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
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.
===============
End of post
==============
[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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