Parish of Lucan

*(i.e., Leamhcan or a place abounding in marsh mallows). *

The Parish of Lucan appears in the seventeenth century as containing the Town-lands of Lucan, Westpanstown, and St. Catherine’s.

It now contains the townlands of Backwestonpark, Cooldrinagh (*i.e., *the corner of the black thorn), Doddsborough, Lucan and Pettycanon, Lucan Demesne, St. Edmondsbury, and Tobermaclugg *(i.e., *the well of the bells).

The objects of antiquarian interest are a sepulchral chamber, and the ruins of the castle and church.

There is a well called Tobermaclugg in the townland of that name. **

Lucan and its Castle.**

The parish of Lucan, famed for the beauty of its situation and its sulphur spa, lies about eight miles to the west of the city of Dublin, and is only separated from the County Kildare by a narrow piece of the parish of Aderrig which lies to the south-west of Lucan. Lucan parish contains the finest inland scenery in the metropolitan county, and its castle stood at a particularly picturesque point on the southern bank of the river Liffey, where that river, to which the parish owes its chief attraction, is joined by another but much smaller one called the Griffeen.

LucanCastle1.jpg (104149 bytes)Remains of the castle are still to be seen within the demesne of Lucan House, the residence of Captain Charles Nicholas Colthurst-Vesey, D.L., close to Lucan village and not far from a great stone bridge of a single arch by which the road from Dublin to Maynooth is carried over the Liffey. The remains of the castle consist of a square tower, two storeys in height, with a stair turret on the northern side, and a small annex in the eastern direction. On the southern side are the walls of the old parish church, which was connected with the castle by a door, and which is divided into two portions, the western one being a burial place belonging to the Vesey family. The remains of the castle occupy, probably, the site of a fortified dwelling erected soon after the Anglo-Norman Conquest. Even before that time Lucan had been a place of importance, as was indicated by the discovery of an early sepulchral chamber near the village. and a century after that event it possessed a manorial residence with a large curtilage- and garden, and the usual adjuncts of a mill and a dove-cot, round which a town of considerable size had grown up, as the rent paid by the inhabitants shows.

(In *Pue’s Occurrences *for July 27 to August 2, 1740, the following appears It having been reported that a cave was lately discovered at Lucan in the County of Dublin on the lands of the Petty Canon of St. Patrick’s, some gentlemen went thither to examine it who give the following account -Within about 100 yards of the town of Lucan on the eastern bank of the river Griffin which falls there into the Liffey is a round hill or large artificial mount (for it is hard to distinguish which it is) so steep on all sides that it is scarce accessible except by one way, against which a rampart of earth was thrown up about breast high as we suppose for defence. On the top of the mount, and not far from the edge of it, is a hole or entrance of stone not unlike the mouth of an oven so narrow that it must be entered with your feet foremost. Then you come into a pretty large circular chamber about 13 feet in diameter built round and arched with stone work and above 8 feet high although much earth is fallen in. From this a passage built in the same manner, about 22 feet in length, leads you to a chamber like the former. From hence a long passage as before conducts you to the end of this subterraneous building from whence you have no way of getting up into the open air but by creeping on your hands and feet.”)

The demesne lands, some of which were covered with wood, were extensive and were worked in the usual way by the smaller tenants, or betaghs, on the other lands owned by the lord of Lucan. This class of tenants seems to have been far the largest in the manor of Lucan, and only few farmers, who rendered service by deputy, or free tenants, came under the jurisdiction of the Lucan manor court. The latter was, however, a source of some small revenue to the owner, as was also the salmon fishing on the Liffey.

After the Anglo-Norman Conquest the lands of Lucan came into the possession of Alard Fitzwilliam, but were granted by him before the year 1204 to Wirris Peche, whose descendants held them for more than a century.

It is in connection with a confirmation by King John of this grant to Wirris Peche that the first mention of the lands of Lucan occurs, and the entry records that the confirmation of his title was given to Wirris Peche in consideration of forty marks and a palfrey sent to the King’s treasurer. The family of Peche, the founder of which, as an old writer quaintly remarks, must have been a very wicked fellow since his name meant sin in the abstract, was seated in Essex as early as the reign of Edward the Confessor, and members of it, including Richard Peche, who was Bishop of Lichfield in the twelfth century, and Bartholomew Peche, who was a favourite minister of Henry III., are afterwards found in various parts of England.

Wirris Peche appears to have been a native of Hampshire, in which county he paid the fees for confirmation of his title to Lucan, but he was not the only one of his name connected with Ireland about that time.

In the reign of Richard I., Richard Peche, who was sent in 1180 as a messenger to this country, and was given by Henry’ II. as provision for his journey forty horse loads of wheat and twenty hogs, owned Irish lands, of which he gave a large portion to the Archbishop of Dublin, and in a royal grant made at Portsmouth by Henry III. to one Hamon Peche it is mentioned that he was the son of Gilbert Peche, who had been in Ireland in the reign of King John.

On succeeding to Lucan, Wirris Peche appears to have come to reside there, and married a daughter of his neighbour Stephen son of Sir Adam de Hereford of Leixlip. By her he had a daughter, Alice, who married Ralph Pippard, and through this marriage the Pippard family ultimately became owners of Leixlip. At Lucan he was succeeded by another owner of the same name, probably his son, and subsequently we find William Peche, who died before 1270, in possession of the manor.

The lands were then for a time in the hands of the Crown, owing to the minority of William Peche’s heir, but in 1285 Henry Peche was in possession of them and rendered annually to the Crown a drum and four pairs of furred gloves as rent for them.

Not long afterwards Henry Peche died, and in 1291 the marriage of his only daughter and child Roesia was granted by the Crown to Robert Hanstede and his wife Margery, who were living in England. The escheator was, however, directed to send their ward under safe conduct to Chester, to the justiciary of that place and his consort, and with their help Roesia Peche evidently arrived safely with her guardians, as in a few years we find her married to their son John Hanstede.

The young couple then entered into possession of Lucan, where we find them in 1305 involved in a lawsuit about the salmon fishery with their relative and neighbour Ralph Pippard, the owner of Leixlip, and with a more formidable opponent, the King. They appear to have been unsuccessful in the cause, the jury deciding that half the Lucan fishery belonged to the owner of Leixlip, and that a weir which had been recently erected at Lucan by one Roger Smalris, and which the sheriff was directed to remove, had much narrowed the water course to the prejudice of the King.

Before 1327 Robert de Nottingham, sometime Mayor of Dublin and one of its wealthiest citizens, already mentioned as owner of Merrion at that time, was in possession of the Lucan estate. He died in that year and was succeeded at Lucan by his son William. The latter, who only survived his father a few years, was possessed at the time of his death of much live stock, including a thousand sheep and two hundred lambs, and of a house well furnished with plate and beds of linen and wool.

After William’s death prolonged litigation took place between three of his relatives - his widow Matilda, who married secondly John Gernan; his father’s widow Eglantine, who married secondly Thomas Bagot and thirdly Thomas de Eton; and his sister Eglantine, who married John de Bathe.

Subsequently we find various persons mentioned as having an interest in Lucan, including Sir Thomas Rokeby, sometime justiciary of Ireland, who had married Matilda Tyrrell, widow of Robert Burnell of Balgriffin, and Sir Robert de Clinton, and ultimately it came into the possession of the FitzGerald family.

The FitzGeralds continued to hold it until the sixteenth century, and it was in the castle of Lucan that, in 1517, Elizabeth, wife of Garret, ninth Earl of Kildare, died. At the time of the dissolution of the religious houses St. Mary’s Abbey owned at Lucan two houses and a dove-cot, and the Minor Canons and Choristers of St. Patrick’s Cathedral a house and some land, while St. Wolstan’s Priory owned, besides a holding in Lucan, the lands of Backweston and Cooldrinagh. After the attainder of Gerald, tenth Earl of Kildare, the manor of Lucan was confiscated by the Crown and leased in 1554 to the Clerk of the Check of the Army, Matthew King, on condition that he inhabited the castle himself or placed in it liege men who would use the English tongue and dress, and hold no communication with the Irish.

A few years later the castle and estate of Lucan came into the possession of Sir William Sarsfield, a citizen of Dublin, who laid aside the toga for military pursuits and a country life. The Sarsfields, who are supposed to have come to this country from a place called Sarnesfield, in Herefordshire, settled in Ireland not long after the Anglo-Norman Conquest, and before- the sixteenth century were seated at Sarsfieldstown, in the County Meath, of which Sir William Sarsfield’s grandfather, Roger Sarsfield, was sometime owner.

His father, John Sarsfield, as a younger son, entered into business in Dublin, and in 1531 was called to the mayoral chair of that city. In that high position he was succeeded in 1553 by his eldest son Patrick, and in 1566 by William, who was his second son. Of the mayoralty of his eldest son, who married one of the Fitzwilliams and has been mentioned as a resident in Baggotrath Castle, Stanihurst has left us a lively picture, and records that this hospitable and public spirited gentleman “thanked God and good company” that three barns well stored and packed with corn and twenty tuns of claret scarcely sufficed for the provision of his house during his year of office.

William Sarsfield, who was nominated as an alderman in 1560, was not so well prepared as he wished when called upon unexpectedly six years later to take the mayoral chair, but he earned the respect of all loyal citizens and the gratitude of the Lord Deputy, Sir Henry Sidney, who was in England at the time, by the prowess he displayed immediately after his election as chief magistrate.

For, on hearing that Drogheda, where Sir Henry Sidney had left his wife during his absence, was threatened by some of the Ulster tribes, “Master Sarsfied,” with a chosen band “of goodly young citizens,” set out to the relief of that town and succeeded, as Campion tells us, “in breaking the rage of the enemy.”

It was for this act of valour that Sir Henry Sidney conferred on William Sarsfleld the honour of knighthood.

From that time Sir William Sarsfield made Lucan Castle, then one of the principal houses in the County Dublin, his chief residence, and was subsequently deprived of his rights as a Dublin citizen for leaving his town house derelict when Dublin was visited by the plague. He served in 1571 as sheriff of his county, and as a man of mark had opportunity of indulging the love for arms which he seems in middle life to have developed.

On several occasions he was included in the commission to execute martial law and to muster the militia of the metropolitan county, and was appointed to command the forces raised in the Newcastle barony.

In this capacity he received from the Crown an expression of thanks together with a grant of lands for his exertions in undertaking, in the winter of 1581, an expedition into the Wicklow hills to rescue a Captain Garret, who had been taken prisoner and was afterwards murdered by some of the inhabitants. The fact that he was one of those who complained of being oppressed and impoverished by intolerable cesses laid upon the Pale, and who were for a time committed to the Castle of Dublin, interfered only temporarily with his public usefulness, and besides his military occupations we find him surveying with Sir Thomas Fitzwilliam the lands to be included in the County Wicklow and acting as a justice- of the peace in the counties within the Pale.

His death took place in 1616, when he had attained the great age of ninety-six years, and he was buried in the church of Lucan adjoining his castle.

Sir William Sarsfield, from whom the famous Patrick Sarsfield, Earl of Lucan, was directly descended, married a daughter of Andrew Tyrrell of Athboy, and many of his children married into families of high position. His eldest son John, who married a daughter of Sir Luke Dillon, Chief Baron of the Exchequer, died before him, and only his second son Patrick, who was established at Tully in the County Kildare, and his third son Simon, survived him.

His eldest daughter was twice married, first to Sir Robert Dillon, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, and secondly to Sir Christopher Bellew; and another daughter married Christopher Bathe, of Rathfeigh.

At Lucan Sir William Sarsfield was succeeded by his son John’s oldest son, who was his namesake as well as grandson, and to him he left the tapestry with which the walls of Lucan Castle were hung and certain articles of plate. These included a basin and ewer of silver, a salt cellar, and covered cups of various kinds, as well as a share of the remaining silver, which he directed should be divided between his grandson and his son

William Sarsileld, who was thirty-four at the time of his grandfather’s death, and had married a daughter of Sir Patrick Barnewall, appears to have passed the peaceful life of a country gentleman, and proved himself when the troubled times came a loyal Roman Catholic.

After the rebellion we find one of his relatives who lived with him at Lucan making a deposition with regard to certain persons whom he had seen in warlike array at the Castle of Lyons; and even when, four years later, the army of the Confederates and the army under Owen O’Neill advanced on Lucan and Newcastle, William Sarsfield “preserved his loyalty unblemished.”

While these armies lay in the district the Marquis of Clanricarde wrote to the Duke of Ormonde from Leixlip Castle saying. that Mr. Sarsfield was “infinitely pestered and destroyed” by the soldiers, and was apprehensive that ho would be deemed disloyal on account of the help which he had been forced against his will to give them, and urging that an assurance should be given Mr. Sarsfield that he would be protected when the armies were withdrawn.

This was done, and in a King’s letter written soon after the Restoration, it is stated that William Sarsfield adhered constantly to the royal cause, and was very diligent and active in providing necessaries for the garrison in Dublin when its siege was threatened.

In this commendation the royal letter includes William Sarsfield’s cousin and heir Patrick Sarsfield, grandson of his uncle Patrick Sarsfield, and father of the Earl of Lucan, who appears to have resided with him at Lucan. There is, however, some doubt as to whether his cousin, although he had been returned in 1641 as member for the borough of Kildare, had acted an entirely loyal part during the rebellion.

His father, Peter Sarsfield, had been outlawed, and he was married to a daughter of the prime conspirator, Roger O’More, who is said, on the discovery of the plot, to have fled from Dublin to his daughter’s house at Lucan.

When the Commonwealth came William Sarsfield, then nearly seventy years of age and a widower, was residing at Lucan with two of his sisters, his cousin Patrick Sarsfield, and his cousin’s wife and family. He gave much employment on his lands, and many of his servants appear amongst the inhabitants of Lucan, who numbered some hundred and twenty persons and included two butchers, two glove makers, two carpenters, two millers, a mason, a tailor, a shoemaker, a man cook, and a gardener.

But the Sarsfields, like their neighbours the Luttrells, soon had to make room for a nominee of the- Commonwealth, and Lucan Castle became the residence of Sir Theophilus Jones, an officer who had distinguished himself in the war in Ireland.

Sir Theophilus Jones was one of three brothers who always managed to be on the winning side in the eventful times in which they lived, and who were innate soldiers. This was the more remarkable as their father, who displayed extraordinary longevity, was a bishop of the Irish Church, and one of the brothers (who accepted, notwithstanding, during the Commonwealth the military office of scout master) was also a prelate of that Church.

The third brother, Colonel Michael Jones, has been already mentioned as the victor of the royal army on the battlefield of Rathmines, and died not long after this, the great achievement of his life.

Sir Theophilus Jones began his military career under Charles I., and after the outbreak of the rebellion in 1641 served in the North of Ireland. Subsequently he was taken prisoner at Kells by the army of the Confederates, but after confinement for some time was released. He then accepted a command in the army of the Parliament. In that service he showed conspicuous courage, and was severely wounded while acting under his brother Colonel Michael Jones in an attack on Ballysonan Castle in the County Kildare, where he had been detained while a prisoner.

During the Commonwealth he was considered one of its most fervent adherents, and represented in the Commonwealth parliament a group of Irish counties. But in 1659 he joined the Earl of Orrery and Sir Charles Coote in wresting the government of Ireland from the civil power, and in the words of Charles II., “acted imminently with the hazard of his life and fortune” in seizing on Miles Corbett and others who then bore sway in this country.

He was one of those who laboured to have the Convention called, and became an active instrument in securing the King’s restoration. He was recommended to Charles II. as one in whom implicit reliance might be placed, and as a powerful supporter of royalist interests in the Irish House of Commons, where he sat for the County Meath, was appointed a privy councillor.

Sir Theophilus Jones made Lucan Castle, which was one of the fairest houses” in the County Dublin, and rated as containing no less than twelve hearths, his chief residence, and ruled as owner over the Sarsfield’s property. His possessions in the village of Lucan, where a good stone bridge then crossed the Liffey, included a corn mill and some twenty thatched houses and cabins, only one of these, however, a house occupied by Nicholas Hide, being rated as containing two hearths, while on lands called Peddinstown he owned “a habitable house,” which was occupied by Samuel Bathurst and rated as containing as many as six chimneys.

Three years after the Restoration Lucan Castle was the scene of a historic interview between Sir Theophilus Jones and Colonel Alexander Jephson, one of the ringleaders in Thomas Blood’s plot to take the Castle of Dublin and overthrow the Government.

In a long account of this interview Sir Theophilus Jones relates how while he was walking, between nine and ten o’clock one May morning in the year 1663, near the bridge of Lucan, watching the arrival of a troop of soldiers who were to be quartered at Lucan, he came upon Colonel Jephson, who had just ridden up alone and alighted from his horse, and how, as the horse required to be shod, he invited him into Lucan Castle, where the early dinner of that time was being prepared in the hall.

For it Colonel Jephson said he was unable to wait, and on his expressing a wish to be apart Sir Theophilus Jones took him into the buttery, being the room next at hand. There, after a tankard of ale, a bottle of cider, and a dish of meat had been set before them, Colonel Jephson disclosed the plot and the intention of the conspirators to offer Sir Theophilus Jones the command of the army after the capture of Dublin Castle - a communication the whole of which Sir Theophilus Jones lost no time in repeating to the Duke of Ormonde.

Sir Theophilus Jones, whose mother was a sister of Archbishop James Ussher, married one of his cousins, a granddaughter of Sir William Ussher of Donnybrook, and a daughter of Arthur Ussher, who was drowned in the River Dodder. As Sir John Perceval and Sir William Davys were nephews of this lady, the proximity of St. Catherine’s to Lucan Castle may have had some bearing on their purchasing successively the former place, and one of her brothers, Arthur Ussher, who was a cornet in her husband’s troop of horse, appears also to have been for a time resident at Lucan.

Sir Theophilus Jones, who died at Osberstown, in the County Kildare, in 16S5, had several children, and through his daughters the Earls of Lanesborough and the Saundersons of Castle Saunderson trace descent from him.

William Sarsfleld only survived his expulsion from Lucan a few years, until 1654; but soon after the Restoration his cousin and heir Patrick Sarsfield petitioned the King to grant him the Lucan estate. This the King was anxious to do, but finally the matter was referred to the Court of Claims, and Patrick Sarsfield lodged a claim on behalf of himself, his wife, and his eldest son.

He had three sons, John, William, and Patrick, afterwards Earl of Lucan, but John had died during the Commonwealth, and William, who was stated to be only a boy of about eleven when the claim was made, was, therefore his eldest surviving son.

The Commissioners under the Act of Settlement took a different view to the King and decided that the estate could not be restored to Patrick Sarsfield on account of his complicity in the rebellion. This could not apply, however, to his son who was not born at the time, and the Commissioners ordered that the estate should be given up to him.

A very serious state of things soon arose. Sir Theophilus Jones, who was required by this decision to give up the Lucan estate, was one of the last persons the King wished should suffer loss. Directions were given to find him at once an estate of equal or greater value elsewhere, but it was not so easy to do, and it was many years before all the Sarsfields’ property was surrendered by him.

In the beginning of 1671 the well-known Richard Talbot, afterwards Earl of Tyrconnel, implored Charles II. to obtain relief for Patrick Sarsfield’s children, “then groaning under an insupportable burden of misery from want of subsistence,” and William Sarsfield, at the same time, sent a formal petition, in which he mentioned that in his belief his father was found guilty of the rebellion on perjured evidence.

In spite of his poverty William Sarsfield had before this time made his way to London and had become known in royal circles, for the next mention of him shows that he had married one of the natural daughters of Charles II., a sister of the Duke of Monmouth.

The latter exerted his influence to obtain the surrender of the Lucan estate to his brother-in-law, but without immediate success, and the King granted the newly-married couple for their present relief a pension of £800 a year.

William Sarsfield died within a few years of that time, in 1675, leaving his wife and three infant children, a son called Charles after his royal progenitor, a daughter called Charlotte, and a son whose name is not known. His widow married before 1677, as her second husband, William Fanshawe, one of the gentlemen in waiting on the King, and they began forthwith an active campaign on behalf of the children and themselves for the recovery of the Sarsfield estate. While this was going on the boys, however, died, and under their father’s will the right to the property passed to their uncle Patrick.

Patrick Sarsfield, the famous general, who was created by James II. Baron of Rosberry, Viscount of Tully, and Earl of Lucan, was successful in recovering most of the estates of his ancestors, but does not appear to have resided much at Lucan. The glowing eulogium which Lord Macaulay has pronounced on his abilities and character, has given him undying fame, but except during the revolution little is known of his career. The date of his birth cannot be fixed with certainty, but it is not improbable that he was born at Lucan before his family was ejected from the castle.

It is said he received some military education in France, but that his first service in an English regiment was against that country in 1677, under his sister-in-law’s brother, the Duke of Monmouth About the middle of the next year he came to London, and remained there “at the house of the King’s saddler at Charing Cross” for more than six months, until appointed a captain in Sir Thomas Dongan’s regiment of foot. On receiving his commission, which was given to him in “the Crown and Sceptre Tavern in Piccadilly,” he set out for Ireland, but does not appear to have remained long in this country.

He is said to have lived much about Whitehall, and a few years later we find him involved in England in more than one affair of honour and accused of assisting a Captain Clifford, who afterwards gained with Henry Luttrell notoriety at Limerick, in carrying off a rich widow against her will as she was driving in her coach over Hounslow Heath. He was severely wounded at the battle of Sedgemoor, where he fought against the Duke of Monmouth.

Three years later, when he had attained to the rank of a colonel, it was rumoured that he was to be made governor of the Barbadoes. He was, however, reserved for a greater if not happier position, and before many months struck his first blow for James II. in the revolution in a skirmish with some of William the Third’s troops at Wincanton, in Somersetshire.

It is unnecessary, and would be impossible to follow Sarsfield through the- historic events of the next few years. In the inimitable pages of Lord Macaulay’s history the story is told of his part in the Irish campaign; how, in spite of discouragement and jealous rivals, he never failed in single devotion to his master’s cause, and stood pre-eminent amongst the commanders on his side for intrepidity and strategic ability, as well as for all that is upright and honour-able.

After the surrender of Limerick he joined James II. in France. His career in the service of that country though brief brought him further laurels and he- received a marshal’s baton. But in 1693 he fell mortally wounded on the battlefield of Landen, exclaiming, “Would to God this had been for Ireland.”

He married a daughter of William, seventh Earl of Clanricarde, and left a son, not altogether unworthy of so brave a father, on whose death in 1719 the male line of the Sarsfields of Lucan became extinct.

Lord Lucan’s mother survived him, and was living in 1694 in France with her two widowed daughters, who had married respectively, Viscount Kilmallock and Viscount Mount Leinster.

Lord Lucan’s right to the Lucan estate was not undisputed by the Fanshawes, who alleged that his brother had been induced to make the remainder to him by undue influence, and at the time of Charles the Second’s death legal proceedings were pending.

On the accession of James II. these proceedings were dropped, but no sooner had William III. been firmly established on the throne than William Fanshawe, who was a Protestant, and whose wife had become one, claimed the Lucan estate, then in the hands of the Crown, on behalf of his steep-daughter Charlotte Sarsfield. After three years exertion and the expenditure of a considerable amount of money, he was successful in regaining it for her. Needless to say, as a great heiress she was not long in finding a husband, and through this marriage the Lucan estate passed to its present owners the Veseys.

Charlotte Sarsfield’s husband, Agmondisham Vesey, was the second son of the Archbishop of Tuam of that time. the Most Rev. John Vesey, who held that see for many years, and from whose eldest son the Viscounts de Vesci are descended. The Archbishop belonged to a family which had been seated at Hintlesham Priory in Suffolk, and the first member of the family mentioned as connected with this country is the Archbishop’s grandfather, William Vesey, described as of Gray’s Inn, who succeeded to Irish property under the will of Henry Reynolds, his maternal uncle.

William Vesey’s son, the Archbishop’s father, the Rev. Thomas Vesey, who entered the: Irish Church, became beneficed in the North of Ireland, and after the Restoration, although he had adopted during the Commonwealth the formularies required by the State, was appointed Archdeacon of Armagh. The Archbishop was twice married, and Agmondisham Vesey was his eldest son by his second wife. She was a daughter of Colonel Agmondisham Muschamp, and from the connection thus established arose the use of the curious names Agmondisham and Muschamp, originally the surnames of two ancient Surrey families, as Christian names in the Vesey family.

Agmondisham Vesey was, through his father’s influence, returned in 1703 as member for the borough of Tuam, which he continued to represent until his death, and appears to have taken an active part in the political life of his day. In recognition of his position the University of Dublin, of which his father afterwards became Vice-Chancellor, conferred on him an honorary degree as LL.D., and some years before his death he was appointed Controller and Accountant-General of Ireland jointly with his son.

His wife, William Sarsfield’s daughter, died not long after their marriage, leaving him two little daughters, from one of whom the present Earls of Lucan are descended, and Agmondisham Vesey had long and troublesome negotiations with the Crown regarding his title to the Lucan property, which required for its settlement more than one Act of Parliament.

While promoting one of these bills in the English parliament in 1712 he received much assistance from Swift, who has recorded in the Journal to Stella that he spent a whole morning at the House of Commons door soliciting interest for a son of the Archbishop of Tuam, and that he secured him the support of above fifty members.

Vesey had married again before that time Jane, daughter of Captain Edward Pottinger, who had been twice previously married, first to John Reynolds, of Kilbride, probably a relative of the Vesey family, and secondly to Sir Thomas Butler, the third baronet of the Ballintemple line. By her he had a numerous family, including Agmondisham, his eldest son, who succeeded him at Lucan, and other sons who entered the Church and the Navy.

He died in 1738, and was buried according to his desire without ostentation in the old church beside Lucan Castle, where a mural tablet to his memory is still to be seen.

(The monument is of black and white marble, and portrays a child leaning over a medallion bearing a man’s head in relief, with a plain pyramidical background. It is supported on two brackets, between which is a tablet bearing the following incised inscription :-” This chappel was repair’d by Jane Lady Butler & this Monument Erected to the Memory of her dearly Beloved Husband A. V. deceased the 23rd of March An Domi 1738 with whom she is inter’d. Where thou art buryerd there will I be buryed also.”)

His son, who became the Right Hon. Agmondisham Vesey, has obtained frequent mention in literature relating to his time as the husband of the far-famed Mrs. Vesey, one of the blue stocking coterie, the friend of Samuel Johnson, Edmund Burke, and a host of the other *literarv *and social celebrities of their day. This remarkable woman was a first cousin of his own, a daughter of his father’s half-brother Sir Thomas Vesey, who was a bishop as well as a baronet, and from whom the Viscounts de Vesci are descended. She had been previously married to William Handcock, sometime member of parliament for Fore, and a collateral ancestor of the Lords Castlemaine.

Her marriage to Vesey took place not long be-fore his mother’s death, which occurred in 1746, and in him, notwithstanding some difference of taste which became more accentuated in later life, she found a kind and indulgent husband. In the University of Dublin, of which he was a scholar as well as graduate, Vesey had shown considerable ability, and as member for Harristown, and subsequently for Kinsale, he took an active part in Irish parliamentary life.

In London, where, owing to the sessions of the Irish parliament being only biennial, he and his wife were enabled to spend every alternate winter, he was thought worthy to be one of the twenty members of the Club founded by Dr. Johnson and Sir Samuel Reynolds, and made himself popular by his gentle manners and polished good nature.

Some want of tact is implied in the accounts of his intercourse with Dr. Johnson, but perhaps it was not altogether his fault that the great doctor, when introduced to him, only remarked, “I see him,” or that on another occasion he thought upon Tom Thumb while Vesey dilated on Catiline’s conspiracy.

A love of fashion, combined with what they considered an excess of gallantry, brought on him towards the close of his life the reproaches of Mrs. Vesey’s friends, but he certainly never lost the affection and constant companionship of his wife.

Notwithstanding her intellectual power and high moral character Mrs. Vesey’s idiosyncrasies were not those to which every man would have accommodated himself, and her friend Mrs. Delany, who first met her as Mrs. Handcock on visiting Dublin in 1731, gives some indication that, like herself, Mrs. Vesey found greater happiness in her second marriage than in her first. She was a woman, although described as *mince *and delicate, of the most extraordinary energy of mind and body, and has been said to have been so desirous of seeing everything in the world that she never thoroughly enjoyed any one object from apprehension that something better might be found in another. Her spirit, wit, and vivacity, which had gained for her amongst her intimates the name of the Sylph, carried her over every obstacle.

In the case of the journey to England, which she made so frequently, she came to disregard not only the discomforts, but also the dangers which then surrounded it, and we find her contemplating the sublime terrors of the pass of Penmaenmawr and travelling through great tempests with an undisturbed mind.

To Bath, Tunbridge Wells, and even to Paris, she was in early life a frequent visitor, and there she laid the- foundations of the friendships which brought to her house in London all the great intellects of that day. In “her dear blue room,” first in Bolton Row and afterwards in Clarges Street, her easy politeness, good sense and improved mind set everyone at their ease, and there Dr. Johnson was allowed to indulge in a harmless “skrimage,” while Horace Walpole was induced to moderate his biting sarcasm.

In their Dublin town house in Molesworth Street, where the Veseys spent the winters in which the Irish parliaments sat, she endeavoured to replace her London circle, and brought on herself some ridicule by her predilection for baronets and pamphleteers when earls and authors of folios failed.

The domestic gifts which Mrs. Vesey lacked were amply supplied by a sister of her first husband, who constantly resided with the Veseys, and was known as Body, while Mrs. Vesey was called Mind. Mrs. Delany, who was one of the Vesey’s most frequent visitors at Lucan, has left a pretty picture of the Lucan housekeeping, and tells how one day, when the Lucan inn failed to provide even a bit of bacon, Miss Handcock saved Dr. Delany and herself from a hungry drive to Dublin by feeding them on a good substantial shoulder of mutton and potatoes.

At Lucan Mr. Vesey developed a perfect genius for architecture and proved himself a successful student in it, whatever he may have done in Irish history and antiquities and Celtic learning, to which he also devoted some attention. Lucan House stands as a monument of Vesey’s skill in design, its Ionic front and hall, adorned with pillars and a frieze in the Grecian order, and enriched with** **medallions from designs by Angelica Kauffman, having received high encomiums from good judges.

He was not neglectful of more useful details, and his new method of slating attracted the notice of the great architect, Sir William Chambers. When Vesey succeeded to Lucan the old castle was the residence in use, and with improvements and probably additions, which he made soon after his marriage, it appears to have served the Veseys as a dwelling until 1772, when the erection of the present house was undertaken.

Mrs. Delany, in letters written soon after the Veseys’ marriage, frequently refers to finding their house full of work and they themselves “up to the- chin in business,” hanging pictures and settling other decorations. To Mrs. Delany this was a most congenial occupation, and the-re was no house in Ireland she liked so well to be in. She speaks with enthusiasm of the Veseys’ method of framing pictures and of transparent Indian figures and flowers with which they decorated their windows, as well as of Vesey’s fine collection of prints and library.

A cottage in the grounds between Lucan House and Leixlip seems to date from their time, and on one occasion, when proceeding to it in a cabriolet, Mrs. Vesey nearly lost her life by the restiveness of the horse. Mrs. Delany also speaks of Mrs. Vesey’s dairy, in which they sometimes breakfasted at a table strewed with roses, and of a bath house, with an antechamber in which they once dined. The latter, which is still to be seen, was according to tradition originally an oratory dedicated to St. John, and the bath is said to be supplied from a holy well.

In the new house Mrs. Vesey, who was to occupy a round room, feared she would be like a parrot in a cage, and received much sympathy from her friends for the loss of “the dear old castle with its niches and thousand other Gothic beauties,” but Mrs. Vesey was delighted with the house when it was completed, and found the reluctance which she had felt in going to it had been little justified.

About the same time as Lucan House, the handsome residence known as St. Edmondsbury, which lies to the east of the village of Lucan on the northern side of the road to Dublin, was built by the Right Hon. Edmond Sexton Pery, who after a long parliamentary career was elected in 1771 Speaker of the Irish House of Commons.

St. Edmondsbury, where we find in 1783 Pery entertaining the Viceroy, was erected on land belonging to the Veseys, to whom Pery had become nearly related by his marriage to a daughter of the first Viscount de Vesci.

On his retirement in 1785 from the Speaker’s chair - a position which he filled to the admiration of so competent a critic as Charles Fox - Pery was raised to the peerage as Viscount Pery, and after the Union, against which he voted, appears to have resided in London, where in 1806 he died.

Although Lucan had been known before as a health resort on account of a chalybeate spa which existed there, it was in Vesey’s time, in the year 1758, that the present sulphur spa was discovered, and it was through his generosity that it was first made available to the public and protected from inundation by the Liffey by the erection of an enclosing wall.

Its reputation stood high in the eighteenth century, and the water, “in flasks carefully corked on the spot,” could be obtained in Dublin, but the advantage of drinking it at the source was then well understood, and numbers flocked to the healing spring. With the invalids came the fashionable world, and in 1789 it is mentioned that Lucan was the favourite summer resort, and that the- well was crowded with persons of condition” who often formed dancing parties at a ball-room which had been built before that time.

Not long before 1795 this ball room was superseded by, or incorporated in, the old hotel, which is still to be seen, and which was modelled on those existing at the time in watering places in England.

The bridge at Lucan was a never ending object of anxiety, and was more than once rebuilt on a new site during the eighteenth century. Swift’s well-known couplet about the bounty of the man who built a bridge at the expense of the county will recall the fact that one had been erected in the time of Vesey’s father. As will be seen in the picture, this stood near the present Lucan House, and was in ruins soon after it was built.

Another bridge, “an elegant stone structure of several arches ornamented with a frieze” had been erected lower down the stream at that time by Vesey, but this was carried away in 1786, and a bridge was then erected in the village near the site of the present one, which dates from 1806.

The Veseys passed the last years of their lives entirely in England. Vesey, who suffered for some years before his death from a complaint most trying to those near him, died in 1785. From that time Mrs. Vesey, who before then had been described by Madame D’Arblay as the most wrinkled and time-beaten person she had ever seen, sank into a most melancholy state, and before her death in 1792 had become quite insensible to all around her.

Vesey has been blamed for the provision which he made for his wife, but from his references to her in his will it is evident that it was far from his intention that she should be deprived of any comfort. Any failure of income was probably due to the expensive mode of living which the Veseys adopted not only in Ireland, where their coach and four excited much admiration, but in England. She was, however, not allowed to want in any way, and her friends have recorded that Vesey’s nephew and heir showed her all the attention of a devoted son.

This nephew, Colonel George Vesey, who was an officer in the 6th regiment of foot, and who served at Halifax and Gibraltar amongst other places, married in 1790, at Marlay, a daughter of the Right Hon. David La Touche, and subsequently settled down at Lucan and became member for Tuam in the Irish parliament.

Of the history of Lucan in the nineteenth century it is outside the scope of this work to treat, and it is the less necessary as the subject has been dealt with in a handbook recently published (‘Luciana’, by Rev. William S. Donegan, CC., Dublin, 1902). **

Ecclesiastical History**

The ruined church of Lucan, which, as has been mentioned, adjoins the ruined castle of Lucan on its southern side, possesses no feature of architectural interest, and probably the walls represent a building of comparatively modern date which superseded a mediaeval structure.

The advowson of the church, which was dedicated to the Blessed Virgin, was granted in the early part of the thirteenth century by Wirris Peche to the neighbouring Priory of St. Catherine. The value of the church was stated about that time. to be eighteen marks, and we find a nephew of the Bishop of Meath mentioned as rector of Lucan and Roger as parson of Lucan.

In 1279 Henry Serle was presented by the Crown to the church, then said to be in the King’s gift owing to the minority of Henry Peche. At the beginning of the next century the value of the benefice was stated to be £20. After the dissolution of St. Thomas’ Abbey, which succeeded to the advowson of Lucan Church as well as to the other possessions of St. Catherine’s Priory, the revenues of the church became impropriate and were leased by the Crown in the sixteenth century to many persons, including Sir William Sarsfield.

It was then served for a time, together with the church of Esker, by a clergyman of Irish birth the Rev. John Ower, who in 1578 was granted the liberty of an English subject. At the beginning of the next century the church, as regarded both nave and chancel, was in good repair and provided with books, but before 1630 the vicar, Thomas Keating, who had married a Roman Catholic, had allowed the chancel to become ruinous.

The value of the living was only £10 a year, and there were not more than five Protestants in the parish. Keating was succeeded by the Rev. Robert Jones, who has been already mentioned in connection with Saggart and Newcastle, and who, owing to the rebellion of 1641, during which he suffered loss, as he alleged, at the hands of the Scurlocks of Rathcreedan and the Allens of Coolmine, retired to live in Dublin.

After the Restoration the parish of Lucan was united to the adjoining one of Leixlip and so remained until the nineteenth century. The succession of yicars has been-in 1660 the Rev. John Harper, in 1670 the Rev. John Pooley, who became Bishop of Cloyne, in 1675 the Rev. Thomas Hawley, who became Archdeacon of Dublin; in 1715 the Rev. John Kyan, in 1750 his son, the Rev. James Kyan (In Esker Churchyard there is a tombstone with the following inscription :-” Here lie the remains of the Rev. John Kyan, who discharged the duty of a Faithful Shepherd 35 years in Leixlip and the united Parishes. After a long life of Piety and Virtue he entered upon ye Reward of his Actions May 18th, 1750. The Revd. James Kyan departed this life October ye 6th, 1773, in the -year of his age A Christian, a Christian.”), in 1773 the Rev. William Percy (in the same Churchyard there is also a tombstone with the following inscription :-” Here lyeth the Body of the late Rev. Wm. Percy who died - 1795, in the 62nd year of his Age; Respected by all who knew him, and Lamented by every Friend.”), in 1795 the Rev. Edward Berwick, the editor of ” The Rawdon Papers”, in 1820 the Rev. James Jones, in 1822 the Rev. Caesar Otway, the author of “A Tour in Connaught” and many other works, in 1826 the Rev. Fielding Ould, in 1836 the Rev. Hugh Edward Prior, in 1856 the Rev. Edmund Trench, in 1859 the Rev. Charles Warren, in 1862 the Rev. Charles Holt Ensell, and in 1871 the Rev. Charles Maunsell Benson.

The present Roman Catholic church at Lucan took the place of an older structure - the site of which is now occupied by the Petty Sessions Court-house - and doubtless the services of the Roman Catholic Church have been celebrated at Lucan from the sixteenth century.

Under the arrangement made in 1615 the parishes of Lucan, Aderrig, Kilbride, Kilmahuddrick, Esker, Palmerston, Ballyfermot, Clondalkin and Drimnagh were formed into one parish known as the parish of Clondalkin and Lucan.

The following appear amongst the parish priests of this parish-in 1680 the Rev. Oliver Doyle, in 1714 the Rev. Richard Fox, and in 1744 the Rev. Christopher Coleman. About 1765 Lucan and Palmerston were detached and made a separate parish, of which we find the following in charge-in 1770 the Rev. Michael Hall, in 1786 the Rev. Andrew Toole, in 1786 the Rev. Michael Ryan, and in 1798 the Rev. John Dunne.

Two years later the parishes of Clondalkin and Lucan were reunited, and the parish priests since that time have been - in 1800 the Rev. John Dunne, in 1837 the Rev. Matthias Kelly, in 1855 the Rev. John Moore, and in 1883 the Rev. James Baxter, the present incumbent.

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