Wednesday, November 23, 2016

The Earls of Ormond and Maynooth Castle

The Earls of Ormond and Maynooth Castle

Niall C.E.J. O’Brien

Introduction

Among the letters in the register of Archbishop John Mey of Armagh is an undated letter addressed to Sir James Butler, 5th Earl of Ormond and 1st Earl of Wiltshire, seeking over £100 in debts.[1] John Mey was Archbishop of Armagh from August 1443 to his death in 1456.[2]

In the letter Archbishop Mey expressed his surprise that after writing a few letters to the Earl of Ormond to request payment of over £100 spent in the Earl’s service that he was still waiting for the money.[3] In 1453 James Butler, 5th Earl of Ormond, was made Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. James Butler was staying in England at the time and opted to remain there. In his absence from Ireland he appointed Archbishop Mey as Deputy Lieutenant of Ireland.[4]

Archbishop Mey told the Earl of Ormond that the conduct of the Earl in not settling his debts was bringing ill will to his friends and adherents including the Archbishop. The disturbed state of the country was adding to people’s concern.[5]

The undated letter to the Earl of Ormond, seeking the £100, was delivered by Robert Keppagh. In the days of the 4th Earl of Ormond, Robert Keppagh was keeper of Maynooth castle.[6] This is the only known mention of Robert Keppagh. The 4th Earl of Ormond held Maynooth castle from 1432 to his death in 1452 but in the absence of any other documentation it is difficult to say when in that time period was Robert Keppagh keeper of Maynooth castle. This article sets out to charter the history of how Maynooth came to be owned by the Earls of Ormond and how the Fitzgerald family, Earls of Kildare, fought for its recovery.

Maynooth castle 

The 5th Earl of Kildare

Gerald Fitzmaurice Fitzgerald, 5th Earl of Kildare, was the son and heir of Maurice Fitzthomas Fitzgerald, 4th Earl of Kildare by his wife Elizabeth, daughter of Bartholomew de Burghersh, Lord Burghersh, by his wife Elizabeth, daughter and co-heir of Theobald de Verdun. In 1390 Gerald succeeded his father as Earl of Kildare.[7]

In July 1397 the manors of Maynooth, Rathmore, Geashill, Rathangan and Lea were entailed to Gerald Fitzmaurice Fitzgerald, 5th Earl of Kildare, and his male heirs. The first male heir was the Earl’s brother, John Fitzmaurice followed by Richard Fitzgerald (illegitimate son of the Earl), Richard Fitzmaurice (the Earl’s brother), Gerald, bastard son of Thomas Fitzmaurice (the Earl’s brother) and then with reminder to Thomas Fitz William and Gerald Fitz William Fitzgerald (the Earl’s cousins).[8]

In November 1415 Gerald, the 5th Earl of Kildare, was given a pardon for all manner of trespasses, treasons, and intrusions in the castle and manor of Kildare, and the manors of Maynooth and Rathmore.[9]

Butler marries Fitzgerald’s daughter

In the summer of 1432 the recently widowed 4th Earl of Ormond, James Butler, married Elizabeth Fitzgerald, daughter and heiress of the 5th Earl of Kildare. Ormond’s first wife Joan, daughter of William Beauchamp, Lord Abergavenny, died in August 1430 by which he had a son, James Butler, the later 5th Earl of Ormond and 1st Earl of Wiltshire. Elizabeth Fitzgerald was herself a widow on the death of her first husband, John Grey, Lord Grey of Cadnor. On 29th April 1432 James Butler and Elizabeth Fitzgerald received papal dispensation to marry as they were doubly related and on 18th July 1432 they received a royal licence to marry.[10] The inquisition post mortem for Gerald, 5th Earl of Kildare, said that James Butler and Elizabeth Fitzgerald were married “long before the death of Gerald” but the above dispensation and licence suggests they were married only a few months before the Earl died.[11]

Kilkenny castle - chief home of the Butlers

Death of 5th Earl Kildare and female succession

When the 5th Earl of Kildare died on 13th October 1432 without any lawful male heirs, the ever ambitious Earl of Ormond quickly moved that the entail of 1397 had no value and that Elizabeth was the sole heiress to the Kildare property.[12] Ormond moved on the manors of Kildare inheritance and claimed them as his in right of his new wife. The estate of Gerald Fitzgerald was detailed in an inquisition produced for the King’s officials in Dublin shortly after the Earl’s death.[13] The 6th Earl of Kildare, John Fitzmaurice Fitzgerald, was the brother of the 5th Earl and was an old man when he succeeded. The 6th Earl found it difficult to challenge the Earl of Ormond and he was in poor health as he died in 1434.[14]

Before 10th December 1432 the Earl of Ormond and Elizabeth Fitzgerald gave fealty for two thirds of the property of the late Earl of Kildare on payment of an entry fine of 100s. The other one third of the property passed as her dower lands to widow of the 5th Earl of Kildare, Agnes Darcy (she survived until 1439).[15]

The Fitzgeralds challenge the Ormond succession

In 1434 Thomas Fitzmaurice Fitzgerald (the future 7th Earl of Kildare) disputed the title of the Earl of Ormond to the manors of Maynooth and Rathmore. The dispute brought sufferings to the locals who petitioned the Dublin government for help and relief.[16] The true 7th Earl of Kildare was John, son of John the 6th Earl, but this John FitzJohn had physical disabilities and was known as John the cam or crooked. Thomas Fitzmaurice Fitzgerald was the son of John the cam.[17]

In 1440 Thomas Fitzmaurice Fitzgerald was living at Kildrought but he didn’t live the life of a country gentleman. Instead he assisted in lawlessness in the Dublin and Kildare area. In 1440 Thomas Fitzmaurice Fitzgerald was made an outlaw for aiding the O’Bryne nation who were then at war with the Dublin administration. He gave them food and participated in burning wheat and corn to pro-English settlers. Thomas Fitzmaurice Fitzgerald was summoned five times to answer the charges but failed to appear and so was declared an outlaw. In April 1440 the sheriff of Dublin was ordered to seize all the goods, chattels, lands and rents belonging to Thomas Fitzmaurice Fitzgerald. But most of Fitzgerald’s property was held by the Earl of Ormond and so the sheriff reported back that he found no goods or chattels within his bailiwick.[18] If Thomas Fitzmaurice Fitzgerald was causing trouble to get the Butler family out of the Kildare inheritance, he was totally unsuccessful.

Ormond management of Maynooth & Rathmore  

On 24th March 1449 the 4th Earl of Ormond appointed John Martyne of Ballygorme to be seneschal of Rathmore, Castlewarren and Oughterard at an annual wage of 13s 4d.[19] A rental for the manor of Rathmore, made in 1449 and 1450, survives among the papers in the National Archives at Kew. The manor appears to have been in good condition. About 4d per acre was the rent for meadow land and 3d per acre for arable land. Most of the manor was in meadow and pasture. The Fitz Eustace family and the prior of Kilmainham appear among those paying chief rents. Thomas Cotterell was the biggest tenant with 120 acres of the demesne land along with holding the watermill and dovecot. The Cotterell surname often appears among the Ormond deeds and he may well have moved into Rathmore to secure the interests of the Earl of Ormond.[20] By the time of the Kildare rental of 1518 there is not Cotterell on the Kildare estate which would suggest that Cotterell was an Ormond man.[21]

Ormond controls the Irish government

The difficulties in the Fitzgeralds recovery their ancient estates were compounded by the Ormond control of the Irish government. In July 1450 the Earl of Ormond was appointed Deputy Lieutenant of Ireland by the Duke of York who left for England. The Earl of Ormond summoned a great council for Drogheda and two immediate Parliaments. In 1452 the Earl of Ormond went to war against Irish rebels in Limerick, Laois, Offaly and Cavan.[22]

A hope of recovery – dashed

On 6th August 1452 Elizabeth Fitzgerald, wife of the 4th Earl of Ormond and daughter of the 5th Earl of Kildare, died. She had no children by James Butler and for a brief time her husband held her lands by the curtesy of England.[23]

On 23rd August 1452 the Earl of Ormond died and was succeeded by his son, James Butler, who in 1449 had been created Earl of Wiltshire.[24] Archbishop Mey was entrusted in the will of the 4th Earl of Ormond with responsibility for the payment of the Earl’s debts.[25] Archbishop Mey was a long associate of the Butler family and would later come to represent the king in Ireland through appointment by the 5th Earl of Ormond.

As James Butler and Elizabeth Fitzgerald had no children her estates at Maynooth and Rathmore should have returned to her nearest male relative of the House of Kildare, that is, John cam Fitzgerald, the unrecognised 7th Earl of Kildare. But John Fitzgerald was unable due to his own limitations and the power of the Earls of Ormond to succeed to his inheritance.

Ormond again controls Irish government

The Fitzgeralds were further hindered in the recovery of their estates by the new Earl of Ormond controlling the Irish government. On 11th February 1451 the original ten year appointment of the Duke of York as Lieutenant of Ireland (made on 9th December 1447) was renewed for another ten years. But on 12th May 1453 the Earl of Ormond and Wiltshire pushed through the corridors of power in England his own appointment as Lieutenant for ten years with a commencement date back-dated to 6th March and without any reference to the Duke of York’s position.

The Earl of Ormond and Wiltshire was then regarded as the ‘best captain of the English nation that was in Ireland and England in those ages’ but to the disappointment of the Anglo-Irish community in Ireland the Earl opted to remain in England. Thus John Mey, Archbishop of Armagh, was appointed Deputy Lieutenant of Ireland.[26]

Archbishop Mey was not regarded as a very active governor and as an appointment of the Earl of Ormond was not going to intervene in the dispute of the manors of Maynooth and Rathmore. Repeated appeals to Archbishop Mey to resolve the issue fell on deaf ears.[27]

Maynooth under Ormond control

In 1453-4 records show that the Earl of Ormond was firmly in control of most of the manor of Maynooth and a court roll of the Earl survives for that year. Remund Roche (Rothe) was the seneschal of Maynooth for Ormond while Walter Sygyn was chief sergeant and Walter Offiyn was deputy sergeant. The court roll mentions ten cases of contempt for the lord, two cases for battery, twelve cases for trespass, two cases for illegal cutting of timber, nine cases of failure to attend court, and twenty-four cases relating to plea for debt and three undetermined cases.[28]

The Earl of Ormond didn’t have all of Maynooth manor. In 1452-3 Sir Thomas Talbot, prior of Kilmainham, held some lands around Maynooth where he was involved with the Fitz Eustace family.[29]

Maynooth castle gateway

Kildare citizens complaint about the dispute

The ten cases of contempt against the Earl of Ormond by the tenants of Maynooth seem to have been repeated across County Kildare. In June 1454 the citizens of Co. Kildare petitioned the Duke of York that the conflict between Thomas Fitzmaurice Fitzgerald and the Earl of Ormond was disrupting the economy and justice as the people dared not go to the King’s court or to market towns. Archbishop Mey was cited for ‘misrule and misgovernance’.[30] The Duke of York was protector of England between March 1454 and February 1455 and again from November 1455 to February 1456 due to the insanity of King Henry VI.

Ormond out of government and Kildare in charge

The petition to the Duke of York raised the issue in the English council as to who was the real Lord Lieutenant of Ireland; York or Ormond. On 15th April 1454 the Duke of York was declared the rightful Lord Lieutenant. As soon as the news reached Ireland Sir Edmund Fitz Eustace assumed the job of Deputy Lieutenant and he presided at a Parliament in July.[31] Archbishop Mey thus lost his job as Deputy. It is assumed that the letter from Archbishop Mey to the Earl of Ormond seeking the £100 may have been written in the summer of 1454.

On 25th October 1454 Sir Edmund Fitz Eustace died and Thomas Fitzmaurice Fitzgerald, 7th Earl of Kildare, was elected Justiciar by the Irish council. The Earl of Kildare held a great council in May 1455 and a Parliament in October with the principle business of restoring order.[32] The settlement of the disorders in the area of Maynooth and Rathmore was high in the ‘to do’ list of the Earl. But getting back the Kildare inheritance proved more difficult.

Meanwhile, on 22nd May 1455 the War of the Roses had begun in England with the battle of St. Albans. The Duke of York was victorious and retained Kildare as his Deputy in Ireland. but on 12th October 1459 the Yorkists were routed at Ludford Bridge and the Duke of York fled to Ireland. The Earl of Ormond and Wiltshire was now reappointed as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland with Sir Thomas Bathe, Lord Louth and Archbishop John Mey as his deputies as the Earl of Ormond remained in England. But the Duke of York was in power in Ireland and the two deputies were made ineffective.[33]

In 1456 Thomas Fitzmaurice Fitzgerald was recognised as the 7th Earl of Kildare but the Earl of Ormond still retained the manors of Maynooth and Rathmore as heir to Elizabeth, daughter and heiress of the 5th Earl of Kildare or so he claimed.[34]

The War of the Roses

But the Ormond control over the Kildare inheritance would soon change dramatically by events in the War of the Roses. In July 1460 the Duke of York left Ireland and at the London Parliament in October claimed the crown as his rightful inheritance. The Parliament rejected the claim even-though the Lancastrian government was very unpopular. A comprised was reached that King Henry VI would remain as king for life to be succeeded by York. But the Lancastrians opposed this and at the battle of Wakefield the Duke of York was killed. Yet this was not the end of the Yorkist campaign as in March 1461 York’s son, the Earl of March (the future Edward IV) decisively defeated the Lancastrians at Towton.[35] 

Recovery of the Kildare inheritance

The Earl of Ormond escaped from the battle of Towton but was later captured and executed. The lands of the dead Earl, and his brothers, were declared forfeit. These lands of the late Earl of Ormond were located in England and Ireland and of course included the manors of Maynooth and Rathmore. The Earl of Kildare was still Deputy of Ireland in 1462 when the attainder was made and must have been delighted with the news from England. The act of attainder excluded the Fitzgerald manors of Maynooth, Kildare, le Carten, le Court de Carton, Rathmore, Lucan, Kildrought, Arst, Geashill, Offaly and all other lands and rights that were anciently held by the Earls of Kildare. 

For an account of the English property of the Earls of Ormond see = http://celtic2realms-medievalnews.blogspot.ie/2016/07/english-estates-of-earl-of-ormond-in.html 

Finally the Earl of Kildare was able to recover the manors of Maynooth and Rathmore. When the property of the Earldom of Ormond was restored to John Butler, 6th Earl of Ormond, in 1474 and 1475 the lands of the Earldom of Kildare was excluded and remained with the 7th Earl of Kildare.[36] Maynooth would go on to become the principle seat of the Earls of Kildare and Maynooth castle played an important part in the subsequent life of the Earldom including the Kildare rebellion on the 1530s.

Model of Maynooth castle

Ormond estate subject to female heiress

By those same 1530s the Earldom of Ormond had suffered the same fate as the Earldom of Kildare did in 1432. In August 1515 Thomas Butler, 7th Earl of Ormond, died without male issue.[37] In 1328 the Ormond property was entailed to male issues along with the title of Earl but in the tumult of War of the Roses and the acts of attainder in 1461-2 the entailment fell into abeyance. Thus in 1515 the two daughters of the 7th Earl of Ormond, Margaret and Anne Butler, and their respected husbands, Sir William Boleyn and Sir James St. Leger, acquired the vast Ormond estate in England and Ireland while the title of Earl was fought over by junior branches of the Butler family.[38]

In 1497 the 8th Earl of Kildare, who was then lord deputy of Ireland, aid the infighting among the Butlers when he protected Piers Ruadh Butler after the latter’s cold-blooded murder of Sir James Butler, the bastard son of the 7th Earl of Ormond and then agent in Ireland for the Earl.[39] 

Kildare continuation

Although the Earls of Kildare suffered death and destruction under King Henry VIII, the family survived. In the eighteenth century the Earls of Kildare became Dukes of Leinster and Carton house outside Maynooth became their chief country house. Much of the Kildare estate remained with the Fitzgerald family until the Land Acts of the late nineteenth century and not an Ormond Butler in sight to claim ownership. 

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[1] W.G.H. Quigley & E.F.D. Roberts (eds.), Registrum Iohannis Mey: The Register of John Mey, Archbishop of Armagh, 1443-1456 (Stationery Office, Belfast, 1972), p. 372
[3] W.G.H. Quigley & E.F.D. Roberts (eds.), Registrum Iohannis Mey, p. 372
[4] A.J. Otway-Ruthven, A history of Medieval Ireland (Ernest Benn, London, 1980), p. 385
[5] W.G.H. Quigley & E.F.D. Roberts (eds.), Registrum Iohannis Mey, p. 372
[6] W.G.H. Quigley & E.F.D. Roberts (eds.), Registrum Iohannis Mey, p. 372
[7] George Cokayne, The Complete Peerage (Alan Sutton, Gloucester, 1987), Vol. VII, pp. 224, 225
[8] G. Mac Niocaill (ed.), The Red Book of the Earls of Kildare (Stationery Office, Dublin, 1964), no. 158
[10] George Cokayne, The Complete Peerage, Vol. X, pp. 125, 126, 127
[11] Edmund Curtis (ed.), Calendar of Ormond Deeds (Stationery Office, Dublin, 1935), Vol. III, pp. 85, 88
[12] Edmund Curtis (ed.), Calendar of Ormond Deeds, Vol. III, p. 86
[13] Edmund Curtis (ed.), Calendar of Ormond Deeds, Vol. III, p. 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89
[14] George Cokayne, The Complete Peerage, Vol. VII, p. 228
[15] Edmund Curtis (ed.), Calendar of Ormond Deeds, Vol. III, pp. 85, 86
[16] George Cokayne, The Complete Peerage, Vol. VII, p. 228, note e
[17] George Cokayne, The Complete Peerage, Vol. VII, p. 228
[18] Edmund Curtis (ed.), Calendar of Ormond Deeds, Vol. III, pp. 119, 120, 121
[19] Paul Dryburgh & Brendan Smith, ‘Calendar of documents relating to medieval Ireland in the series o ancient deeds in the National Archives of the United Kingdom’, in Analecta Hibernia, No. 39 (2006), p. 10
[20] Paul Dryburgh & Brendan Smith (eds.), Handbook & Calendar for Medieval Ireland, pp. 271, 272, 273, 274
[21] Gearóid Mac Niocaill (ed.), Crown Surveys of Lands 1540-41 with the Kildare Rental begun in 1518 (Irish Manuscripts Commission, Dublin, 1992), pp. 253, 363
[22] A.J. Otway-Ruthven, A history of Medieval Ireland, pp. 384, 385
[23] George Cokayne, The Complete Peerage, Vol. VII, p. 227, note h, Ibid, Vol. X, p. 125
[24] George Cokayne, The Complete Peerage, Vol. X, pp. 126, 127
[25] W.G.H. Quigley & E.F.D. Roberts (eds.), Registrum Iohannis Mey, p. 372
[26] A.J. Otway-Ruthven, A history of Medieval Ireland, p. 385
[27] A.J. Otway-Ruthven, A history of Medieval Ireland, p. 385
[28] Paul Dryburgh & Brendan Smith (eds.), Handbook and Select Calendar of Sources for Medieval Ireland in the National Archives of the United Kingdom (Four Courts Press, Dublin, 2005), pp. 238, 239, 240
[29] Paul Dryburgh & Brendan Smith (eds.), Handbook & Calendar for Medieval Ireland, pp. 263, 254, 265
[30] A.J. Otway-Ruthven, A history of Medieval Ireland, p. 385
[31] A.J. Otway-Ruthven, A history of Medieval Ireland, p. 386
[32] A.J. Otway-Ruthven, A history of Medieval Ireland, p. 386
[33] A.J. Otway-Ruthven, A history of Medieval Ireland, p. 386
[34] A.J. Otway-Ruthven, A history of Medieval Ireland, p. 386, note 16
[35] A.J. Otway-Ruthven, A history of Medieval Ireland, p. 388
[36] A.J. Otway-Ruthven, A history of Medieval Ireland, p. 386, note 16, p. 389; Edmund Curtis (ed.), Calendar of Ormond Deeds, Vol. III, p. 192, 217
[37] George Cokayne, The Complete Peerage, Vol. X, p. 133
[38] David Edwards, The Ormond lordship in County Kilkenny 1515-1642: The Rise and Fall of Butler Feudal Power (Four Courts Press, Dublin, 2003), pp. 79, 80, 82
[39] David Edwards, The Ormond lordship in County Kilkenny 1515-1642, p. 83

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