escorted to the water side by the Lords Justices and many of the military and gentry, William III.’s favourite Geneeral, Godert de Ginkel.

The condition of the port of Dublin, then only navigable by vessels of from fifty to one hundred tons’ burden, can now hardly be realised. At high tide the water spread over a great area, coming up on the south side to the line of Denzille Street Great Brunswick Street, Townsend Street, and on one occasion even to Merrion Square, and at low tide the Liffey made its way to the sea by devious courses through a labyrinth of sands.

Near Ringsend the ships lay at low water on the hard sand, and were exposed to every wind. Much of the merchandise was carried from the ships in litters, and the annual expenditure on the conveyance of passengers from Ringsend to Dublin was estimated at not less than £500, a large amount in those times.

The unsatisfactory state of the port is first shown in 1673 in a survey made by Sir Bernard de Gomme, the most famous military engineer of his day, for a great citadel which he proposed should be erected at a cost of some £130,000 on ground in the neighbourhood of the modern Merrion Square, but in the following year it is treated of in the most exhaustive manner, in a report drawn up at the request of the Lord Mayor, Sir Francis Brewster, by Andrew Yarranton, one of the earliest political economists and pioneers of inland navigation. The latter proposed as a remedy that locks, such as he had seen in Holland, should be constructed at the mouth of the Liffey, and that cuts or canals, in which the ships could float with warehouses and a military storehouse on their banks, should be made in the slob land, which then lay between Ringsend and Lazar Hill or Townsend Street.

Although attempts were made in 1676 by one Henry Howard, and in 1698 by the Corporation of Dublin, to found a ballast office, it was not until 1707 that corporate powers for the preservation and improvement of the port of the Irish metropolis were conferred by Act of Parliament.

From that time operations for clearing and widening the channel were actively carried on. Lighters were employed to deepen the bed of the river, the enclosing of the ground on the south side of the river was undertaken, and surveys for piling below Ringsend to keep the sand within bounds were ordered.

About the year 1717 the piling, strengthened by a wooden framework filled with stones, commenced, and was carried on to near the site of the Poolbeg lighthouse. The piling and framework soon decayed, and the construction of the South Wall, on which the Pigeon House stands, was commenced. Before the year 1755 it had reached as far as the site of the fort, and before the year 1796 the extension to the Lighthouse was completed - the successful conclusion of the work being largely due to the indefatigable exertions of Viscount Ranelagh, to whose prominence in the public affairs of his day reference has already been made in connection with his residence at Monkstown.

At the end of the piles, in 1735, a vessel with a lantern at her mast head was placed, and this was the only guide for ships entering the port until 1767, when the Poolbeg Lighthouse first showed its light. That structure was commenced in 1761, and has remained, as a writer of that period predicted, - a lasting testimony of the ability, no less in design than in execution, of the undertaker, Mr. John Smith”.

Ringsend at the beginning of the eighteenth century is described as being a clean, healthy and beautiful village, with houses on the walls of which vines were trained; and later on Mrs. Delany speaks of Ringsend, where she went to buy shells for her grotto, in connection with a description of the environs of Dublin which aroused her admiration.

It was then inhabited, in addition to seamen, by officials belonging to the port of Dublin, and for their convenience, as the Parish Church of Donnybrook was often inaccessible owing to floods caused by rain and high tides, the Royal Chapel of St. Matthew, commonly known as Irishtown Church, was erected, in what was then an adjacent village.

The shore near Ringsend was famous for shrimps and cockles, and there was also an oyster bed, the produce of which could be partaken of in their purity at the sign of “the Good Woman”, and these good things, as well as horse races and sea-bathing, made the place a favourite outlet for the citizens of Dublin.

As the port improved the Lords Lieutenants usually embarked and disembarked at Lazar Hill or George’s Quay, but occasionally they did so at Ringsend. Thus we find landing there in 1709 Thomas, Earl of Wharton; in 1737, William, Duke of Devonshire; in 1761, George, Earl of Halifax; in 1763, Hugh, Earl of Northumberland, who spent some hours in the Surveyor’s House before proceeding to Dublin, and ordered £10 to be distributed amongst the poor of Ringsend; and in 1765, Francis, Earl of Hertford.

Towards the close of the eighteenth century Ringsend is said to have been in a very melancholy condition and to have resembled a town which had experienced all the calamities of war. Overwhelming floods from the mountains had descended upon it, and as they had carried away the bridge over the Dodder which had been rebuilt in 1727, the inhabitants were cut off from direct communication with Dublin except by means of a narrow and dangerous wooden structure. A drawing of this temporary erection made by a contemporary of Francis Grose, John James Barralet, is here reproduced. It has been pronounced to have artistic merit and a critic has said that there is considerable vitality if no very literal truth in the figures which enliven it.

A new stone bridge described as of handsome design was afterwards in 1789 erected at the small cost of £815, a misplaced economy, to which was due, doubtless, its destruction in turn in 1802 by another disastrous inundation.

After the construction of the South Wall, or Pigeon House Road, vessels began to start from the point where the Pigeon House stands. This building, now the Electric Lighting Station of the Corporation of Dublin, and until recently a fort and military barracks, derives its name from a wooden house which was built early in the eighteenth century on the piles near its site.

This house was called Pidgeon’s House from its occupation by a watchman of the name of Pidgeon, and became a well known place of resort for boating parties from Dublin. To his ordinary occupation Pidgeon added the supply of refreshments to such as visited his sea retreat, and so many came that he eventually set up a boat himself for the conveyance of his customers to and from the shore.

When the piles were superseded by the South Wall a stone dwelling, at first known as the Block House, took the place of Pidgeon’s abode, and the Lords Justices, with the Lord Mayor of Dublin and the Directors of the Ballast Office, on making, in 1764, an inspection of the works, partook there of a cold repast.

Subsequently the Block House, reverting to the older name under the corrupted form Pigeon House, became the famous starting place for the English packet boats, which has been immortalised in the works of Lever and other writers of fiction, and from it the seam tossed passengers, after escaping from the revenue officers, or the plucking of the Pigeon House, as it was called, were conveyed to town in a vehicle known as a Long Coach, the discomfort of which has been pathetically described by one’ who endured it.

Baggotrath

Where Upper Baggot Street now stands was to be seen in the early part of the nineteenth century the ruins of a mediaeval castle, the chief residence of the manor of Baggotrath-a manor which included, as already mentioned under the history of Merrion, not only a great portion of the lands forming the Pembroke Township, but also those on which Merrion Square, Fitzwilliam Square, and the adjoining streets are built.

These lands, like those of Merrion, lay within the liberties of the citizens of Dublin. They extended in the thirteenth century on the west to the lands of the Convent of St. Mary de Hogges, now College Green, on the north to the Steyne, or bank of the Liffey, on the east to the Dodder, which separated them from the lands of Richard de St. Olof, now known as Simmonscourt, and on the south to the lands of tile See of Dublin, now known as Cullenswood, and to the citizen’s common pasture called the green of St. Stephen.

Soon after the Anglo-Norman invasion, Baggotrath, then known as the Rath near Donnybrook, was granted by the Crown to Theobald Walter, the first chief butler, ancestor of the Ormondo family, but in the succeeding century it was hold by tenants, whose title was derived from the Corporation of Dublin.

The first of these were Ralph de Mora and William de Flamstead, and they were succeeded in 1255 by no less a person than Maurice Fitzgerald, afterwards Justiciary or Viceroy of Ireland, an ancestor of the Leinster family.

From Maurice FitzGerald, who was under a covenant not to build a village, which might burden the common lands of the citizens, the lands passed to Philip de Hyndeberge, whose grandson, Nicholas do Hyndeberge, conveyed them in 1280 to the family from which the district takes its name.

The first of the house of Bagod to occupy them appears to have been Sir Robert Bagod, Chief Justice of “the Bench” in Ireland. He was a man of activity and ability, and, as his friend, the Bishop of Bath and Wells, testified, of devoted loyalty to the Crown.

He was succeeded successively in the possession of Baggotrath by his son, who bore the same Christian name, and was also a Knight and Justice of “the Bench”; by his grandson, Hervey Bagod, Arch-deacon of Glendalough, and by his great grandson, William, son of Sir William Bagod. In the deed of conveyance to Sir Robert Bagod no castle is mentioned as standing in the Manor of the Rath, which is described as consisting of three carucates and forty acres of land, with a site for a mill and a mill-race fed by the Dodder, but the erection of one was at once undertaken by Sir Robert Bagod.

Leave to cut timber for building, as well as fire wood, in tile forest at Maynooth was granted to him by Nicholas de Hynteberge, and in a grant made by him of portion of the lands, he reserves the right to quarry for stone, for building and fencing. At the time of his death, in 1336, Sir Robert Bagod’s son and successor was residing in the castle, which was supplied with much furniture and plate, and, as a long inventory of the crops and stock shows, farming the lands.

After the lands, described as then containing two carucates, with the castle and a mill, had been for a time held by Walter, son of Richard Passavaunt, and by Sir John Cruise and Stephen, Bishop of Meath, acting as custodians under the Crown, they came into the occupation of William Fitzwilliam, son of Richard Fitzwilliam, of Moreton, near Swords, the most important member of the Fitzwilliam family of that period.

He was a man of high position and influence, and held, amongst other offices, those of Constable of Wicklow Castle, Sheriff of the Counties of Dublin and Meath, and Guardian of the Steyne, or sea approach to the metropolis. From 1379 to 1400 the castle was occupied by him, and then after passing through the hands of James Cotenham and Sir John Stanley, it came, in 1403, into the possession of Sir Edward Perrers.

Perrers was a warrior and statesman, who rendered signal service to the Crown during the Viceroyalty of the boy Lord Lieutenant, Prince Thomas of Lancaster, and who, as Constable of Wicklow Castle in the custody of which he succeeded William Fitzwilliam, kept the O’Byrnes in check.

He was given, as a mark of the royal favour, a grant out of the paymenta made to the Crown by the City of Dublin, which relieved Baggotrath of rent to the Corporation. Perrers made the castle his home, and soon after he became the owner, license was given to his servants to go by sea to Wicklow and bring from thence building materials for its repair.

After his death, as he left an only son, who died, after a visit to the English Court, in 1428, Baggotrath passed to his widow, Johanna, who was after-wards twice married, first to John Eustace of Newland, and, secondly, to Sir John Bacon.

As executor of her will, executed on her death-bed in the Castle of Baggotrath on New Year’s Eve in the year 1441, James Cornwalsh, then Chief Baron of the Irish Exchequer, came into possession of Baggotrath. This acquisition was attended with fatal consequences to him. The family of Sir Edward Perrers resented Cornwalsh’s occupation of a castle which they thought rightfully belonged to them, and William Fitzwilliam, the then owner of Dundrum, who had married Sir Edward Perrer’s daughter, Ismaia, determined to take the castle from him. With a great multitude of armed men in warlike array he descended, on the 28th September in the following year, upon the castle, and finding there the Chief Baron, who had come up from his residence at Dunboyne to hold the Michaelmas sittings of his Court, did, as was alleged, traitorously and feloniously murder him. Either the charge was not well founded, or the provocation was considered an excuse for the outrage, for a pardon was speedily granted to William Fitzwilliam and his wife, and Baggotrath, which was afterwards confirmed to him by Sir John Perrer’s nephew and heir, John Hall, remains in the possession of his descendants to the present day.

The Castle of Baggotrath in the year 1489 was in a ruinous condition, but it was subsequently restored, and, as mentioned in the history of Merrion, became the principal residence of Thomas Fitzwilliam, who was the great grandson of William Fitzwilliam, the son-in-law of Sir Edward Perrers, and also of his son, Richard Fitzwilliam, who died there.

After Sir Thomas Fitzwilliam, the son of Richard Fitzwilliam, succeeded to the property we find in 1547 Robert Jans, a merchant of Dublin, and in 1561 Patrick Sarsfield sometime Mayor of the city, described as of Baggotrath.

Before the year 1568 the castle was in the occupation of a sister of Sir Thomas Fitzwilliam, Katherine, widow of John Cashell, a Drogheda merchant, and there in 1574 she died. Her will contains much curious information as to the manners and customs of that time.

“To every dweller her tenant in Baggotrath to relieve their poverty,” and to every poor or religious house within the city of Dublin, she leaves a peck of malt and of peas; to St. John’s House John’s House a double quantity, and to the religious house beyond the Liffey, in order to obtain their prayers for her soul, “a pan that breweth one peck, with a barness, to remain for the easement of the poor; she mentions various articles of jewellery and apparel, including a great and a small ring, a heart of gold, a clasp and silver buttons, a gown of purple with green velvet trimmings and a little harness girdle, a pair of tassels and a cloak, which she leaves to the parson of Trim, who is to redeem it from the person then mending it; and concludes by bequeathing to her cousin, the Mayor of Dublin, John Ussher, of whom we shall see under Donnybrook, “a couple of beeves” for his kitchen, and to the Mayoress her second-best board or table cloth.

About the year 1609 Baggotrath was held under the Fitzwilliams by Sir Anthony St. Leger, a son of “the wise and wary” Lord Deputy of that name, who held the position of Master of the Rolls. Before 1615 the castle had passed from him into the occupation of the Right Hon. Sir John King, the founder of the Kingston family.

King was an Irish administrator who earned much distinction on the commissions in connection with the early plantations, and it was as a reward for his services that the vast estate in Roscommon owned by his descendants was granted to him. One of his younger sons was the Edward King whose untimely fate by the foundering of a ship in which he was crossing from Chester to Ireland, in 1637, is deplored in Milton’s Lycidas.

At the time of the Rebellion Baggotrath appears to have been taken possession of by the military authorities. Viscount Fitzwilliam complained on more than one occasion of wastage of his lands by the commander of the ordnance, and in June 1642, 260 horses belonging to the transport were stationed there. These, the night before they were to leave for the country, with reinforcements just arrived from Chester, were carried off by a party of Wicklow mountaineers, and the soldiers had to supply their loss by seizing next day from friend and foe alike all the horses they could find in the neighbourhood.

The event destined at the same time to invest Baggotrath with historical importance, and to cause the demolition of its castle, Battle of Rathmines, which resulted in the overthrow of the Royalist army under the Duke of Ormonde by the Dublin garrison of the Parliament under the command of Colonel Michael Jones, took place in the year 1659.

Ormonde, who had given up Dublin two years before that time to the Parliament, had returned to Ireland in October, 1648. He had landed at Cork, and after a long delay at Kilkenny, spent in reconciling the conflicting elements of which his army was to he composed, he had advanced on Dublin. In the succeeding June he encamped at Finglas, whence, as we have seen, a detachment of his forces made an attack on the outposts of the besieged town at Ringsend.

Towards the end of July Ormonde, for the purpose of more closely investing the town, moved the greater portion of his troops to the southern side, and encamped with them on the lands of Rathmines, near where Palmerston Park now lies.

The Castle of Baggotrath was the strongest building near Dublin, and its occupation by Ormonde would have been in the highest degree prejudicial to the besieged garrison. The fields lying between it and the Liffey provided the only sustenance for their horses, and it would have been easy from it to raise earthworks along the estuary of the river to prevent the landing of reinforcements and provisions.

Colonel Jones had, therefore, taken the pre caution of partly demolishing the castle. Notwithstanding its condition, it was determined at a council of war held by Ormonde on August 1st, that, if it were possible to fortify it in one night the work should be undertaken and troops placed in it.

Several of Ormonde’s generals were at once sent off to make an inspection, and, as their report was favourable, a body of troops to the number of 1,500 men, with materials for constructing fortifications, under the command of Major-General Patrick Purcell, set out that night for the castle. Owing to the treachery of the guides the troops did not reach Baggotrath until a little before daylight, and when Ormonde rode down from Rathmines in the morning he found not only that the castle was not as strong as he had been led to believe, but also that owing to the shortness of the time and the incompetence of the Engineer the work of fortification was little advanced.

The design of Ormonde had been made known to Colonel Jones, and from the high ground near the castle, Ormonde perceived that he was getting his army into battle array under the protection of earthworks behind Trinity College.

A battle was certain, but Ormonde thought it would not take place for some hours, and as he had sat up all night he went off to his tent to take some rest, ordering the army to stand to their guns. He had not long gone when Colonel Jones descended on Baggotrath with 4,000 foot and 1,200 horse.

The only protection which had been erected appears to have been a rampart thrown across the road, and, although the defenders fought gallantly, this was soon surmounted. The royalist horse deserted the foot soldiers, and, most of them having been slain or taken prisoners, Colonel Jones followed up his advantage by advancing on Rathmine’s, where the final conflict was waged.

Although the village of Baggotrath, stated at the time of the Restoration to have been inhabited by three persons of English and twenty-nine persons of Irish descent, continued to exist, no attempt was made to restore the Castle of Baggotrath, and it remained in a state of ruin until the extension of Dublin in the nineteenth century required its removal.

The ruins have been described by Austin Cooper, who visited them in 1778, and who mentions that a deep trench reminded the visitor of the scenes that had been enacted there, but a picture by Francis Grose, which is here reproduced, gives a better idea of its appearance.

Donnybrook

Donnybrook, or the Church of St. Broc, now the name of a suburb to the north-west of Simmonscourt and south-west of Baggotrath, was formerly the designation of a village of very ancient origin, and at the time of the Anglo-Norman Invasion was also the designation of a very large extent of lands. These lands, comprising six carucates, and including those of Merrion and Simmonscourt, as well as a townland called Forty Acres, on which Clyde Road is built, were then given, as has been already related, to Walter de Rideleford, Lord of Bray.

While in possession of his family two portions of the lands were granted away in fee, namely, the portion now forming Simmonscourt, the alienation of which cut off Merrion from Donnybrook and made Merrion a separate manor, and the portion known as the Forty Acres, which was granted for the annual payment of a pound of pepper to the Priory of All Saints.

There was not any castle on the lands, which were divided into farms held from Walter de Rideleford by his men of Donnybrook, but the village or town in which these men of Donnybrook dwelt was for the period one of considerable size.

In the fourteenth century it was governed by a bailiff, and probably possessed walls which afforded some resistance to the raids of the hillsmen. It must, however, have largely depended, owing to the absence of a castle, on outlying places for protection, and it was a short-sighted policy that induced the inhabitants in 1356 to resist a rate to pay for watchmen on the mountains to warn them when the Irish enemies of the King were meditating an incursion.

The establishment of the Fair of Donnybrook, the great mart of the citizens of Dublin in the middle ages, made it also a place of no small importance. The license to hold this fair was issued to the citizens of Dublin so early as the reign of King John in the year 1204.

At first the period for which the fair might last was eight days, and it was appointed to be held on the vigil, day, and morrow of the Invention of the Holy Cross, which falls on May 3rd, and for five days afterwards.

The period was subsequently extended to fifteen days, the profits from the tolls for two of those days, namely, the vigil and the day of the Invention of the Cross, being granted to the Archbishop of Dublin, and the date was changed in 1241 to the Translation of St. Thomas the Martyr, in 1279, to the Translation of St. Benedict the Abbot which falls in July, and finally to the Decollation of St. John the Baptist, on the 29th of August, on which date it continued to be held until the fair, in its sadly degenerated form, ceased to exist in the nineteenth century.

Besides Walter de Rideleford, who was succeeded at Donnybrook by his eldest daughter, the wife of Hugh de Lacy, Earl of Ulster, there were others concerned in the lands of the district. Chief of these was Walter de Lacy, brother of the Earl of Ulster, who granted lands in Donnybrook to one Waiter Misset, in consideration of the rent to tthe Crown, which was the payment for one archer rendered at the gate of Dublin Castle. Amongst other persons mentioned in connection with the ownership of the lands in the thirteenth century are Henry de Verneuil, who in 1222 had a suit with Waiter de Rideleford touching them; Theobald le Butler, or de Verdon, whose mother was grand-daughter and co-heir of Walter de Lacy; and Matilda le Butler, who exchanged with William de London and Matilda, his wife, their interest in the Manor of Wicklow for a messuage and 183 acres of land in Donnybrook.

After being for a time at the beginning of the fourteenth century in the possession of the Bagods of Baggotrath, who held also the Forty Acres under the Priory of All Saints, and subsequently in that of the Fitzwilliams of Dundrum, the lands of Donnybrook passed to the Ussher family on the marriage in 1524 of Alison, daughter of Thomas Fitzwilliam, and sister of Richard Fitzwilliam, then owner of Merrion, Baggotrath, and Dundrum, to Christopher Ussher, a collateral ancestor of the two distinguished Primates of his name.

The Usshers were great people in the Dublin mercantile world of that day, and Christopher Ussher filled, as his father had done before him, the office of Mayor. Like Richard Fitzwilliam, he was a devoted adherent of the house of Kildare, and in 1514 was presented by the Earl with a hackney. He had been previously married, and was nearly sixty when he contracted the alliance with Alison Fitzwilliam. He only survived this marriage two years; and died, leaving an infant son.

This son, John Ussher who succeeded to the Donnybrook estate, followed in his father’s footsteps, became Mayor of Dublin, and rose to a position of much eminence amongst the inhabitants of that city.

When a young man of little over thirty we find him acting as Captain of the City Levies in an expedition against the Scottish invaders, but in later life he turned his attention to the works of peace, and is remarkable as being the person to whose munificence and religious zeal we owe the first book printed in Irish, which was a translation of the Catechism of the Church of Ireland.

He stood high in the favour of the Government officials as a conscientious and God-fearing man, and was a frequent visitor to London in connection with projects for the increase of the revenue, his profits in which he desired to bestow in founding a college or university.

When the Usshers acquired Donnybrook, then stated to contain three dwellings and one and a half carucates of land, as well as a watermill, a source of much revenue, which the Fitzwilliams retained themselves, it contained no mansion house, but during the sixteenth century the Usshers erected there a handsome Elizabethan residence. This became the home of John Ussher’s only surviving son, Sir William Ussher, for over forty years Clerk of the Privy Council and sometime representative in Parliament for the borough of Wicklow.

His first wife was a daughter of the great Archbishop Loftus, who speaks of Sir William’s father as “a rare man for honesty and religion,” and to his father-in-law’s influence, in addition to his own fidelity, learning, and good character, the success which attended him in life is to be attributed. He continued to carry on the work of printing books in Irish commenced by his father, and in his town house in Bridgefoot Street, in the year 1602, the first Irish version of the New Testament was printed. This was dedicated to King James I., who thus became acquainted, before he ascended the throne of England, with Sir William Ussher, and did not afterwards forget him.

Sir William Ussher’s eldest son, Arthur Ussher, who was drowned while crossing the Dodder in presence of a number of persons on horseback and on foot, including his nearest friends, who were powerless to save him, predeceased him, and Sir William Ussher, who died in 1637 at a very advanced age, was succeeded by his grandson, Sir William Ussher the younger.

As his grandfather had done before him, the latter made a great match, marrying the daughter of Sir William Parsons, afterwards a Lord Justice of Ireland, and a relative of the first Earl of Cork, who mentions young Ussher more than once in his diary; but it was probably to his grandfather’s interest that he owed the honour of Knighthood which was conferred on him by the Earl of Strafford during his grandfather’s lifetime.

Sir William Ussher the elder had, besides his eldest son; a son Adam, who was Ulster King of Arms; and six daughters; his eldest son, Arthur Ussher, who was joined with him in the office of Clerk of the Council, had eight sons and four daughters, and Sir William Ussher the younger, who was twice married, had eight sons and four daughters. It would be impossible to give a list of all the noble and distinguished persons who trace descent from them, but amongst these may be mentioned the Dukes of Wellington and Leinster, and the Earls of Rosse, Egmont, Lanesborough, Enniskillen, and Milltown.

The boldness of the rebels and the imminent peril to which the City of Dublin was exposed in the rebellion of 1641 are forcibly illustrated by depositions made by the owners of two farms at Donnybrook.

In the first of these Richard Winstanley deposed that in addition to the destruction of his house he had suffered the loss of twenty cows of English breed, and eight horses carried off from his farm within two miles of Dublin, and in the second, Robert Woodward, whose house at Donnybrook had also been destroyed, deposed that the rebels had followed him to College Green, where he had taken his cattle for safety, and carried off thirty cows and five horses.

When setting out from Dublin, after taking Drogheda, for the South of Ireland, Oliver Cromwell selected Donnybrook as the rendezvous for his army, and there on September 22, 1649, four regiments of light horse, four regiments of dragoons, and four regiments of foot assembled and encamped that night.

At the time of the Restoration the population of Donnybrook is returned as four persons of English and nine persons of Irish descent, and a few years later Sir William Ussher is returned as occupying the mansion house, which was rated for the purposes of taxation as containing thirteen hearths. The mill, which was still a source of profit continued to be the property of the Fitzwilliams, and is mentioned amongst the possessions of the Earl of Tyrconnel and of his nephew, the fourth Viscount Fitzwilliam.

At the beginning of the eighteenth century the mansion house of Donnybrook was held under the eldest son of Sir William Ussher the younger, Christopher Ussher, “a person of true piety, solid judgment, and great estate, eminent for his great charity, and a vast encourager of learning,” by Mr. Thomas Twigg, who belonged to the legal profession.

On the death of Mr. Twigg in 1702 the mansion house, in accordance with the terms of his will, in which he directs that he should be buried “without noise or charge ” in St. Kevin’s Church, became vested in trustees for the purposes of sale. One of these trustees was Sir Francis Stoyte, who was Lord Mayor of Dublin in 1705, and, as mentioned in Dean Swift’s Journal to Stella, some of Stoyte’s relatives afterwards occupied it.

There Stella stayed, and so could not write to Swift; there she lost money at cards with Dean Sterne and the Stoytes; there she was carried by Dean Sterne to cut asparagus; and there Goody Stoyte was to give Swift a world of dinners.

Amongst other temporary residents in the mansion house was one of the six clerks in the Court of Chancery, Isaac Dobson. He was the son of a leading Dublin bookseller and publisher in the reign of Queen Anne, of whom more will be seen as a resident at Dundrum, and from his three daughters, of whom the eldest was “a young lady of great merit, beauty, and three thousand pounds fortune” are descended Lord Carew, Sir William Joshua Paul of Waterford, and the Moores of Mooresfort, in the County Tipperary.

At the same time portion of the mansion house was occupied by a young barrister, Warden Flood, who was destined to become Chief Justice of Ireland, and to be father of the well-known statesman and orator, but who, owing to his slender means, lived at Donnybrook in a retired manner, and was not popular on account of his pride and reserve.

The interest of the Twiggs in the mansion huse and demesne lands of Donnybrook was in 1726 sold to Robert Jocelyn, then M.P. for Granard and third Sergeant-at-Law, and subsequently Lord Chancellor of Ireland, the ancestor of the Earls of Roden.

He was an Englishman of good family - a grandson of a baronet, who had come to this country in the year 1719 to practice at the bar. In the society which his countrymen, who then filled the highest positions in Church and State, made amongst themselves, and into which he had the *entree *Jocelyn became acquainted with the Bishop of Kilmore, Dr. Timothy Goodwyn, and little more than a year after his call to the bar he was married to that prelate’s sister-in-law in Kilmore Cathedral.

To the Bishop his return as member for Granard was due, which, in conjunction with the friendship of Lord Chancellor Hardwicke, with whom he had been in chambers in London, led to his legal promotion. After his appointment to the woolsack, Jocelyn took Mount Merrion House from the Fitzwilliams, and under that place something more will be seen of him.

The old mansion house of Donnybrook, of which a sketch, taken by Thomas Ashworth, a linen printer, who was murdered in 1757 on the high road from Dublin to Donnybrook, is here reproduced, was at this time falling into decay, being finally demolished in 1759, and Lord Chancellor Jocelyn appears to have lived in a house which still exists on the Eglinton Road, and is known under the name of Ballinguile.

This house, which was approached by an avenue of elms and was surrounded by gardens and fields, he leased, on going to live at Mount Merrion, to Mr. Arthur Newburgh, Secretary of the Linen Board, who was married to one of the Coles, and subsequently in 1749 he assigned it to his son, who succeeded to the viscounty bestowed on him, and was created Earl of Roden.

Amongst other residents at Donnybrook in Lord Chancellor Jocelyn’s time were the Rector of the parish, Archdeacon Whittingham, who resided in the globe house adjoining the old graveyard in the village and William Roberts, an eminent doctor of laws, who resided at Coldblow, now known as Belmont Avenue, and whose collateral descendant, Captain Lewis Riall, D.L., of Old Connaught Hill, now owns his property.

During the early part of the eighteenth century the river Dodder was crossed at Donnybrook by a ford, and it was not until the year 1741 that a bridge was erected. This bridge was carried away by mountain floods within six months of its construction - an occurrence which it was feared would ruin the contractors who had given security to keep it in repair for fourteen years

On the Stillorgan Road, where now lies Nutley, the seat of the Right Hon. Mr. Justice Madden, there was then a small village known as Priesthouse, the principal resident in which was Mr. Patrick M’Carthy, a linen and cotton bleacher. A curious advertisement appeared in 1750 from M’Carthy warning his customers, whom it was his intention to serve with care, justice, and honour, that some employee, without his knowledge, had used lime in the bleaching process - a thing which he had sworn before Mr. Arthur Newburgh never to do himself-and he announced in 1764 that he had bleached a parcel of stockings for the Prince of Wales, and invited the public to join a royal cavalcade of his friends adorned with orange and blue cockades, who had undertaken to accompany him when bringing his handiwork to Dublin Castle.

Donnybrook Fair had before that time become a place of amusement and its drolleries, doubtless, gave rise in 1729 to a satirical elegy on the much-lamented death of Madam Bentley, who broke her neck when riding to Donnybrook - a lady for whom the poet predicts no good fate in the next world. Apart from the Fair, Donnybrook was also in the eighteenth century a great resort of the citizens of Dublin, and in the early part of that period we find houses with the signs of the Red Cross and of the Dargle. Later on, in addition to an inn renowned for its Wicklow ale, two teas houses were opened-one of these known as the sign of the Rose, occupying the glebe house, formerly the residence of Archdeacon Whittingham.

Amongst the residents in the later half of the eighteenth century we find Sir Edward Barry, who lived in a large house known as Barry House, on the main road to Dublin. He was a physician of great eminence, on whom a baronetey was conferred, and was author of several medical works, including one on the history of wines, a subject of which he was the first to treat scientifically.

After his death, Barry House became in 1777 the residence of Robert Hellen, then Solicitor-General for Ireland, and afterwards a Justice of the Common Pleas, who figures in the pages of “Baratariana,” and there in 1793 Judge Hellen died. He was a most popular judge, esteemed for his profound legal knowledge as well as for his urbanity, and was a man of literary tastes and culture, his library being one of the best in the kingdom of his day, and his collection of paintings and antiquities of rare excellence.

Another resident was Lieutenant-General Lewis Dejean, Colonel of the Regiment of Horse Carbineers, who in 1762 entertained the Lord Lieutenant, the Earl of Halifax, at dinner at his house on the Donnybrook Road, and died two years later at the age of eighty; and the Downes family, of which Lord Downes, Chief Justice of the King’s Bench, was a distinguished member, was long seated there.

Ballinguile had become the residence of John Fitzgibbon, the father of Lord Chancellor Clara, the determined opponent of the Union, and later on the fourth Viscount Chetwynd had a country house near Donnybrook Green. At Coldblocw, died in 1789, Sir William Fortick, whose name is still preserved in an almshouse in Little Denmark Street founded by a member of his family, and subsequently it was for many years the home of the Honble. Denis George, successively Recorder of Dublin and a Baron of the Exchequer (2).

The far-famed fair of Donnybrook was throughout the eighteenth century, and down to the year 1855, when it was abolished, the annual carnival of the Dublin populace. It has formed the theme of innumerable ballads and humorous descriptions, and it would be well if history could confirm the account which they give of a scene of light-hearted gaiety. This, however, truth does not permit. All references in local literature indicate that the fair was the occasion of drunkenness, riot and moral degradation which were a disgrace to Ireland, and it would serve no useful purpose to enter more fully into particulars of revels, the abolition of which was a service to civilization.

Ecclesiastical History.

Donnybrook was, in the opinion of that learned Celtic scholar, the late Dr. James Henthorn Todd, the site of a Convent founded in the early days of the Irish Church by a holy woman canonized under the name of St. Broc, and in the Martyrology of Donegal, Mobi, a nun of Donnybrook, whose festival fell on September 30th, is noticed. St. Broc was one of the seven daughters of Dallbronach, who resided in the barony of Deece, in the County Meath, and is mentioned in the Works of Aengus the Culdee.

A church, which probably had its origin in the religious establishment of St. Broc, existed in Donnybrook (where a large graveyard marks its site), at the time of the Anglo-Norman conquest. It was then a member of the Church of Taney or Dundrum, a church of great importance in Celtic times, and was given in the beginning of the thirteenth century with the latter church by Archbishop Luke, whose chaplain, William de Romney, had for a time held it, to the Archdeacon of Dublin as part of the support of his dignity.

From that time until the year 1864, when it was severed from his corps and made a separate benefice, it continued with short interregnums - at the time of the dissolution of the religious houses and at the time of the Commonwealth-to belong to the Archdeacon of Dublin.

Of the church in early times there is little recorded, but its valuation - thirteen marks - shows that it possessed a considerable number of worshippers, and it was served by a resident chaplain under the Archdeacons. At the time of the dissolution of the religious houses the tithes, including those from the fisheries, and church dues, were valued at £15 3s. 4d.,* *and these, together with the glebe house and three acres of land, were leased first to John Sharp and afterwards to John Goldsmith, of Dublin, who undertook to provide a fit chaplain for the church.

The chapel at Merrion, the site of which is marked by a graveyard, referred to under the history of that place, does not appear to have been an edifice of any importance, and after the dissolution of the religious houses in the sixteenth century the Church of Donnybrook, as has been already mentioned, became the burying place of the Fitzwilliams, who had a chapel off it, in which Richard Fitzwilliam in 1596 ordered a tomb in memory of his ancestors to be erected.

In the beginning of the seventeenth century both the chancel and nave of the church were in good repair, and there was a congregation of about forty. The duty was discharged by curates appointed by the Archdeacons, and amongst those who served in that capacity were, in 1615, the Rev. Robert Pont, who was murdered a few years later at Rathdrum, in the County Wicklow-a vicarage to which he had been appointed by the Crown; in 1630, the Rev. Richard Prescott a master of arts and a preacher, to whom the Archdeacon allowed a stipend of £12 out of his tithes, amounting to £100; in 1639, the Rev. Nathaniel Hoyle, already referred to in connection with Bullock; in 1644, the Rev. John Watson, like Mr. Hoyle, a Fellow of Trinity College; in 1645, the Rev. George Hudson, a prebendary of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, who died the next year; in 1647, the Rev. John Butler; and in 1648, the Rev. William Selby.

The Roman Catholic Church at the beginning of the seventeenth century had enacted that parishes should be reconstructed for the purpose of administration, and that, when from want of clergy priests could not be found for each, several parishes should be united. Under this ordinance in 1630 the Rev. John Cahill was serving Donnybrook as well as Ringsend, Irishtown, Booterstown, Blackrock, Stillorgan, Kilmacud, and Dundrum, and holding services at Dundrum, under the protection of the Fitzwilliams, and at Balally, then owned by the Walshes, another Roman Catholic family. Later on a Roman Catholic place of worship was established at Booterstown, which in 1697 was served by the Rev. Patrick Gilmore, who had charge of the places mentioned, and was then living at Newtown on the Strand, or Seapoint, as it is now called.

Under the Established Church, after the Restoration, we find amongst the curates in charge of Donnybrook in 1669 the Rev. William FitzGerald, afterwards Bishop of Clonfert and Kilmacduagh, of whom Archbishop Narcissus Marsh held no high opinion, and in. 1679 the Rev. John Sankey.

During the Revolution, owing to the resignation of the Archdeacon of Dublin, Dr. John FitzGerald, who was a brother of the Rev. William FitzGerald, and who was one of the nonjurors, the tithes of Donnybrook, together with those of Rathfarnham, also part of the Archdeacon’s corps, were sequestrated to the Rev. John Tucker and Daniel Reading.

Archbishop King, in his diary, mentions that one Walker, “formerly a cobbler, afterwards a1 servant to’ Viscount Lisburne of Rathfarnham, and then a Cornet of Hors’s in King James’s Army,” threatened the Protestants of those parishes that if they did not pay their tithes he would kill them and burn all their corn.

The curates of Donnybrook, after the Revolution, included in 1691 the Rev. John King; in 1694, the Rev. Thomas Leigh, a minor canon of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, and a member of a family now represented by the Balfours of Townley Hall, County Louth; and in 1698 the Rev. Anthony Raymond, afterwards Vicar of Trim, frequently mentioned by Dean Swift in his Journal to Stella, the increasing congregation, doubtless, being the occasion of the presentation to the church in 1699 of a chalice and flagon, which are still in use, by the Archdeacon of that day, the Venerable Richard Reader.

The beginning of the eighteenth century saw the erection of the Royal Chapel of St. Matthew at Ringsend, now generally known as Irishtown Church. It was built at a cost of £1,000, towards which the inhabitants of Ringsend were only able to contribute £23, and was completed in 1707, with the exception of a steeple, which was in 1712 ordered to be built at the charge of the Corporation of Dublin.

It was one of the churches which the Diocese of Dublin owes to the zeal of the good Archbishop William King, to whom provision for a resident minister was for many years a subject of anxiety. In 1721 King writes; to the Commissioners of Revenue in support of an application from a Mr. Porter, who had been very industrious in overseeing the building of the chapel and in soliciting subscriptions, that a grant should be given for the purpose, and says that he allowed himself £20 a year for the performance of Sunday duty there, which had been for a time undertaken by the Curate of Donnybrook, the Rev. Walter Thomas, and was then performed by the Rev. John Borough, ancestor of a baronet of that name. After great exertions the Archbishop was successful in securing the necessary amount, and in 1723 the Rev. John Borough, who died in 1726, and was buried in the churchyard, was appointed the first minister.

He was followed in 1726 by the Rev. Michael Hartlib, who in early life was patronised by the Ormonde family, and whose appointment as he held a distant benefice, Archbishop King did not approve; in 1741 by the Rev. Isaac Mann, who was afterwards successively Archdeacon of Dublin and Bishop of Cork; in 1750 by the Rev. Theophilus Brocas; in 1764 by the Rev. John Brocas; and in 1795 by the Rev. Robert Ball, who is buried in Stillorgan Churchyard.

The Fitzwilliams continued to make use of their burying place at Donnybrook; in 1667 Oliver, Earl of Tyrconnel was laid there, in 1676 Thomas, third Viscount Fitzwilliam, and in 1776 Richard, sixth Viscount Fitzwilliam, but besides these a host of distinguished people were buried at Donnybrook, and, to compare great things with small, Donnybrook Churchyard may be considered the Mount Jerome of the eighteenth century.

Amongst those interred there were in 1729, Archbishop King, who was buried, according to his desire, “in the little pleasant village” of Donnybrook in a tomb prepared by Ulster King of Arms:, and whose interment was attended by most of the nobility and gentry, and thousands of the citizens; in 1730, his nephew, Archdeacon Dougatt, who was buried in the same grave; in 1733, Sir Edward Lovet Pearce, the architect of the Houses of Parliament whose residence at Stillorgan, where he died, has been noticed; in 1739, his brother, Lieutenan-General Thomas Pearce, who was at once Governor, Mayor, and Representative in Parliament of the City of Limerick”; in 1758, Bishop Clayton and the Right Hon. James Tynte; in 1759, Dr. Bartholomew Mosse, the founder of the Lying-in Hospital, who died at Cullenswood; in 1762 Arthur Newburgh (whose residence at Donnybrook has been noted), and his wife, who only survived him a few months; in 1766, Bishop Clayton’s widow; in 1780, the Hon. Francis Napier; and in 1785, Sir James Stratford Tynte, the General of the Volunteers.

At Irishtown also some persons of note were buried, including Lord Chancellor Jocelyn’s first wife, Henry, Lord Power, and a son of Lord Mayo.

During the first twenty years of the eighteenth century the cure of Donnybrook was entrusted to the Rev. Walter Thomas, but on succeeding to the Archdeaconry in 1719 the Venerable Charles Whittingham came to reside, as has been mentioned, in the glebe house next the churchyard, and ministered in the parish, with the assistance of his curates at St. Peter’s, Dublin.

Amongst those acting as curates’ of St. Peter’s and Donnybrook were - in 1735, the Rev. Thomas Heany, afterwards Curate of Monkstown; in 1747, the Rev. William Donellan; in 1749, the Rev. Thomas Burton; in 1750, the Rev. James Hawkins, afterwards successively Bishop of Dromore and Raphoe; in 1753, the Rev. John Drury, a prebendary of Christ Church and St. Patrick’s Cathedral, who died in 1791 in Cuffe Street; in 1756, the Rev. Peter Chaigneau, who was Secretary of the Dublin Society; in 1757 the Rev. John Owen, “a young gentleman of extraordinary good character,” who died in 1760 in St. Stephen’s Green.

Then we find appointed for Donnybrook alone in 1760, the Rev. Philip Sheills; in 1761, the Rev. Lawrence Grace; in 1767, the Rev. Dive Downes, brother of Lord Downes, sometime Chief Justice of the King’s Bench; in 1772, the Rev. Matthew West, the author of several poems and plays; in 1780, the Rev. Gore Wood; and in 1800, the Rev. George Wogan, who was murdered in 1826 by burglars.

During the eighteenth century the Roman Catholic Church established a place of worship at Ringsend in addition to the one which existed at Booterstown, and in the year 1788 Ringsend was severed from the other parishes, and made an independent charge.

Amongst the clergy serving in Booterstown we find in 1731 the Rev. Francis Archbold; in 1766, the Rev. Matthew Kelly; in 1775, the Rev. James Nicholson; and in 1794, the Rev. Thomas Connolly, a preacher of great celebrity. Ringsend was in 1766 served by the Rev. Mr. Brady, as Curate to Mr. Kelly, and after its severance from Booterstown the following were appointed to its charge: - in 1788, the Rev. Peter Richard Clinch, who is buried in Irish-town Churchyard; and in 1792, the Rev. Charles Joseph Finn, an accomplished scholar.

An interesting description is given by Austin Cooper of the appearance at the close of the eighteenth century of the old Church of Donnybrook, which was dedicated to St. Mary. It was, as he mentions in his notebook under the date March 8th, 1780, a very plain structure, of T. shape. Opposite the entrance stood the Communion Table, which was severely unadorned, and on the right hand side of the entrance was the reading desk, which was surmounted by a handsome pulpit.

Between the reading desk and the Communion Table the royal arms were displayed, and on the opposite wall there were several trophies composed of flags and banners, a coat of armour, and a sword and shield, with the motto “ad mortem fidelis.”

A fine black marble font, which was placed in the church in the year 1729, stood at the entrance to the nave. Adjoining the chancel was the chapel built by the Fitzwilliams, the door of which was always locked, and from which there had been formerly an entrance into the church near the Communion Table, and in it there was then to be seen a black marble tomb bearing the inscription “Here lyeth the body of the Right Honourable and Most Noble Lord Oliver, Earl of Tyrconnel, Lord Viscount Fitzwilliams, of Meryonge, Baron of Thorncastle, who died at his house in Meryonge April 11th, 1667, and was buried the 12th day of the same month”

Of the ecclesiastical history of Donnybrook in the nineteenth century and of the numerous places of worship with which the district is now adorned much information will be found in the charming annals of the parishes of Booterstown and Donnybrook compiled by one of the most painstaking of parish historians, the late Rev. Beaver H. Blacker, who long ministered in them.

Here it will suffice to record a few of the more important events. In 1824 a movement set on foot by Mr. James Digges La Touche, of Sans Souci, already mentioned in the history of Booterstown, resulted in the severance of the Booterstown district from Donnybrook. Booterstown, the tithes of which had been enjoyed in an anomalous manner by the Dean of Christ Church as rector of the adjoining parish of Monkstown, was then formed into a separate parish, with the church, dedicated to SS. Philip and James, in Cross, Avenue, which was then erected, as the parish church.

In 1827 the old church of Donnybrook, all trace of which has completely disappeared, was replaced by the modern church of St. Mary in Simmonscourt. And shortly before the Disestablishment of the Irish Church, in 1867, a similar movement to that in Booterstown resulted in the formation of the parish of St. Bartholomew, which comprises lands formerly in Donnybrook, with some additions from the original parish of St. Peter’s, Dublin, and in the erection of the handsome parish church in Clyde Road.

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