Tag: Earl of Thomond

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Barnabas O’Brien & Mary Fermor, Part 2

The O’Briens continued to live in Carlow Castle, but two years after moving into Bunratty Castle, they found themselves in the middle of a war in Ireland. Excerpted and edited from the new book “Thomas Fermor and the Sons of Witney.”

On 17 July 1615, Barnabas “Barnaby” O’Brien married Mary (Fermor) Crichton, the youngest surviving daughter of Sir George Fermor, and the second great granddaughter of Thomas Richards alias Fermor.[1] George Carew in his letter dated 24 January 1616 to Sir Thomas Roe writes “August… Sir Brian Obrien, the Erle of Tomond’s second sonne, is married to the Ladie Sanquer.”[2] As Sir George had died on 01 December 1612 and was buried the next day, the widowed Mary (Curson) Fermor and her eldest son, Sir Hatton Fermor, arranged the marriage settlement.

Despite their home in the grand Carlow Castle, large estate, and beautiful Irish surroundings, 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.”[3] In 1618, Barnaby and Mary were granted a license to operate several taverns in Carlow, as well as making and selling wine.[4] To Barnaby and Mary were born Henry and Penelope.

While intermarriage with English wives offered advantages to Irish nobles by 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. As a Catholic family, the main religion of Ireland would not have been a deterrent, and perhaps the firsthand accounts of life in Tipperary and Cork from Mary’s brother Robert were satisfactory. The marriages of English brides into the families of Irish nobles certainly facilitated family opposition to attempts by the government in the late 1630s to confiscate lands in Counties Kilkenny and Tipperary.[5]

After the 26 July 1639 death of Barnaby’s brother Henry O’Brien, 5th Earl of Thomond, Barnaby became the 6th Earl of Thomond and moved into Bunratty Castle, the Thomond family seat. The castle was “a noble ancient structure” and “the loveliest of any place of any kind [in Ireland]… worthy of a king” located on the banks of the River Shannon near Limerick. The large deer park allegedly held three thousand stags and the gardens were “the likes of which put Italy’s to shame.” The castle and its farm buildings were ordered and furnished, with two story stables holding up to sixty horses. The public rooms were furnished with great splendor. Eleven pairs of tapestries hung in the dining room, which could accommodate forty people seated around eight tables. A large Turkish carpet covered the floor. The master bedroom, dominated by a bed hung with dark orange velvet trimmed with gold and silver loops, and matching stools and cupboard cloths, also had rich Arras carpets and tapestries. The castle courtyard, with its kitchen, laundry and outhouses, was the hub of domestic activity.[6]

Shortly before Christmas 1641, a musket-wielding rebel force commanded by Sir Walter Bagenal and Sir Morgan Kavanagh besieged the town of Carlow. Almost four hundred Protestant English settlers sought refuge in Carlow Castle. After rejecting an offer of fair quarter and safe passage to the sea if they surrendered, they became virtual prisoners within the castle living a nightmare as the besieged began to starve. Edward Briscoe and his wife watched seven of their nine children die “by want of necessaries.” Some women slipping out to forage for food were captured and hanged in full view of their families. A servant girl sent to fetch water was shot. A flood hampered efforts to break the siege until shortly before Easter 1642 when James Butler,[7] Marquess of Ormond and commander of the Crown forces in Ireland, sent a force under the command of Sir Patrick Wemys to relieve Carlow. As Wemys approached, the Rebels burned Carlow and fled. By July 1643, the countryside was so scorched by war that nothing grew, and starvation was rife.[8]

Barnaby did not want to commit to any one side in Ireland and diplomatically played each side – Rebel, Roundheads, and Royalists – against each other to his advantage. Admiral William Penn, the father of the Quaker founder of Pennsylvania of the same name, was assigned to defend Bunratty Castle and its strategic location to the city of Limerick but surrendered and the castle fell to the rebels in July 1646. Thomas Farmer, a lieutenant under Sir John Bolles, now serving under Penn in a frigate protecting the castle, safely removed Barnaby and Mary from the castle to Youghal where Thomas was residing.[9] The O’Briens subsequently fled to England, abandoning Bunratty Castle. The Rebels removed many of the valuable household items, the livestock, and “thoroughbred horses” when they captured the castle.[10]

Philip Farmer is the author and publisher of “Thomas Fermor and the Sons of Witney” a 790-page biographical history of the Fermors from 1420 to 1685. The sequel “Edward Farmar and the Sons of Whitemarsh,” follows the family immigration from Ireland into Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee, and Harlan County, Kentucky.

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[1] Lodge, The Peerage of Ireland (1754), p.262; Lenihan, Limerick; Its History and Antiquities (1884), p.157 incorrectly states he married “Mary, youngest daughter of Sir James [sic] Fermor, Knight, lineal descendant [sic] of the Barons Lempster, Earls of Pomfret…”

[2] Maclean, Letters From George Lord Carew to Sir Thomas Roe 1615-1617 (1860), p.15.

[3] Ohlmeyer, Making Ireland English:  The Irish Aristocracy in the Seventeenth Century (2012), p.185.

[4] Bunbury, “Carlow – The Castle & The County,” TurtleBunbury.com. 2000.

[5] Ohlmeyer, Making Ireland English:  The Irish Aristocracy in the Seventeenth Century (2012), pp.185-186.

[6] Ohlmeyer, Making Ireland English:  The Irish Aristocracy in the Seventeenth Century (2012), p.103. The description of the castle from an August 1639 inventory.

[7] First cousin-twice removed to Elizabeth Butler who was courted by Barnabas O’Brien, James Butler (1610-1688) was the son of Elizabeth Pointz and Thomas Butler (Viscount Thurles), the son of Walter Butler (11th Earl of Ormond), the son of John Butler of Kilcash, the son of James Butler (9th Earl of Ormond) whose son Thomas Butler (10th Earl of Ormond) was father to Elizabeth Butler who married Richard Preston, 1st Earl of Desmond.

[8] Bunbury, “Carlow – The Castle & The County,” TurtleBunbury.com. 2000.

[9] Bunbury, “Carlow – The Castle & The County,” TurtleBunbury.com. 2000.

[10] Ohlmeyer, Making Ireland English:  The Irish Aristocracy in the Seventeenth Century (2012), p.103.

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Barnabas O’Brien & Mary Fermor

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.

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[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.