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.
[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.