In 1791 the House of Lords restored the ancient rights and estates to the eldest son of the eldest daughter. Walter, the eighteenth earl, in 1810 disposed of the prisage of the wines of Ireland granted to the fourth earl by Edward I., to the crown for £216,000, and the contract was approved by parliament. It was not until the coronation of George IV. that the family was entirely reinstated. James, the nineteenth earl, was then installed a knight of St. Patrick, was advanced to the dignity of a marquis of the United Kingdom, and was made lord lieutenant of Ireland. He had a large family and his sons and daughters married well. His son John, born in 1818, married the daughter of the Marquis of Annesley, and died Sept. 25, 1854, leaving two sons—James Edward William Theobold, the present marquis, and James Arthur Wellington Foley of the Life Guards, who in 1887 married Ellen Stager of Chicago, daughter of the late General Anson Stager, formerly president of the Western Union Telegraph Company. As the present duke has no direct heir, Nellie Stager’s son will inherit the titles and estates of one of the oldest and most famous families of Ireland.
At Clonmel, which claims to be the cleanest town in Ireland, is another fine castle over which an American girl presides—the wife of Lord Doughnamore. She was a Miss Grace of New York, a niece of the late William R. Grace and a daughter of Michael P. Grace, who owns and lives in that famous castle known as “Battle Abbey” in Kent County, England, near the city of Canterbury. Mr. Grace and Lord Doughnamore were partners for many years in what was known as the Peruvian Corporation—a company which assumed all of the foreign indebtedness of that republic and took over all of its railroads as compensation.
XXIV
REMINISCENCES OF SIR WALTER RALEIGH
In the year of Queen Elizabeth’s accession to the throne a terrible rebellion broke out in Ireland, led by the Earl of Desmond, chief of the Geraldines, the most powerful of all the clans, which was put down by Lord Grey of Wilton, who came over from England and laid the Kingdom of Munster in ashes. The great Earl of Desmond who had been master of almost half of Ireland and the owner of numerous castles, was defeated in many battles, his forces were scattered, his stronghold destroyed, and he was proclaimed an outlaw and hunted from one hiding place to another. In order to repopulate the country the vast estates belonging to him and one hundred and forty of his adherents were confiscated, and proclamation was made throughout all England inviting gentlemen to “undertake the colonization of this rich territory at the rate of two or three pence an acre.” None but English settlers were allowed, and tracts of land of four thousand acres and upward were granted to favorites of the throne, to enterprising English noblemen, and to worthless adventurers, very few of whom ever saw the property, but some of them organized colonies and sent them over to Ireland in charge of agents.
The Ancient City of Youghal, County Cork; the Home of Sir Walter Raleigh
Edmund Spenser, the poet, author of that famous poem, “The Faerie Queene,” was private secretary to Lord Grey, and received twelve thousand acres in County Cork, including Kilcolman Castle, the ruins of which, near the town of Buttevant, are visited by tourists still. Sir Walter Raleigh got forty-one thousand acres, also from the Desmond estate, in the counties of Cork and Waterford, and made his home in what is now known as Myrtle Lodge in the ancient town of Youghal. His house still stands very much as it was when he left it, and is owned and occupied by Sir Henry Blake, recently retired from the governorship of the British Colony of Hong-Kong. Lady Blake is a relative of the Duchess of St. Albans, whose husband is descended from the illegitimate son of Charles II. and Nell Gwynne. He is one of the most influential peers in the United Kingdom and kindly looks after his kin. The previous owner of the property, curiously enough, was Sir John Pope Hennessy, the predecessor of Sir Henry Blake as governor of Jamaica, of Ceylon, and of Hong-Kong.
Sir Walter Raleigh called Youghal his home from the time he first came to Ireland, twenty-eight years old, as a captain in the command of Lord Grey, and, according to the records, received a salary of four shillings a day for himself, two shillings a day for his lieutenant, fourteen pence a day each for four non-commissioned officers, and eight pence a day for every common soldier, all of whom were also provided with “good furniture,” that is, suitable armor and trappings, at the expense of the government. They were mostly Devonshire men, like their captain, full of reckless courage and energy, like their captain, and the amount of damage they committed under Sir Walter’s leadership was entirely out of proportion to their numbers and their pay. Sir Walter lived at Myrtle Lodge where he studied the chronicles of the Spanish and Portuguese explorers of South America, and started from there upon his ill-fated expedition to Virginia. He returned to this home whenever he could escape from the presence of his affectionate but fickle queen, and it was there that he wrote most of his poems and his letters and commenced his “History of the World.” After he lost his power and influence and was committed to the Tower as a traitor, his property was confiscated. Lady Raleigh was deprived of everything he left her, including an estate called “Tivoli,” in the neighborhood of Cork, and was actually in want of bread when James I., in response to a touching petition, gave her a pension of £400 per annum and a home for life. She was granted another special favor which she valued very highly. After Sir Walter’s execution his head was sent to her. She had it embalmed and carried it about with her wherever she traveled. At her death the ghastly relic was left to Carew Raleigh, who treasured it as highly as his mother had done, but, fortunately for subsequent generations, stipulated that it should be buried in his coffin with him when he died. Raleigh’s confiscated estates fell into the hands of Sir Richard Boyle, the second Earl of Cork, and were retained by that family after his death.