There is a tradition that Anne Boleyn was born in the castle. Thomas, Earl of Carrick and Ormond, who died in 1515, had two daughters, one of whom married Sir William Boleyn, a London merchant, and she was grandmother to the future Oueen. History is uncertain where Anne Boleyn was born, as several places are mentioned; it is, therefore, not impossible that at Carrick Elizabeth’s mother first saw the light. Henry VIII. created Anne’s father Earl of Ormond and Wiltshire, but the former title afterwards reverted to the Butlers.
In 1571 Perrott visited Carrick Castle during his campaign in Munster, and it was plundered by the seneschal in the Desmond rebellion of 1582.
In the time of Thomas, 10th Earl of Ormond, it became the chief residence of the family. Thomas Dubh, or the Black Earl, was the favourite of Queen Elizabeth, who used to call him her “black husband,” to the annoyance of his rival the Earl of Leicester. He was a great statesman and chivalrous nobleman, and enjoyed the full confidence of his Sovereign during her long reign.
In the latter years of his life he lived almost entirely at Carrick. A glimpse of his loyal love for England is given by Sir John Davys in the following observations of his on a journey in Munster in 1606:—
“And because I was to pass by the Carricke, a house of my Lord of Ormond, where his lordship hath lain ever since his last weakness, I went thither to visit his lordship and to rest there upon Easter Day; but because the feast of St. George fell out in the Easter holidays, I was not suffered in any wise to depart until I had seen him do honour to that day. I found the Earl in his bed, for he was weaker at this time than he had been for many months before; so that upon the day of St. George he was not able to sit up, but had his robes laid upon his bed, as the manner is. From thence I returned to Dublin at the end of Easter week.”
Towards the end of his life, Earl Thomas was quite blind, and a quaint old MS., discovered at Brussels in 1822, gives a graphic account of a prophecy supposed to have been delivered by him at a Christmas family gathering in Carrick Castle shortly before his death, which took place in 1614.
Among those present at the feast were Sir Walter Butler, of Kilcash, brother to the Earl, and also his son and grandson, James. The latter was only four years old, and there being no room at the table, he was let play about, and “being a sprightly boy, entertained himself with a whipping of his gigg” (a kind of top) behind his great-uncle’s chair. Black Thomas asked what the noise was, and being told, he took the child (afterwards the great Duke of Ormond) between his knees and said:—
“My family shall be much oppressed and brought very low; but by this boy it shall be restored again, and in his time be in greater splendour than ever it has been.”
Viscount Tullogh, who was the Earl’s son-in-law and heir, pushed back his chair angrily from the table, and again the blind Earl asked who made the noise. Upon hearing, he said—
“Ah! he is a flower that will soon fade.”