One Irish Summer

by William Eleroy Curtis

Lady Desmond, the widow of the great earl, who until his treason, was the richest man in Ireland, and was known as “Queen Elizabeth’s wealthiest subject,” was also compelled by her poverty to apply for a pension. Upon the recommendation of Sir Walter Raleigh Queen Elizabeth allowed twenty-two pounds a year to “this lady of princely castles and fair gardens,” whose gowns of cloth of gold are referred to in one of Raleigh’s letters. The royal warrant granting the pension, above the bold autograph of Elizabeth, is now among many other interesting relics in the old house at Youghal. Lady Desmond is buried in the ancient Church of St. Mary’s, which occupies the adjoining ground. She lies in a recess in the south wall with her effigy carved upon her sarcophagus. Her liege lord, the great Earl of Desmond, lies in a similar tomb in a similar recess in the opposite wall, although he lost his head in the Tower of London. Why the husband should rest on one side of the church and the wife on the other has never been explained. She must have been a very remarkable old lady, for, according to the records, she lived more than one hundred and forty years. She was born in 1502, married Thomas Fitzgerald, eighth Earl of Desmond, in 1520. His estates were confiscated in 1585; Raleigh first met her in 1589, and her pension was granted in 1598. Robert Sydney, second Earl of Leicester, refers to her about 1640, when he was ambassador at Paris, as follows: “The old Countess of Desmond was a marryed woman in Edward IV.’s time in England, and lived till toward the end of Queen Elizabeth, so she must needes be neare 140 yeares old. She had a new sett of teeth, not long afore her death, and might have lived much longer had she not mett with a kinde of violent death; for she would needes climbe a nut tree to gather nuts; so, falling down, she hurte her thigh, which brought a fever and that fever brought death. This, my cousin, Walter Fitzwilliam, tolde me.”

The wealth of the Earl of Desmond at the time of his rebellion may be judged from the fact that eight hundred thousand acres of his property were confiscated in County Cork, five hundred and seventy thousand acres in County Limerick, and over a million acres in Tipperary. All of this area, by virtue of a proclamation, reverted to the crown and was divided by Queen Elizabeth among her favorites and among the “undertakers” who agreed to settle the lands exclusively with Englishmen and to drive out the Irish from them entirely. There were other conditions, also. They were to encourage the English and discourage the Irish in every way possible and no natives of Ireland were to be allowed upon their possessions.

The Earl of Desmond is said to have owned thirty castles and fled from one to another, accompanied by his faithful wife, who never left him except occasionally when she went to intercede for him with his enemies. His grandson, William Fielding, was made Earl of Denbigh, in the English peerage, by Charles I., as a reward for his loyalty, and the family have been known since by the latter title. He was mortally wounded in a sharp skirmish at the head of the king’s forces against Cromwell in a battle near Birmingham and died soon after. His son attended Charles I. to the scaffold and received from his sovereign a few moments before his execution a ring in which his majesty’s miniature was set. That ring is now in possession of the family.

The present earl is Rudolph Robert Basil Aloysius Augustine Fielding, who was born in 1859 and married in 1884 to the daughter of Lord Clifford. He was a lord-in-waiting to Queen Victoria for several years, until her death, and is now a lord-in-waiting to his majesty, King Edward. He served as aid-de-camp to the Marquis of Londonderry when the latter was lord lieutenant of Ireland.

Canon Hayman, who was curate of St. Mary’s Church at Youghal for many years and made a thorough investigation of the history of the town and the church and all the remarkable incidents that have occurred here from the beginning of time, tells us that the Countess of Desmond was one hundred and thirty years old when she went to see Queen Elizabeth about her pension, and that she walked all the way from Bristol to London because she was too poor to hire a conveyance. And the young man who showed us about St. Mary’s Church added another interesting item to the already interesting story,—that her daughter, who was ninety years of age, made the trip with her, but became so weak and weary that the countess had to carry her on her back—which seems to be spreading it on a little thick.

In the garden of Myrtle Lodge Sir Walter Raleigh planted, probably in the year 1586, the first potatoes that were brought to Ireland. Potatoes are natives of Peru and their merits were discovered there by the Jesuits, who accompanied Pizarro during the conquest. They sent samples back to Spain, as they did with quinine or cinchona bark, which was named in honor of the Countess of Cinchona, wife of the Spanish viceroy of Peru. They also sent potatoes to the Spanish colonies in the West Indies, where Sir Walter Raleigh obtained the seed that he planted in his garden at Youghal, and the fruit of that seed has fed the population of Ireland for nearly three centuries. The garden is also interesting because the first cherry tree in Europe was grown there. Sir Walter Raleigh brought the seed of the affane cherry from the Azores Islands, whence it is believed to have been transplanted to America. The cherry orchards throughout the United Kingdom can nearly all be traced to this source.

You can run down to Youghal from Cork by rail in an hour, for the distance is only thirty miles and the train passes through a very pretty country. Shortly after leaving the station it dashes by Black Rock Castle, now a lighthouse and a storehouse for extra buoys and cables and lights for the harbormaster, the place from which William Penn embarked for America. His father, an admiral in the navy, lived at Macroom, about thirty miles west of Cork, where the great Quaker was born. On the other side, a little farther down, as we follow the banks of the River Lee, is Tivoli, an amusement resort, which was once the home of Sir Walter Raleigh, and Lady Raleigh lived there while he was off on his final expedition to America.

“Wood Hill” was the home of John Philpott Curran, the great orator and barrister, whose daughter was the sweetheart of Robert Emmet.

Youghal is a summer resort. There is sea bathing and boating and delicious salt air which gives one a lazy feeling and takes away his eagerness for antiquities and history. The only thing in the town to attract strangers is the home of Sir Walter Raleigh and St. Mary’s Protestant Church, which is said to be the oldest house of worship in which service is regularly held in all the world. It remains practically unaltered from the eighth century, and one of the transepts dates from the sixth century. There are tombs dating back to the eighth and ninth and tenth centuries, and a slab of marble upon the altar is said to have been taken from a Druid temple which stood on the same site.

Four holes about five inches in diameter have been made in the walls each side of the chancel about two-thirds of the way to the roof opening into large chambers within the walls. The verger told us that this was an invention to relieve an echo and had been entirely successful. I have never seen it anywhere else, and he insisted that it is unique.