Excerpted and edited from a new book to be released soon.
In the early seventeeth century, the family patriarch exercised total parental control and carefully orchestrated the right marriage contracts of their children, a normal practice in a society that regarded family discipline as a guarantee of public order, and in which young men and women depended on their fathers for their living allowances. It was a complex process with an accepted set of protocols involving three general stages, with customs, practices, and timeline varying with each family. First, informal enquiries were made to the prospective spouse’s family to gather general information before securing permissions – sometimes royal permission – to proceed with more formal discussions. Second, the two families, sometimes using a broker, negotiated the financial arrangements, especially the bride’s dowry and jointure, and secured the signing of the marriage articles and the settlement of estates. This stage often took months to complete as it involved the exchange of sensitive details relating to rentals, debts, mortgages, liabilities, general income and expenditure. Finally, the marriage ceremony took place followed by the consummation of the marriage, which was delayed if the couple were too young.[1] While intermarriage with English wives offered advantages to Irish nobles increasing their social status, wealthy and well-connected English families were reluctant to send their daughters to a country associated with incivility, barbarism, rebellion, and popery.[2]
Donough O’Brien, fourth earl of Thomond, was the fourth largest landowner in Ireland. Most of the Thomond estate was in County Clare, in the baronies of Bunratty and Tulla, with additional acres in neighboring Counties Limerick and Tipperary and in the Counties of Carlow, Dublin, Westmeath, and Queen’s. In September 1614, Thomond in his bridal search for his second son, Barnabas, upset the English courtier Thomas Butler, tenth Earl of Ormond. Ormond objected to the uninvited and “distasteful” overtures made to his only daughter, Elizabeth, who at the approximate age of twenty-two had been recently widowed with the death of her first cousin, Theobold Butler, first Viscount Butler of Tulleophelim, Ireland, a year earlier in December 1613. Thomond’s persistence left Ormond feeling “abused and dishonoured,” since he felt the match “might breed destruction to her, and dishonour to himself, in regard of his engagement to His Majesty, from which he never purposes to digress.” If Elizabeth defied his wishes by seeking an “unfit match” with Barnabas, Ormond threatened to “forget her to be his daughter.” [3] The situation may not have been whether Thomond was a “good match” because even if Ormond had better plans for Elizabeth, James I had intervened and obliged Ormond to marry his daughter to the court favorite Richard Preston, Lord Dingwall of Scotland and later first Earl of Desmond. Ormond did not approve of Preston and was very averse to the marriage but realized the dire consequences of opposing the king. Preston and Elizabeth married shortly soon after; Ormond died on 22 November 1614 at his home in Carrick and buried the following spring, 17 April 1615, at St. Kenny’s church at Kilkenny.[4]
On 17 July 1615, “Barnaby” married Mary Fermor, the youngest surviving daughter of Sir George Fermor.[5] Mary had been previously married to Scottish nobleman Robert Crichton, eighth Lord Crichton of Sanquhar, and the son of Edward Crichton. Crichton was a Member of Parliament in 1585 and 1587, and was appointed to a commission as Justice of the Peace, but after abusing his office, was discharged and allowed to remain as Sheriff of Dumfries. After a brief time sitting on the Privy Council, he entered the court of King James VI of Scotland as a diplomat, a position that made Crichton unpopular with his influence over the king.[6] For his role in the murder of the fencing master, John Turner, Crichton was hanged 29 June 1612 on a gibbet with a silken halter in Great Palace Yard, before the gate of Westminster Hall. After dying penitent professing his Catholic faith, his body was taken by Lord Dingwall and Robert Kerr, Lord Roxburgh, and returned to Scotland.[7]
Sir George Fermor had died on 01 December 1612 and was buried the next day. The widowed Mary (Curzon) Fermor and her eldest son, Sir Hatton Fermor, arranged the marriage settlement. The £4500 received by Barnaby mentioned in a quadripartite indenture dated 11 June 1616 granting him Castle Carlow[8] may have been paid by Sir Hatton Fermor and his mother Mary, and that in return, Barnaby’s father was to grant them land of equivalent value in Ireland to live on.[9] If so, the indenture indicates the Fermors were either expanding their estate holdings or investing in a future relocation.
Despite the grand castle, large estate, and beautiful surroundings, in 1616 Barnaby asked Sir Richard Boyle, Baron of Youghal (later first Earl of Cork), to meet him and Mary at Youghal so that “his wife think she is in England.” [10]
Philip Farmer is the author and publisher of “Edward Farmar and the Sons of Whitemarsh,” a 500-page, 155-year biographical history of the family immigration from Ireland into Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee, and Harlan County, Kentucky. The prequel and the sequel are currently in work.
[1] Ohlmeyer, Making Ireland English: The Irish Aristocracy in the Seventeenth Century (2012), p.174.
[2] Ohlmeyer, Making Ireland English: The Irish Aristocracy in the Seventeenth Century (2012), p.185.
[3] Ohlmeyer, Making Ireland English: The Irish Aristocracy in the Seventeenth Century (2012), p.103, 174. King James I and IV of Scotland and England had a series of personal relationships with male courtiers, called his “favorites,” suspected to have been the king’s homosexual partners.
[4] Carte, The Life of James, Duke of Ormond, vol.1 (1851), p.cxv.
[5] Lenihan, Limerick; Its History and Antiquities (1884), p.157 erroneously states he married “Mary, youngest daughter of Sir James Fermor, Knight, lineal descendant of the Barons Lempster, Earls of Pomfret…”
[6] Paul, The Scots Peerage Founded on Wood’s Edition of Sir Robert Douglas’s Peerage of Scotland, vol.3 (1906) p.230.
[7] Letters and State Papers During the Reign of King James the Sixth (1838), p.36-37; Henderson, Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900, vol.13 (1888), p.91; “1612: Robert Crichton, Lord Sanquhar and mediocre swordsman.” ExecutedToday.com. 29 June 2014. Retrieved 05 March 2021. In July 1617, James I was entertained at Sanquhar Castle by William Crichton, 7th Lord Sanquhar and Robert Crichton’s son. “Doubtless it was a convenient stopping-place, but the royal visit must have awakened unpleasant memories in the family, since only five years earlier James had condemned his host’s predecessor in the title to an ignominious death by hanging before the gates of Westminster Hall on the charge of having instigated a murder, for which the unfortunate sufferer had at least some provocation, seeing that the victim, one Turner, had, whether intentionally or not is uncertain, put out one of his lordship’s eyes in a fencing bout…” (The Scottish Historical Review, vol.10 (1913), p.27).
[8] Burnbury, “Carlow – The Castle & The County.” TurtleBurnburry.com. 2000.
[9] Burnbury, “Carlow – The Castle & The County.” TurtleBurnburry.com. 2000.
[10] Ohlmeyer, Making Ireland English: The Irish Aristocracy in the Seventeenth Century (2012), p.185.