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HISTORY
HOUSE HISTORY
Rathsallagh, County Wicklow: A Potted History of 5000 Years
Turtle Bunbury 2003
Contents
2. Megalithic Rathsallagh
Tuatha de Danaan - Stone Circles -Origins of Baltinglass - Burial Sites
& Dolmens
3. The Dawn of the Celts
Keltoi - The Celtic System in Ireland - The Death of King Cormac -Celtic
culture - Ringforts - Ogham Stones.
4. The Coming of Christianity
St. Patrick's Visit to Moone - The First Monasteries - The Beginnings of
Rathsallagh Farm - St. Kevin of Glendalough - Celtic Christianity.
5. Viking & Norman Invasions
Plunder & Pillage - The Battle of Glen Mama (Dunlavin) - Brian Boru
- The Cistercian Order - Strongbow's Invasion - Glendalough's Decline.
6. Medieval Ireland
War and Plague - Edward the Bruce's Invasion - The End of Glendalough -The
Rise of the FitzGeralds - The Dissolution of the Monasteries - Silken Thomas
- The Eustace Family.
7. Elizabethan Ireland
Robert Piphoe of Rathsallagh - Massacre of Mullaghmast - The Eustace Rebellion
- Sir Henry Harrington of Grangecon.
8. Rathsallagh, the Ryves & the House of Stuart
Origins of the Ryves Family - Sir William Ryves - The Confederate Wars -
Dr. Brune Ryves & the Restoration - William III & the Penal Laws.
9. The Age of the Ascendancy
The Big House Boom - The New House at Rathsallagh - Jonathan Swift in Dunlavin
- Quakers of Ballitore - Stratford-on-Slaney - The Grand Canal.
10. Rathsallagh & the 1798 Rising
Origins of the Rebellion - Local Atrocities - Captain William Ryves - The
Massacre of Dunlavin Green - The Burning of Rathsallagh - Mick O'Dwyer.
11. William Ryves & the Early 19th Century
Act of Union - Napoleonic Wars - Enlightened Liberalism - Construction Boom
- The Last of the Ryves.
12. The Pennefathers
Staffordshire Origins - The Whiteboys - Chief Justice Edward Pennefather
- John Nelson Darby & the Plymouth Brethren - The Great Famine - O'Connell's
Monster Meeting - Edward Pennefather, QC.
13. The Age of Leisure
Arrival of the Railway - Hunting and Shooting - Punchestown 1868 - Percy
French in Dunlavin - Death of Edward Pennefather, QC - Father Donovan &
Dunlavin - The Gordon Bennett Cup 1903 - Court of Petty Sessions - Parnell
& the Irish Land League - Peirce O'Mahony & the Twelve Apostles
- Captain Charles Pennefather - Fred Pennefather of New Zealand.
14. Twilight of the Irish Colony
The Theft of the Crown Jewels - The Great War - Home Rule - The War of Independence
- Irish Civil War.
15. Rathsallagh after Independence
The Division of Rathsallagh -End of the Line for West Wicklow's Railway.
16. The Last of the Pennefathers
Harold Freese Pennefather - John Joseph White - Patricia Bennet - The Telephone
Line - Herr Funk - "The Fire Station's on Fire!"
17. Modern Times
The O'Flynns of County Cork - Rathsallagh Golf & Country Club
Rathsallagh: A Brief Introduction
The story of Rathsallagh is an epic and sweeping saga that ties the land in with much of the history that has befallen Ireland since man first arrived here 8000 years ago. In the following pages, the story is relayed in chronological fashion so that the reader might learn not just about the history of the farm itself but of the history of the island on which it stands. When the first humans arrived in the foothills of the Wicklow Mountains, the land must have presented a formidable challenge. Glacial valleys overgrown with scrub wood and ancient, inpenetratable forests. For several thousand years, these European settlers seem to have lived a simple nomadic existence, celebrating the creation of life with ritual gatherings on the summits of the surrounding hills and mountains. Gradually the arrival of the Celts shifted the emphasis towards a more settled existence and the first agricultural revolution got underway. In the 6th and 7th centuries after Christ, West Wicklow emerged as one of the most significant outposts for the Christian community in Europe during an otherwise dark and fearful time. Rathsallagh started life as a farming outpost of the monastic city of Glendalough during these same years. Internal warfare and the invasions of Viking, Norman and English armies took their toll on the landscape; Rathsallagh was one of infinite pawns in the subsequent struggle for political supremacy between the indigenous Irish, the Anglo-Norman settlers and the Elizabethan armies of the late 16th century. By the 17th century, Ireland had fallen to the English Crown and Rathsallagh came under the possession of the Ryves family, a bloodline intimately associated with the ruling elite of both England and Ireland through to the accession of Queen Victoria. The Rebellion of 1798 brought much tragedy to the locality; the Ryves mansion was burned down in its aftermath and the Queen Anne stable converted into the present house.
In 1834 the house at lands at Rathsallagh came to a man named Edward Pennefather
who, as Chief Justice of Ireland, went on to become one of the principal
political opponents of Daniel O'Connell, the Emancipator. After Chief Justice
Penneftaher's death, his descendants continued to farm the land while concentrating
on their own careers in the legal, diplomatic and political world. Rathsallagh
survived the Troubles of 1919 - 1922 intact but, in the wake of Irish independence,
much of the estate was divided up and re-granted to its former tenants.
The Pennefather line continued to occupy the main house until the death
of Harold Freese-Pennefather in 1962. A German and a Dutchman subsequently
took on the property. In 1979, it came to rest with the family of Joseph
O'Flynn, a Corkman who was proud to become the first Irishman to own the
land since its seizure by the English Crown in the reign of Henry VIII.
Under the expert management of the O'Flynns, Rathsallagh has since emerged
as one of Ireland's foremost Golf and Country Clubs.
Megalithic Rathsallagh
Tuatha de Danaan - Stone Circles - Origins of Baltinglass - Burial Sites.
It may perhaps seem odd to commence a history of one of Ireland's leading country clubs with the actions of mysterious nomadic Stone Age men five thousand years ago. But to understand the true value of anything, a broad perspective often helps. Rathsallagh lies in a region where megalithic remains have been found in abundance; more than 400 recorded and protected monuments lie between the Wicklow Mountains and the borders of Counties Kildare and Carlow. The oldest may date as far back as 6000 BC. "Megalithic" is a term to describe the manmade stone formations erected in an unrecorded time by an unrecorded people for an unrecorded purpose. These magnificent structures continue to baffle the broadest of archaeological minds to the present day. How can we relate to the ancient cairns and perfect stone circles on mountain tops? Or the gigantic dolmens and carefully chiselled long stones that stand alone and aloof by rivers and sea? What can we do but gape in bewildered awe as we enter passage graves bedecked with symbolic spirals and strange coralesque motifs?
The 12th century Book of Invasions maintains that Ireland was first occupied by a magical people from the north of Europe, known as the Tuatha de Danaan, Children of the Sun Goddess Dana. Some believe these were masters of the occult, educated in the great, mysterious cities of Falias, Gorias, Murias and Finias. Others suggest they arrived from the Middle East in the wake of the Great Flood, an argument most strongly voiced in the Kingdom of Kerry where Noah's granddaughter is said to have died. Fictional or not, that the Tuatha de Danaan honoured the Sun should come as no surprise. The ancients understood nature as we have failed to do. For them, the Sun dictated Seasons and the Seasons dictated Life. Thus the Sun was the source of Life.
The only thing we can say with any certainty is that the architects of the megalithic structures of Ireland had a profound understanding of both mathematics and astronomy. Stone circles - of which there are more than 200 in Ireland - were definitely created with the assistance of astronomical learning. Each one seems to have been designed to coincide with an important lunar or solar event, such as Midwinter or Midsummer's Day, or on one of the Equinoxes between. Many of these stone circles lie upon ley-lines, powerful beams of magnetic energy that are in existence all around us. The Castleruddery Stone Circle near Donard is a particularly fine specimen, featuring a pair of sizeable white quartz portal stones. There is a sense of quiet magic here that compels one to concur with those who can't sleep unless they've got small quartzite pebbles in every corner of their bedroom. At Athgreany, on the Baltinglass - Blessington Road, a signpost points the way to the Piper's Stones. The archaeologist Peter Harbison tells the legend of "a piper (a standing stone) and his dancers pirouetting in a circle … turned into stone for having dared to amuse themselves so frivolously on the Sabbath". Harbison believes this version probably emerged during the puritanical days of the 17th century. An older story runs that this was simply the result of a stone-throwing contest between giant-sized pipers. A smaller stone circle is to be found at nearby Brewel Hill, perhaps the work of a junior league of piper stone-throwers. Another stone circle - known as the Griddle Stones - lies at Boleycarrigeen near Kilranelagh. In fact, there was probably a good deal more stone circles across Ireland than exist presently but many were broken up by farmers seeking to clear land or by Christians eager to extinguish any festering beliefs in pagan Gods.
The townland of Baltinglass, which lies on the River Slaney to the south of Rathsallagh, appears to have been occupied since earliest times. Lewis' Topographical Dictionary of Ireland (1837) states "this place, in the opinion of most antiquaries, derives its name from Baal-Tin-Glass, signifying, according to common acceptation, the pure fire of Baal, and is thence supposed to have been one of the principal seats of Druidical worship". Could this be the same Baal whom the ungrateful Israelites persistently flock to in the Old Testament? Or could this be the legacy of occultist refugees in the time of the Tuatha de Danaan? Recent scholars have denounced the Lewis definition as Victorian Satan-mongering and prefer to attribute the pure fires to the Celtic Feast of Bealtan (now May-Day). Either way, the silent passage grave on the summit of Baltinglass Hill no doubt contains the truth. Golden Fort, near Tuckmill Cross, is the setting for two ancient circular ring-forts or raths. In one, a number of golden coins were found, hence giving rise to the name. In the other, 19th century archaeologists found a kistavaen containing an urn of rude pottery in which were ashes, with a number of human bones scattered around. An ancient cemetery lies in the same demesne.
Such monuments to the ancients continue to rise from the ground to the north and west of Rathsallagh. At the entrance to the Punchestown Racecourse, a 23 foot standing stone, the second highest such stone in the British Isles, fell over in 1931. During its re-erection a Bronze Age burial site was discovered at its base. More of these grooved granite long stones, unique to Kildare, have been found at Craddockstown, Mullaghmast, Harristown and Ballycore. The Celts seem to have adopted (or perhaps rebuilt) these stones as meeting points for sporting occasions such as wrestling matches and chariot racing. In a stone-henge at the Curragh, archaeologists found a pit containing the skeleton of a young woman buried alive. A more cheerful discovery was that of a 6-foot high holed stone at Crehelp, outside Dunlavin, a device associated with the celebration of marriage in megalithic times. At Tournant Moat, south of Dunlavin, a large stone was found bearing similar spiral-shaped markings to those found at Newgrange. It has been suggested that the burial ground at Rathsallagh itself has pagan origins. Prehistoric burial sites have also been identified locally at Crehelp and Friar Hill (Dunlavin), Golden Fort and Lathaleere (near Baltinglass), Carrig and Blackrock on Mount Lugnagun and Killeen Cormac (Colbinstown). At Kilashee. 2 miles south of Naas, archaeologists are presently investigating a remarkably complex passage grave or souterrain hollowed out of sandy clay. Another passage grave is sited at Rathcoran on the summit of Baltinglass Hill, enclosed within the twin banks of a once substantial ring-fort.
One of the more remarkable feats of ancient engineering was the construction
of the dolmens. Two excellent dolmens (or "Druid's Altars") are
to be found in County Carlow, one at Haroldstown near Rathvilly,
the other outside Carlow Town at Brown's Hill. The capstone of the latter
is a phenomenal 100 tons, making it the largest of its kind in Europe. In
the legends, these dolmens served as nocturnal bedrooms for the lovers Diarmuid
and Grainne in their flight from the wrath of Grainne's old and troublesome
husband, the once mighty warrior Finn MacCool. In happier times, Finn and
Grainne are said to have slept on the slopes of Mount Keadeen, by Kiltegan;
the imprints of their substantial bodies may be seen on the mountains' north
west slope to this day.
The Dawn of the Celts
Keltoi - The Celtic System in Ireland - The Death of King Cormac - Celtic culture - Ringforts - Ogham Stones.
In due course, the original inhabitants of Ireland came under the influence of the Celtic world. The chronological distinction between ancient monuments erected by the Celts and those built by their predecessors is still something of a blur but with modern archaeological innovations, such as radio carbon dating, we are everyday getting a clearer insight. The word "Celt" is derived from the Greek word keltoi, denoting a vast ethnic group whose domain eventually extended from Scandinavia to the south of Spain and from the western shores of Ireland to the Baltic Sea. Their driving force was the cult of the Celtic Sun God, Lugh, from which we get the Irish word, lughnasa, meaning August. Celtic civilisation was not the creation of a separate race but a language and a way of life that spread from one people to the next, much as democracy, capitalism and rock n' roll did in the last century. It began some 4000 years ago, somewhere between Bohemia and the east bank of the Rhine. By 500 BC, they dominated the northern half of Europe, Ireland included. Setting forth from their hill-forts, led by nobles on horseback or in chariots, they sacked Rome in 390 BC and looted the temple of the Oracle in Delphi in 278 BC.
As such, there is no set date for the start of the Celtic Age in Ireland. Some believe their influence began to take effect as early as 1500 BC. Others insist there was no significant alteration of native culture until the 2nd century BC by which time Celtic power in Europe had been heavily curbed by the rising Roman Empire. Ireland has traditionally been a land in which newcomers are absorbed with remarkable speed. It seems plausible that these new Celtic-thinking peoples inter-married with what indigenous peoples they encountered and together sired the ensuing generations. But maybe they simply massacred the non-believers and started all over again. Sadly, aside from the cryptic letters of Ogham, the "Celts" left no written records and so we are dependent on their enemies - predominantly later Christians - for any account of their day-to-day lives. These sources are often propaganda driven, spinning terrifying tales of a pagan tribe much given to the jovial pastimes of head-hunting and human sacrifice.
They certainly enjoyed a good fight. Celtic Ireland was divided into a hundred or more petty kingdoms, each ruled by an elected tribal elder. These petty kings then paid tribute (in the form of cows, sheep, pots, pans and no doubt the occasional milkmaid) to their superiors, the Kings of Munster, Leinster, Ulster, Meath and Connuaght. And these kings would, in turn, pay their respects to the High King (or Ard Ri) of Ireland who ruled from his palace on the Hill of Tara. Only it wasn't quite that simple. Many of the petty kings wanted to be Kings. Those who succeeded then invariably set their ambitious eyes on the High Kingship of Tara. Thus, there were plenty of excuses for full-scale warfare all year round.
The petty king of the Rathsallagh district must have been in a fine predicament during the days of the Celt. At various times, the kingdom of Munster reached as far north as the village of Grangecon. But the Kings of Leinster, headquartered at Naas and Kilcullen, also laid claim to Grangecon and its environs. In between these on-going territorial debates, a lot of fighting took place. Indeed, just outside Grangecon, there is a large lump of a hill known as Cormac's Grave or Killeen Cormac. Cormac was a kindly king of Munster who, on hearing of yet another war on his north-eastern front, ventured up from his palace - the Rock of Cashel in County Tipperary - to negotiate a settlement with the Leinster men. Sadly he was slain in mid-talks prompting another battle between the two sides as to who now had the right to bury the dead monarch. The dispute was finally settled when Cormac's corpse was placed on a cart drawn by unguided oxen. They drew it to the aforementioned large lump of a hill outside Grangecon whereupon a hound leapt from a nearby hill (possibly Knockdoo) with such vitality that he landed on a stone and left the imprint of his paw. A pillar-stone with what appears to be the imprint of a paw can still be seen at Killeen Cormac.
The Celts brought much in the way of progress to Ireland. For one, they were skilled horse riders and charioteers making battles much more exciting; the great plain of the Curragh (meaning, literally, race-course) was a site for chariot racing in Celtic times. They were also highly skilled in the decorative arts, developing the intricate patterns and spirals found on ancient passage graves to embellish their pottery and metalwork. The gold-bearing mountains of the Wicklow range would have been of immense importance to the Celtic craftsmen and it is assumed that much of the gold that eventually made its way into Celtic chalices, brooches, manuscripts and other items was panned from the rivers to the east of Rathsallagh.
The Rathsallagh area is well supplied with ringforts, dating to the Celtic age but often occupying sites of much greater antiquity. These forts are generally composed of circular earthen embankments or stone walls, situated on higher ground. They were most likely used as base camps for Celtic tribes at a time when traditional hunter-gatherer lifestyles were fading away and enclosed livestock farming was becoming the norm. The Brussellstown Ringfort on the summit of Spinan's Hill, between Donard and Baltinglass, is a jolly place to go for a ramble on bright afternoons. The ringfort is said to be the largest in Ireland and dates to at least the 2nd century AD. The view is immense. All the mountain ranges of Leinster are to be beheld - the Blackstairs of Wexford, the Comeraghs of Kilkenny, the Slieve Blooms of Laoise and Offaly, the Hill of Allen in County Kildare and - on exceptionally clear days - the great Hill of Tara in County Meath. Similar views can be obtained from the raths at Golden Fort outside Baltinglass, Glen Ding near Blessington and Dun Ailinne outside Kilcullen, once the most important royal palace in South Leinster. Another former Royal Residence stood at Naas. Dunlavin takes its name from the Irish, Dun Luadhain, or Luadhan's Fort but, alas, there is no record of whom Luadhan might have been. At Tournant, a mile north of Rathsallagh, archaeologists have unearthed several carved items featuring Celtic inscriptions as well as a Celtic burial chamber. Rathsallagh evidently derives its name from its own rath or ring-fort; an adaptation of the Irish expression "Raith Salach" for "dirty (miry) fort".
If Ireland is acclaimed as a literary nation then this too may be a legacy of the Celts for they gave us our first alphabet. Just off the N7 heading south from Naas, 1 km before The Priory Inn, there stands a lofty, oblong rock perched atop an earthen mound. This is one of several hundred Ogham Stones in Ireland. Ogham was the ancient alphabet of the Celts, invented in the south of Ireland perhaps 2000 years ago and subsequently used as far away as Bosnia. These rocks were Stone Age Man's equivalent of exercise books. Adults and children would assemble around Ogham Stones to listen as their wizened elders prodded relevant letters and explained their meanings. Meanings, incidentally, which again we today can only guess at. In due course, Irish Christians would adapt this novel method of teaching to their high crosses.
St. Patrick's Visit to Moone - The First Monasteries - The Beginnings of Rathsallagh Farm - St. Kevin of Glendalough - Celtic Christianity.
During the 4th century AD, the crumbling Roman Empire realised it was in dire need of something adhesive to unite their innumerable subjects against the increasingly militant hordes to the north and south. Thus they invented Roman Catholicism; a religion loosely based on the Judaic teachings of the Old Testament together with the four "Christian" Gospels and a number of other suitable letters, psalms and essays. Missionaries were encouraged to go into the dark corners of Europe and spread the word. One of the first to come to Ireland was a Gaulish Bishop, Saint Auxillius, who established a monastery at Killashee (Cill Ausaile) near the royal seat of Naas in the late 4th century. A Roman Bishop named Palladius is credited with founding a monastery at Moone during the same era.
In 432AD a refugee called Patrick, a self-confessed "sinner, the simplest of men", arrived in Ireland, lit a powerful bonfire upon the Hill of Slane and proceeded around the country, preaching the word of God. Saint Patrick is believed to have passed through the Rathsallagh region with great determination in the mid-5th century, founding a monastery at Old Kilcullen and baptizing King Cromthain of Leinster in the River Slaney near Rathvilly. This was no mean feat in a land supposedly populated by war-mongering maniacs who'd skewer their own daughters over the price of a bullock. He was particularly unimpressed by his reception at Moone. The local community was against a visitation to their community by the future Patron Saint and thus laid a series of traps for him, the intricacies of which sadly do not survive. Patrick got wind of this skullduggery and placed a curse on the town decreeing that no man born in Moone would ever become a king or a bishop. Sixteen hundred years later, the curse still stands to the good. However, many did like what Patrick had to say and started doing the same thing, barefoot walkabouts and spreading the word. Gradually the petty kings and provincial Kings and High Kings of Ireland conceded defeat and swore blindly to accept the new faith.
However, old habits have always died hard and, despite their noble intentions, the petty kings and provincial Kings and High Kings of Ireland continued to wage war in a singularly unchristian manner. The saints sighed at the heavens and decided to stop wanderings and settle down. For a long time the inhabitants of Ireland had been building structures made of rock that, while pleasing to the eye and useful for clan gatherings, were nonetheless not much use in regard to sleeping arrangements. In general, one's bedroom was a bundle of straw on the ground of a small dark hole contained within cold mud walls and a damp thatched roof. The saints thought about this conundrum and came up with the notion of reassembling rocks into structures that we today might call houses. These dwellings, variously known as monasteries or abbeys, became very popular from around the 6th century onwards. The Saints were, like Jesus, often kind-hearted people, happy to have visitors come and stay. They built special dormitories for pilgrims and travellers to sleep in and, in time, they built other rooms where they could offer instruction to those seeking Christian education and spiritual enlightenment.
The Saints and their followers left no stone unturned in their bid to spread the word. In his concise and informative history of Rathsallagh, Ian Cantwell suggests that the circular embankment or rath (27 metre diametre) is typical of early Christian farmsteads built between the 5th and 8th century. At some point, the farm at Rathsallagh became a daughter house of the great monastic city of Glendalough in the Wicklow Mountains. It may even precede Glendalough; in the old burial ground outside Rathsallagh, archivists speak of headstones inscribed with Christian crosses dating to the 5th or 6th century but, alas, these have since disappeared. From about 550AD onwards, the war-weary aristocrats of the battle-scarred European continent began sending their sons to be educated in Ireland, henceforth the land of saints and scholars. Glendalough was founded about this time by Saint Kevin and had become one of the great centres of learning in Europe by the 7th century. Saint Kevin of Glendalough was born a few miles west of Blessington at Tipperkevin. His memory is enshrined in a large white statue, erected on a rocky outcrop behind the village of Hollywood. The Irish name for Hollywood, Cillin Chaomhin, means the Little Church of Kevin. Hollywood is very keen on Kevin. The (Protestant) Church of Ireland, the Roman Catholic Church and the National School are all named for him. His bed and cave are said to be located beneath the statue and his Chair lies in the valley below. It is said that any person who can rise from this chair without using their hands will never have back trouble.
Kevin was not alone in his bid to convert the heathens of the Wicklow Mountains and Great Plains of Kildare. Saint Tegan is credited with the founding of the original church at Kiltegan (meaning Church of Tegan) and the now ruined St. Bridget's Abbey at Kilranelagh. This was also the age in which the Bishop of Ferns, Saint Moling, founded the monastery at Timolin (Tigh Moling, St. Moling's Monastery). Saint Diarmuid, a grandson of King Aed Roin of Ulster, established a hermitage at Castledermot that would go on to become a major monastery in the 9th and 10th centuries. Less successful was St Conleth, a protégé of Saint Bridget, who decided to go on a pilgrimage to Rome but was killed by a wolf near Dunlavin in 519 AD.
In the following centuries, scores of monasteries and hermitages were constructed across Kildare and Wicklow. It is again worth noting that these early "Christians" felt inclined to adapt the decorative style of the pagan Celts in order to convince their listeners of the authenticity of their words. The elaborately decorated high crosses of Ireland are a particularly good example of this overlap in culture. On the Moone High Cross, for instance, one finds ancient Celtic motifs and symbols running adjacent to scenes from Genesis and the New Testament. These Celtic art forms may have been purely decorative but it is relevant that certain pagan aspects of Ireland's past survived into the Christian era. The same fate befell the traditional pagan festivals, which were eventually converted into Christian festivals, celebrating a particular event in the New Testament or perhaps commemorating the life of a Saint.
A new religion had by now emerged in Ireland, blending the creative flow
of Celtic thought with the moral code of the Holy Bible. These people
are thus referred to as Celtic Christians. However, it was not just
the pagan festivals and Celtic arts that survived the coming of Christianity.
In fact, contrary to all they claimed, many early Christians still tended
to hold a good deal of respect for the druidic inclinations of their forefathers.
They were not prepared to wholly abandon their inherited fascination with
sun, moon and stars in order to worship a carpenter's son from Galilee.
They did not necessarily believe in the divinity of Christ, the Virgin birth,
eternal damnation or even the Resurrection. The new faith would be severely
tested over the following centuries when first the Vikings and then the
Normans arrived in Ireland in pursuit of gilded riches and territorial conquest.
Viking Attacks &
Norman Mercenaries (795 - 1169AD)
Plunder & Pillage - The Battle of Glen Mama (Dunlavin) - Brian Boru - The Cistercian Order - Strongbow's Invasion - Glendalough's Decline.
There's nothing like an axe-wielding Viking to put the fear of God in one's soul. The Irish Annals are filled with the scrawls of terrified monks bemoaning their inevitable demise at the hands of these beer-swilling Scandinavian anti-Christs. The first Viking assault on Ireland took place at Lambay Island in Dublin Bay in 795AD. Within 50 years they had established settlements along the south coast at Limerick, Cork, Waterford, Wexford and Dublin with further encampments at Arklow and Leixlip. From these bases, the dragon-prowed longships of both Norse and Dane advanced up river in pursuit of the immense wealth of gold and jewellery reputed to hidden in monastic schools and villages. The plundering and pillage was, by all accounts, of a most brutal nature. The abbey at Glendalough, Rathsallagh's mother church, was a popular target, being repeatedly attacked from about 815 through to 902. St. Patrick's monastery in "Old Kilcullen" was another favourite, eventually destroyed by Vikings in the 9th century. The original monastery of Saint Diarmuid in Castledermot was also raided on several occasions. However, just as the Celts fell for the spirit world of the Tuatha de Danaan, so too the Vikings gradually calmed down, converted to Christianity and started concentrating on the lucrative merits of Europe's rapidly expanding trade industry.
An important battle took place at Glean Mama near Dunlavin in 999AD. Sitric, Danish King of Dublin, had captured the King of Leinster, prompting an attack by Brain Boru, King of Munster. Sitric was defeated, and his brother Harold killed. Legend has it that Prince Harold lies buried beneath the pillared stone at Crushlow Churchyard in Crehelp. The Munster men subsequently took Dublin, where they remained seven nights, before burning the fortress and plundering the city of "gold, silver, hangings, and all precious things." Sitric was expelled from the city, but soon found an ally in his former foe, Brian Boru. Together they masterminded the fall of Malachy II and, in 1002, Brian Boru assumed the High Kingship.
By the 11th century, Ireland was struggling to deal with the legacies of Celt, Christian and Viking. In 1014, Brian Boru managed to unite just about everybody in a war that would suit all tastes and still leave him with the High Kingship. Vikings, both Norse and Danish, were selected as principle enemy of state. The troublesome Leinstermen were also declared fair game. Boru's colossal army set forth for the marshlands of Clontarf in north Dublin to do battle. It was a famous victory for Boru, although he himself was slain in the process. The Vikings completely toned down their operations in Ireland, leaving a few ineffective puppet kings to rule their rapidly depleted coastal communities, and fled north to Iceland where there is still a remarkably strong Celtic Irish tradition to this day. That said, the Vikings continued to exert an influence over Leinster right up to the arrival of the Normans in 1169. In that year, Mac Torcall, the last Norse King of Dublin, still claimed to rule over a territory extending as far south-west as Blessington. The Normans had him swiftly beheaded for such impudence.
About thirty years before the Normans arrived in Ireland, a new wave of Roman Catholic thought arrived in the country, spearheaded by the fundamentalist Cistercian Order founded in France in 1112AD. The first Cistercian abbey was established at Mellifont in County Louth by Saint Malachy, Bishop of Armagh, in 1142. Within a decade there were more than three hundred Cistercian abbeys in France and the British Isles, including 35 in Ireland. One of the finest examples of a Cistercian abbey is that of Baltinglass, founded in 1148 by Dermot MacMurrough, King of Leinster. The Cistercian Order received the full support of the Kings of Europe. Indeed, the abbey at Baltinglass numbered among its principal benefactors no less a man than John, Earl of Morton and Lord of Ireland, better known as King John, the great foe of Robin Hood and his Merry Men. Its original name was Vallis Salutis or "The Valley of Salvation" and its estate covered some 50,000 acres of the Slaney Valley, with daughter houses established at Maune (County Cork), Jerpoint (Co. Kilkenny), Abbeyleix (Co. Laoise) and Monasterevin (Co. Kildare).
The Cistercians did much to advance the practice of agriculture in Ireland. Monastic life was no longer a case of simply humming the Te Deum and whipping one's back with birch whenever a dirty thought came to mind. Young novices now mustered together for specific projects, constructing weirs and eel farms on the rivers, planting herbs and fruits, harvesting wheat, clipping unruly yew bushes, negotiating wool exports with Italian merchants and such like. The village of Grangecon commenced as an out-farm (or grange) of Baltinglass Abbey. It seems likely that, although technically governed by the Celtic Christian community in Glendalough, the farm at Rathsallagh would also have fallen under the sphere of Cistercian influence.
Dermot MacMurrough, King of Leinster and founder of Baltinglass Abbey, is the man universally blamed for bringing the rabbit-munching Normans to Ireland. Dermoy had fled Ireland during a brutal tribal war with the O'Rourkes and the O'Connors. When Henry II of England turned down his request for military assistance, he called upon the Cambro-Norman knights of Wales. Their leader, Richard de Clare, Earl of Pembroke, better known as Strongbow, was offered a vast tract of land in Leinster together with the hand in marriage of Dermot's wilful daughter, Aoife. Strongbow accepted the offer and managed to secure a letter from the Pope - an Englishman called Adrian - giving his small army of Norman mercenaries the go-ahead for an 'invasion' of what was deemed to be a pagan island on Christianity's westernmost frontier.
Strongbow's mercenary army arrived in Wexford's Bannow Bay in the summer of 1169, consisting of just 30 knights, 30 cavalry and 600 foot-soldiers, many of them Flemish. Within less than a decade most of the eastern half of Ireland had come under the rule of the English throne. Amongst the knights were three sons of Princess Nesta - Maurice FitzGerald, Robert FitzStpehen and Raymond Le Gros. The petty kings and provincial kings and High Kings didn't stand a chance against the Norman's super-efficient chain-mail clad army of cavalry, lancers and archers. The Normans' gigantic Arab steeds made the Irish ponies and draught horses look like field mice. In no time at all, the clans conceded defeat, swore a vague allegiance to the English king and returned to their various castles and raths (ringforts) for a rethink. On Dermot's sudden death in 1171, Leinster, formerly the stronghold of the O'Tooles and MacMurroughs, fell into the hands of Strongbow and his men. It was a powerful step west for a Norman Empire that now stretched as far east as Palestine and southern Italy.
[Dermot McMurrough is supposedly buried in Ferns, Wexford,
where Henry II spent some 5 weeks as penence for ordering the execution
of Thomas a Beckett. Others claim Dermot is buried in the Abbey in Baltinglass].
In 1172, just three years after the Norman Invasion, Rathsallagh was listed as a grange or farm attached to the Abbey of Glendalough. At this time, Glendalough fell within the demesne of the eminent ecclesiastic, Saint Laurence O'Toole, Archbishop of Dublin. Born in 1128, this outstanding man survived the Norman invasion but died in France in 1180 while trying to broker a peace treaty between King Henry II of England and Roderick O'Connor, the deposed High King of Ireland. O'Toole was canonised in 1226.
Anglo-Norman activity in the Rathsallagh area was immense. Perhaps their
most magnificent monument was the construction in 1180 of Kilkea Castle
outside Castledermot by Hugh de Lacy. Castles and keeps of considerable
strategic importance were also built at Baltinglass (later converted
into a farmhouse but two arched Norman doorways remain today), Rathvilly
(credited to Hugh de Lacy) and Athy (Woodstock Castle, built by Richard
de St. Michael at the end of the 13th century). Smaller defensive structures
were constructed on man-made earthen mounds, or mottes, at Tournant and
Tober (near Dunlavin), Merginstown and Lemonstown (between Dunlavin and
Hollywood), Casteruddery, Rathmoon, Rathvilly and Ardscull (the Hill of
Shouts) near Athy. A castle was built on top of an earthen motte at Hollywood
(adjacent to the present Church of Ireland) and a manor house erected on
the site of the present village. Villa Cumin, a manor house at Burgage
outside Blessington, was established by John Comyn, a man of Scottish descent
who succeeded Laurence O'Toole to the Archbishopric of Dublin; the church
tower still stands. Another manor house was built for the Archbishop in
Ballymore Eustace. With the Norman sponsored churches now on the
rise, the influence of Glendalough was waning fast. Those tilling the soils
of Rathsallagh must have wondered what this new European power had in store
for them.
Medieval Ireland
(1300 - 1561 AD)
War & Plague - Edward the Bruce's Invasion - The End of Glendalough - The Rise of the Fitzgeralds - The Dissolution of the Monasteries - Silken Thomas - The Eustace Family.
Judging by the sombre words of the Irish Annals, the centuries that followed the Norman invasion of Ireland involved an endless torrent of plague, famine and bloody war. Sometimes it's Norman against Celt. On others occasions it's Celt against Celt. But mostly its Norman and Celt against Norman and Celt with a few Scottish mercenaries and Welsh archers thrown in. The Christian settlements were not immune from violence. The Cistercians of Baltinglass were under continual attack from the mountain septs of O'Byrne and O'Toole seeking the spoils of plunder. In 1308, the Archbishop of Dublin's property at Dunlavin was burnt down, along with the nearby Norman settlement of Tober. In 1328 Saint Moling's church at Timolin was destroyed by Edmund de Butler, the Anglo-Norman Chief Justiciar.
It could have all been so very different. In 1315 the Normans were very nearly cleaned out of Ireland when a joint army of Scot, Welsh and Irish under the leadership of Edward the Bruce (brother of Robert of Bannockburn) came storming south through the country intent on uniting the three lands into one Celtic Kingdom. In the first weeks of 1316, they achieved a major victory over the English at the Mote of Ardscull, north of Athy. The Scots subsequently plundered the Franciscan friary in Castledermot and set fire to the fledgling town of Naas. Alas for the Celt, everything went downhill when the Irish chieftains began quarrelling and murdering one another en route giving the Normans just enough breathing space to advance north and kill Edward the Bruce.
As a consequence of the on-going wars between the Wicklow chiefs and the Anglo-Norman invaders, the great monastic city of Glendalough was finally burned and abandoned in 1398. The farm at Rathsallagh had been taken over by laymen in the early 13th century. By 1326, it belonged to Thomas Fitzgerald, 2nd Earl of Kildare. They rented the property for 70 shillings and "two pounds of wax" a year. It is perhaps difficult to eradicate the image of men anxiously fingering their ears whenever rent was due but such wax was most probably manufactured by a small bee population living in the locality.
By the 16th century, the Royal Houses of England had run out of patience with Ireland. For centuries the King's coffers had been pouring money into the country and getting scant little in return. The island was now largely in the hands of the Fitzgeralds, Earls of Kildare, and the Butlers, Earls of Ormonde. The King's Lord Deputy was effectively impotent to perform any of his duties without first obtaining consent from the heads of these two powerful Anglo-Norman dynasties. The Wicklow Mountains were still predominantly in the hands of the O'Toole, O'Byrne and MacMurrough clans but each of these was now finding themselves under pressure from the growing ambitions of the Fitzgeralds.
In 1529 Henry VIII (1509 - 1547) fell in love with Anne Boleyn. In the process of separation from his Spanish wife Catherine of Aragon, he announced that he would no longer be answerable to the Pope and that he himself would henceforth be Supreme of Head of the Church of England. Lo!, the birth of English Protestantism.
There were several motives behind the English administration's subsequent decision to suppress and close the Catholic monasteries of Ireland. There were, of course, allegations of mass corruption within the monastic hierarchy. But the Catholic Church in Ireland was also possessed of enormous wealth in terms of land ownership, a wealth the English were eager to acquire. In the Rathsallagh area alone, there were abbeys at Baltinglass, Moone, Castledermot, Naas, Kilcullen and dozens of smaller monasteries scattered in between. Furthermore, these strategically located properties doubled up as safe-havens for rebels. In short, the dissolution of the monasteries would eradicate a major thorn in England's side and simultaneously increase the State's revenue. The church lands, when seized, could then be resold to key figures in the Irish system, Gaelic (ie: Irish Celt) or Norman, and thus hook these same individuals into a contractual bond with the Royal House of Tudor that could not easily be broken. By 1540, the monasteries of Ireland had been closed down and the church lands re-granted to those deemed worthy of royal patronage by the English administration in Dublin Castle. West Wicklow and the plains of Kildare now came under direct royal control but the dissolution may not have had such a dramatic impact on daily life as later histories suggest. Indeed, the farm at Rathsallagh would most probably have continued to operate as a farm, despite the change of ownership.
The Anglo-Norman family of FitzEustace were hereditary Constables
of the Archbishop's Manor in Ballymore Eustace from 1373 until 1524. Intermarriage
with the indigenous O'Byrne, O'Toole and Kavanagh clans complimented their
rise within the colonial administration. In the 15th century, Sir Edward
Eustace stood as Lord Deputy of Ireland while his son, Sir Roland, served
as both Lord Deputy and Lord Treasurer. In June 1534, Silken Thomas Fitzgerald,
10th Earl of Kildare (and landlord of Rathsallagh), launched a spirited
but doomed rebellion against the English forces in Ireland. He was defeated
at Threecastles near Blessington, and again at Maynooth. Despite a guarantee
of his personal safety if he surrendered, Silken Thomas was hung, drawn
and quartered with his five uncles at Tyburn on 3rd February 1537. In the
wake of his execution, the Crown confiscated Kildare's substantial lands.
Rathsallagh formed part of this forfeited estate and was granted to Sir
John Travers in 1545. The lands around Rathsallagh were granted to Sir Thomas
Eustace, a nephew of Sir Rowland. In 1538, Sir Thomas was created Lord Kilcullen
and Viscount Baltinglass. The latter title was created when the Eustace
family were granted the estates formerly owned by the Cistercians of Baltinglass
Abbey.
Robert Piphoe of Rathsallagh - Massacre of Mullaghmast - The Eustace Rebellion - Sir Henry Harrington of Grangecon.
In the early part of Queen Elizabeth's reign, Rathsallagh passed from Sir John Travers to his kinsman, Robert Piphoe, Crown Seneschal (or military governor) of West Wicklow. At the time, the estate consisted of a tower house and approximately 1000 acres. The tower most probably stood near the present graveyard, but Piphoe himself most probably lived in the Manor House at Hollywood. Piphoe's appointment as Seneschal in 1569 suggests that he would have been heavily involved in quelling the unrest that was soon to explode across the island in reaction to the Desmond and Eustace Rebellions. Piphoe had the power to assemble all local inhabitants into a defensive militia as well as pass judgement and punish "in body and goods, rebels and malefactors". Piphoe retained this post for nearly a decade until succeeded in 1578 by Sir Henry Harrington (1541 - 1612), a nephew of Lord Deputy Sidney, who resided in a tower house just outside Grangecon.
There were rebels a-plenty in Piphoe's day. And not without cause. During the reign of Queen "Bloody Mary" Tudor (1554 - 1559), the modern day counties of Offaly and Laois were planted with English settlers and became known as King's (after Philip II of Spain, Mary's husband) and Queen's County respectively. This territory incorporated the Slieve Bloom Mountains, ancestral home to the O'Moore chieftains, which lie to the west of Rathsallagh. In response to the plantation, the O'Moore's and their allies launched a guerrilla campaign against the planters and the English garrisons stationed to protect them. The war assumed a religious bent in the wake of the papal excommunication of Queen Elizabeth in 1570. On New Year's Day 1576, the Slieve Bloom chieftains were summoned to attend a Peace Conference at the ancient rath of Mullaghmast near Ballitore. Queen Elizabeth gave her personal assurance that the English would treat the chieftains with all due respect. This was not the case. O'Moore and forty of his principal allies were massacred at Mullaghmast by an English force headed up by Sir Francis Cosby of Stradbally Hall.
As such, Elizabethan Ireland was again a time of war but increasingly it was a war between Catholic and Protestant. The Catholics were those who had lived in Ireland prior to the Reformation. Most were of native "Irish" stock but many were descended from both the original Anglo-Norman families and later migrants from medieval England and Wales. The Catholic Counter-Reformation on the European continent was of the utmost importance to these men. The Protestants were primarily English settlers, like Piphoe and Harrington, supported by an ever-expanding military presence in the four provinces and a well-financed administration head-quartered in Dublin. The two major rebellions of this period were the Desmond Wars in Munster (1579 - 1583) and the Nine Years War, which began in Donegal in 1592 and concluded with the decisive defeat of the Irish chieftains at the battle of Kinsale in 1601. But there was a third rebellion during Elizabeth's reign that is of much greater relevance to the Rathsallagh locality - the FitzEustace Revolt.
In July 1580 the devoutly Catholic James Eustace, 3rd Viscount Baltinglass, allied himself with the septs of O'Byrne and Kavanagh and launched a rebellion against the English, in the name of the Pope and Mary, Queen of Scots. Under the command of FitzEustace and Fiach MacHugh O'Byrne, the Catholic rebels sacked the garrison town of Naas and managed a famous victory over the English army at Glenmalure in the Wicklow Mountains on 25th August 1580. Inevitably Baltinglass's rebellion linked up with that of the Desmonds in Munster, a war that had become increasingly serious since the arrival of Spanish reinforcements at Smerwick Harbour in County Kerry. However, the English regained the upper hand, captured the Earl of Desmond, slaughtered the Spanish army and Viscount Baltinglass fled to Rome in February 1581.
The Eustace estates were subsequently confiscated and granted to Sir Henry
Harrington of Grangecon, Seneschal of Wicklow since 1578. He seems to have
alternated between a policy of coercion and bribery. For much of the FitzEustace
Rebellion he was actually incarcerated in Grangecon by the government who
believed his role in the execution, without trial, of Tibbert O'Toole
had been a major cause of the rebellion. A brave but foolhardy commander,
he does not seem to have been much of a peacemaker, losing 200 men during
a skirmish with the O'Byrnes near Rathdrum in May 1599.
Rathsallagh, the Ryves
& the House of Stuart
Origins of the Ryves Family - Sir William Ryves - The Confederate Wars - Dr. Brune Ryves & the Restoration - William III & the Penal Laws.
Robert Piphoe died in 1609, eight years into the reign of the Scottish-born King James I. Rathsallagh formed part of his inheritance but, for the next twenty years, actual ownership of the property is unknown. By 1632 it had come into the possession of Sir William Ryves (c 1570 - 1648) whose family were to retain the estate through the bloodiest age Ireland had ever known. The Ryves family had its origins in the English county of Dorset and claimed to be the inspiration behind "A Reeves Tale" in Chaucer's A Canterbury Tale. During the 16th and 17th centuries many of the Ryves bloodline attended Oxford University, after which they went on to play prominent roles in the fields of education, politics and the church. Perhaps the most illustrious member was Sir William's cousin, Dr. George Ryves (1559 - 1613), who was among those men selected by James I to work on the translation of what would become the King James Bible (1605 - 1611).
Sir William Ryves and his brother, an ecclesiastical lawyer of note, came to Ireland in the early 17th century at the behest of their influential cousin Sir John Davis, Speaker of the Irish House of Commons. In 1619, Sir William was appointed Attorney-General of Ireland, an office that put him in intimate contact with the political elite. In 1629, the South Wicklow magnate Lord Fitzwilliam became involved in a long and expensive inheritance dispute with his siblings. The costs forced him to mortgage "his lands in all directions". Sir William Ryves was named as one of his mortgagees. Part of this repayment may have been the granting of the estate and townlands of Rathsallagh. In 1632, Sir William was granted a license to hold a market at Rathsallagh on the Feast of Saint Bartholomew (4th September). This fair was still going strong 300 years later when a visitor described it as "one of the largest fairs in the kingdom … for horses, cattle and sheep".
Fairs and feasts aside, 17th century Ireland was a profoundly unhappy land. With religious divisions ever deepening throughout Europe, it was inevitable that a people so predominantly Catholic would be plunged into further conflict. During James I's reign, the Protestant and Presbyterian planter communities in Ireland consolidated their hold of the Irish Parliament and began to gradually dispossess and disenfranchise the Roman Catholics. Under Charles I, the Earl of Strafford, as Lord Deputy of Ireland, made some attempt to halt this process; an act that ultimately provided his manifold enemies with the necessary pretext to demand his execution.
In 1641 the Irish Catholics rose and the Confederate Wars commenced, pitting a fragile alliance of Irish and Anglo-Norman Catholic (including the Eustace family) against the forces of English Protestant Republicanism. Head-quartered in Kilkenny, the Confederate forces produced many admirable victories, including the conquest of north Kildare, but were ultimately unable to sustain the pressure. Following Cromwell's brutal suppressions of the garrisons at Drogheda and Wexford, a treaty was signed at Cahir Castle in County Tipperary. The collapse of the Confederacy enabled Cromwell to proceed with the confiscation of all property belonging to Catholics accused of complicity in the "rebellion". These lands were duly granted to soldiers who had fought in his victorious wars against the Royalist forces of King Charles I in England (1642 - 1653) and against the Catholics in Ireland. Among those to benefit from the Cromwellian land settlements were Matthew Pennefather (whose descendants would go on to inherit Rathsallagh) and Sir Maurice Eustace, who built the first house at Harristown in 1662.
The activities of Sir William Ryves of Rathsallagh and his family during these troubled times is unknown. He himself would have been too old to fight but it seems likely that his sons and grandsons took sides in the confrontation. Following the death of Sir John Davis in 1638, three years before the outbreak of the Confederate Wars, Sir William succeeded to the vacated post of Justice of the King's Bench, an office he held until his own death in 1648. In 1643, he served in the prominent position of Speaker of the Irish House of Commons. Sir William died in 1648, shortly before the execution of Charles I. His estates (including Rathsallagh) were inherited by his eldest son, Charles Ryves, a barrister, and then by his grandson, Richard Ryves who became Baron of the Exchequer in 1693.
Following Cromwell's death in 1659, the English concluded that a King was better than a dictator. The monarchy was restored in 1660 with the accession of the eccentric but likeable Charles II. James Butler, Duke of Ormonde, an enlightened soul who briefly commanded the Confederate army during the wars of the 1640s, was appointed Lord Deputy of Ireland.
It may be of interest to note the advancement of an English cousin of the Ryves at this time. Dr. Brune Ryves (1594 - 1677) served as Chaplain to both Charles I and Charles II. During Cromwell's Protectorate (1649 - 1660) he made at least one trip to France to carry funds to the latter, then in exile. During this time he almost certainly encountered the Duke of Ormonde who was also in exile in France. After the Restoration of the House of Stuart, he was appointed Chaplain to the King and Dean of Windsor. Upon his death in 1677, he was buried in Windsor Castle. In the 17th century, as today, progress depended less on what you knew and more on whom you knew. Dr. Ryves close ties with the monarchy can only have enhanced the fortunes of his cousins at Rathsallagh.
The relative peace that existed during Charles II's reign came asunder
with the accession of his brother, James II, a fervent Roman Catholic. Britain
was once again plunged into civil war - known as the Glorious Revolution
(1688) - as Protestants mustered around the Dutch Prince William of Orange,
and Catholics rallied to the Jacobite cause of King James. Once again Ireland
bore the brunt of the violence with the major battles - the Boyne (1689)
and Aughrim (1691) - taking place on Irish soil. At one point King William's
mighty army swept across the plains of Kildare from Kilcullen. King James
was defeated and exiled to France. King William III and the Protestants
now held absolute authority throughout the British Isles and, in order to
prevent any further outbreak of revolt, initiated a legislative campaign
- the Penal Codes - that would effectively render the Catholic population
of Ireland second class citizens for over 130 years. Catholics were forbidden
the right to bear a weapon or own a horse. They were not allowed to vote
in elections or buy land. Roman Catholicism itself was outlawed and proposals
to castrate any priests found giving Mass were seriously considered in the
Irish House of Parliament. The age of the Protestant Ascendancy had begun
and high amongst the new elite was Richard Ryves of Rathsallagh, appointed
Baron of the Exchequer in 1693.
Big House - The New House at Rathsallagh - Jonathan Swift in Dunlavin - Quakers of Ballitore - Stratford-on-Slaney - The Grand Canal.
Over the course of the 18th and 19th centuries, Ireland developed as a relatively prosperous economical unit primarily through the industries of textile manufacture and agriculture. New administrative and judicial buildings were built in the main towns, alongside banks, churches, markets, tholsels and gaols. The population continued to climb steadily. By 1845, the eve of the Great Famine, there were some 8 million people living in the country. The vast majority lived on Protestant-owned land outside of the towns. Most were tenant farmers, contractually bound to pay rent to the landowners as well as a tithe to the Established (Protestant) Church. The principal land-owning families in the Rathsallagh area during the 18th century included Saunders, Stratford, Tynte, La Touche, Harrington, Dennis, Pendred, Bunbury, Bonham and Ryves.
Perhaps the most symbolic legacy of this new age was the so-called Big House, the sumptuous mansions and castles built for the Anglo-Irish aristocracy and landed gentry who effectively ran the country from the reign of King William III until independence in 1921. The province of Leinster was a major stronghold for these predominantly Protestant families and many walled estates are to be found around Rathsallagh. Indeed, one of the earlier houses to be built at this point may well have been at Rathsallagh. Richard Ryves's tenure as Baron of the Irish Exchequer under King William III had provided him with sufficient money to retire from the law and settle as a gentleman-farmer. In 1703, with Queen Anne on the British throne, he commissioned the construction of a new stable for his horses in the old farm at Rathsallagh. It is not known when the house he resided in was built but it seems likely that it would date from the same period. The original house was destroyed by fire in 1802, at which point the stables were converted into the present Rathsallagh House. Richard Ryves eldest son and heir, Thomas, stood as High Sheriff for County Wicklow in 1714, the year the German-speaking George I succeeded to the British throne. Wisely he seems to have kept his head out of the political intrigues that followed the Hanoverian succession and his son, William, served as High Sheriff in 1734.
Architects and masons were kept busy throughout West Wicklow and South Kildare during the Georgian Age. In 1702, James Worth Tynte, an influential Dublin-based politician, secured as his bride Hester Bulkeley, sole heiress of John Bulkeley, landlord of the Dunlavin estates. Their scholarly son Robert Tynte built Dunlavin's Market House in 1741. This granite stone building was primarily used as a market place for the sale of potatoes and corn but later acquired a less honourable distinction when used as a prison prior to the massacre of Dunlavin in 1798. In 1716, a year after the accession of King George I, barrister Morley Saunders, a grandson of Cromwell's Governor of Kinsale, purchased an estate outside Baltinglass and commissioned a large three-storey mansion with 365 windows, known today as Saunder's Grove. His brother-in-law, George Pendred, who succeeded Thomas Ryves as High Sheriff of Wicklow, constructed Fortgranite outside Baltinglass in 1730. Castle Martin outside Kilcullen was built for the Blacker family in the same year. Russborough House, near Blessington, was designed in 1741 by the great Richard Cassels, assisted by Francis Bindon, and is considered to have the most perfect Palladian entrance in Ireland. Cassels and Bindon again joined forces in 1743 to create Belan House, home of the Earls of Aldborough, in the village of Moone. The Bonhams established their family seat at Colbinstown, Dunlavin, in 1744. The Yeats built a small Palladian house by the 15th century ruined castle in Moone. Three miles from Moone, Burtown House, home to the Fennell family, dates to the mid 18th century. The Harringtons, descendants of the Elizabethan Seneschal, built a new house at Grangecon. The Powells erected Tober House (now ruined) outside Dunlavin in the early 18th century. In the 1770s the Huguenot banking family of La Touche commissioned Whitmore Davis to design a new house by the old FitzEustace castle at Harristown outside Brannockstown. These were the families with whom the Ryves of Rathsallagh socially interacted; an uncertain and isolated gentry, be-wigged and frocked, seated in grand halls and earnest libraries, reading the works of Swift and Defoe, listening to young ladies play Handel on the piano, arguing about Bonnie Prince Charlie and the growing impudence of the colonists in British North America.
The religious divide continued to widen, albeit at a more peaceful pace than the previous century. The Established Church of Ireland exerted the predominant influence. One of the earliest Protestant churches was St. Mary's in Blessington, built in 1685, complete with clock and bell-tower. A new Protestant church was built in Dunlavin in the early 18th century, presided over by a young Jonathan Swift, author of "Gulliver's Travels", appointed to the prebendary of Dunlavin in 1700.
The Quakers had been in Ireland since the days of Oliver Cromwell. But progress was by no means limited to the landed gentry. In the late 17th century, two industrious members of the community named Barcroft and Strettel purchased a tract of land on the banks of the River Griese at what is now the village of Ballitore. A Yorkshire-born Quaker named Abraham Shackleton (1697 - 1771), great-great-great grandfather of the polar explorer Sir Ernest, founded a school at Ballitore in 1726. In 1740, the school became the educational quarters of 11-year-old Edmund Burke (1729 - 1797), perhaps the greatest philosopher of the late 18th century. A later student of Ballitore was Cardinal Paul Cullen (1803 - 1878), the man who drafted the dogma on papal infallibility.
This was also an age of small-scale industrial revolution in Ireland. Indeed, one of the greatest projects of the era was the construction of a model industrial town at Stratford-on-Slaney during the 1780s. The project was the initiative of Edward Stratford, the eccentric Earl of Aldborough, and resulted in a linen and cotton-printing factory, together with an extensive walled bleaching green, which operated on the banks of the River Slaney. At its peak in the early 19th century, Stratford employed more than 1000 people, producing in excess of 2000 pieces of printed cotton every week. The importation of a labour force from Ulster to work at the factory necessitated the building of a Presbyterian kirk in the village. Only the bleaching green and a ruined dye house remain today but Stratford continues to impress in the annual National Tidy Towns Competition.
At the close of the century, the town of Athy received a significant
boost when the River Barrow was linked to the Grand Canal at Robertstown
in 1791, enabling goods to travel with relative ease along the 42 mile waterway
to Dublin City. Benefiting from this development was the Crookstown Corn
Mill on the banks of the River Griese near Ballitore, built in 1804
of limestone by the local landowner John Bonham of Ballintaggart
House.
Rathsallagh and the 1798
Rising
Origins of the Rebellion - Local Atrocities - Captain William Ryves - The Massacre of Dunlavin Green - Burning of Rathsallagh - Mick O'Dwyer.
For the most part, Georgian Ireland was a peaceful and relatively prosperous land, an age in which buildings, both public and private, rose up across the landscape with renewed confidence. However, with the evolution of political thought, it was inevitable that Ireland would once again be drawn into a European conflict. In this case, the catalyst was the American War of Independence (in which so many first and second generation Irishmen fought) and the French Revolution. Both events were founded on a desire to bring liberty, fraternity and equality to all mankind. Such noble aims were enticing to Irish ears. In 1792 a union was formed between certain Protestants, Presbyterians and Catholics eager to bring an end to the Ascendancy's monopoly on Irelands' economic and political affairs. The revolt of the United Irishmen - better known as the 1798 Rebellion - was ultimately a disaster and a tragedy. The lines of communication between like-minded people were too fragile for any concise strategy to develop. The French fleet arrived several months too late. The British Redcoats (numbering several thousand Irishmen in their ranks) managed to douse the rebellion but only after a bitter and indiscriminate four-month war that left perhaps as many as 30,000 people dead, loyalist, rebel, Catholic, Protestant and Presbyterian; the majority, civilians.
The small towns and villages around Rathsallagh did not escape the violence. Brutal battles and murders took place at Kildare, Ballitore, Narraghmore, Dunlavin, Ballymore Eustace, Stratford and Baltinglass. Thirty cartloads of rebel dead were carried away from the latter skirmish. Mr. Yates of Moone Abbey, one of Lord Aldborough's yeomen, was piked to death at Ballitore early in the conflict. Captain La Touche of Harristown was one of the lucky survivors of an ill-advised cavalry charge on rebel forces at Old Kilcullen, a battle that left more than 150 dead, mainly loyalists. On another drastic occasion, 350 unarmed Catholics were massacred at the ancient Gibbet Rath outside Kildare town. In Ballitore, the Quaker diarist Mary Leadbetter managed to write down her own unhappy experience when a British troop took the village.
"Ah, they came breathing vengeance … cannon accompanied them! To see cannon in Ballitore! I ran upstairs to my children whom I had seen in the room over the dairy. The Currough was now on fire, the crash of breaking windows could be heard and the trumpet sounded. Just then it was said the doctor was shot. I ran out into the room, and beheld him lying on his back, his arms extended and his life flown: then terror and distress seized me … the tumult now ceased, the trumpet sounded again. I suppose a retreat. We awoke as from a terrible dream".
At this time, Rathsallagh was in the possession of Captain William Ryves, grandson of the William Ryves who served as High Sheriff in 1734. A contemporary, the Rev. Christopher Robinson described him as "sensible, cool, loyal, persevering but in examining a man to get information, he sticks too much to the quibbles of a Court of Law and forgets the now necessity of the soldier". Ryves certainly gave little heed to the "quibbles" of law when he ordered the execution of over 30 prisoners at the Green in Dunlavin in June 1798. Being a Magistrate and supporter of Anglo-Irish interests, Captain Ryves had mustered his own cavalry corps to rout insurgents early in the days of the rebellion. His neighbour, Captain Saunders, had likewise formed a corps with which he had rounded up some 36 suspected rebels, subsequently imprisoned in the Market House in Dunlavin. The following is an extract from the memoirs of the Rev. John Shearman, Rector of Dunlavin at this time.
"Next day Captain Ryves of the Rathsallagh yeomen, being on the look-out for insurgents on the hill of Uske, his horse was killed by a ball aimed at its rider. Ryves got home safely; rode to Dunlavin, and then it was determined to shoot the prisoners of Saunder's yeomen, and those of the Narraghmore corps, numbering in all 36 men. Next day, the 26th May, being the market-day of Dunlavin, these unfortunates were marched from the market-house to the Fair Green, on the rising ground above the little town. In a hollow or pit on the north side, near the gate of the Roman Catholic chapel on the Sparrowhouse Road, the victims were ranged, while a platoon of the Ancient Britons (a loyalist brigade) stood on the higher ground on the south side of the Green on the Boherbuoy Road. They fired with murderous effect on the 36 victims. All fell - dead and dying - amid the shrieks and groans of the bystanders among whom were those widows and relatives".
The event is commemorated in the Irish ballad "Dunlavin Green" although, remarkably, it is Saunders and not Ryves who takes the brunt of responsibility:
Bad luck to you, Saunders, may bad luck never you shun!
That the widow's curse may melt you like the snow in the sun
The cries of the orphans whose murmurs you cannot screen
For the murder of their dear fathers on Dunlavin Green
Some of our boys to the hills they are going away
Some of them are shot and some of them going to sea
Micky Dwyer in the mountains to Saunders he owes a spleen
For his loyal brothers who were shot on Dunlavin Green
After the rebellion had ended, Mary Shackleton and a friend went to Rathsallagh in order to retrieve "some of our plundered property" which "Squire Ryves", as a magistrate, was safe-guarding. She wrote:
"The way seemed long, lonely and dreary. The large old mansion of Rathsallagh exhibited a melancholy air. Its neglected appearance, barricaded windows, the absence of the female part of the family and the presence of a military guard made us think our own situation preferable, as we were permitted to enjoy domestic comfort. Some of our things were here and while the squire restored them to us, he smiled, and warned us of our danger of being robbed again. He foretold but too truly…"
The jury is still out as to whether the fire that subsequently destroyed the manor house at Rathsallagh in 1802 was accidental or not. It is perhaps a surprise that the house survived the rebellion at all. Protestant parishes to the north and south suffered badly and put in claims for substantial compensation. Donard Parish was the worst hit in the county, with one claim for every three houses. Captain Ryves died in February 1803 and was succeeded by his son, William, a solicitor, who took over as captain of his fathers' corps. He also converted the Queen Anne stables into a fine country house that we know today as Rathsallagh House.
The rebellion continued in the Wicklow Mountains long after its suppression
elsewhere. At Derrynamuck, on the south side of the Glen of Imaal,
the Dwyer-McAllister Cottage stands testament to this prolonged resistance.
In a showdown reminiscent of the Wild West, Michael Dwyer, leader
of the Wicklow rebels, made a daring getaway from this cottage when surprise
attacked by a brigade of Scottish Redcoats from Humewood, Kiltegan,
in February 1799. His friend Sam McAllister, already wounded, deliberately
drew the enemy musket-fire so that Dwyer could escape out the back. A monument
to McAllister now dominates the main street in Baltinglass. Dwyer was later
captured and exiled to Australia, one of 60,000 Irish felons transported
Down Under between 1785 and 1845. He became a Constable in Sydney but died
of the drink.
William Ryves & the
Early 19th Century
Act of Union - Napoleonic Wars - Enlightened Liberalism - Construction Boom - The Last of the Ryves.
In 1800 the Irish Parliament voted itself out of existence and ceased to exist. Ireland's five million strong population now found themselves in a situation where all decisions on Irish affairs were henceforth to be concluded at Westminster, a situation that remained until independence was granted to the Irish Free State in 1921. Without the tiresome duties of State to trouble them, the Anglo-Irish landlords looked to improve their arrangements in the countryside; many had acquired a considerable fortune as a result of the British Government's policy of "compensation" for the abolition of the Irish House of Parliament.
The Napoleonic Wars inevitably took their toll on Ireland, not least in the number of oak trees felled to provide wood for the rapidly expanding British Navy. There were human casualties too, of course. William Ryves neighbour, Morley Saunders, lost two sons - one at the battle of Vittoria and another in the American War of 1811. In the wake of Waterloo (1815) and Napoleon's fall, a new age of enlightened liberalism emerged in British politics. In the Empire, this resulted in the abolition of slavery in 1836. In Britain there was a radical overhaul of working conditions. In Ireland, largely due to the powerful presence of Daniel O'Connell, the Catholic population - or those who owned land at any rate - were finally given the right to vote. The emancipation of the Catholics inspired a new era of religious architecture in Ireland. The benevolent Anglo-Irish landlady, Lady Hannah Tynte-Caldwell personally granted land in Dunlavin for her tenants to build a Catholic Church in Dunlavin, named for Saint Nicholas of Myra, aka Santa Claus. By 1835 Sunday mass at St. Nicholas' was drawing a congregation of almost 2000. The Catholic Church of St. Kevin in Hollywood was restored and extended in 1830. Nonetheless the situation remained dire and, between 1815 and 1845, more than a million Irishmen emigrated to North America.
But nothing could dampen the Ascendancy's spirits when it came to building Big Houses. The Marquis of Downshire was one of the first off the mark, building a brand new house at Blessington in 1801 to replace an earlier one burnt in the 1798 Rebellion. William Ryves conversion of the Rathsallagh stables took place at the same time. The ancient Fitzgerald stronghold at Kilkea Castle had also been severely damaged during the rebellion and underwent a restoration, a process it had to repeat following a serious fire in 1849. Ballinure, outside Grangecon, was built for the Carroll family in the early 19th century. The Tynte family, resident in Ireland since Elizabethan times, built a new Classical home, Tynte Park, outside Dunlavin in 1820; it remained with the family until 1974. William Heighington oversaw the construction of Donard House outside Dunlavin in 1813. The Dennis family of Fortgranite considerably extended the size of their property between 1810 and 1815, and again in 1870 when a large arboretum was planted. Gowran Grange, by Punchestown, was built for the Baron de Robeck between 1847 and 1852. Daniel Robertson was summoned from retirement to design a new house and gardens for the McClintock Bunbury family at Lisnavagh during the same years. Joseph Welland, later Vice-President of the Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland, designed D'Israeli School in Rathvilly for an uncle of Benjamin Disraeli, the British Prime Minister, who had won a National Lottery and decided to put the money to good use. One of the last houses to be built was the magnificent Gothic mansion of Humewood Castle outside Kiltegan, completed in 1860, the brainchild of an eccentric architect, William White, who spent his life trying to prove that Francis Bacon was William Shakespeare.
Witness to these sweeping changes was the solicitor William Ryves, the last of his bloodline to reside at Rathsallagh. One assumes the family never got on with their neighbours quite so well ever after the massacre on Dunlavin Green. Like many of his class and generation, William Ryves, a bachelor, got into serious debt. Cantwell suggests this may have been "through gambling or some other secret vice …as none of the money he raised by mortgaging the estate was spent on his house or demesne". Ryves adopted a policy whereby land could no longer be sub-let by his tenants to smaller farmers, an act unlikely to have enhanced the popularity of his family. The estate population subsequently dropped from 1000 in 1820 to just over 300 by the time William Ryves died on 6th June 1834. Ryves's debts were covered by a Tipperary based lawyer, Edward Pennefather, who inherited Rathsallagh House and demesne as a repayment.
Staffordshire Origins - The Whiteboys - Chief Justice Edward Pennefather - John Nelson Darby & the Plymouth Brethren - Great Famine - O'Connell's Monster Meeting - Edward Pennefather, QC.
The Pennefathers were an old English family from Staffordshire. The first of the family to come to Ireland was Matthew Pennefather, a Cornet in the New Model Army, who acquired lands in County Tipperary in 1660. His grandson, also Matthew, served as a Lieutenant Colonel in General Sabine's regiment and "gallantly distinguished himself at [the battle of] Outenarde". He served as Auditor of the Irish Revenue and MP for Cashel during the reign of King George I. Lieutenant Colonel Pennefather's nephew, Richard Pennefather, had two sons, Kingsmill and William. The Right Honourable Edward Pennefather (1774 - 1847), a grandson of William, was the man who acquired Rathsallagh in 1834. Edward trained for the law, most probably in the Four Courts in Dublin. He went on to become "one of the most eminent and learned lawyers of his time". His elder brother, Richard Pennefather (1773 - 1859), was one of the Barons of the Exchequer in Ireland.
In 1806 Edward Pennefather married Susan Darby, eldest daughter of John Darby of Markly in Sussex and Leap Castle in County Offaly (then the "King's County"). John Darby's brother Henry commanded HMS Bellerophon (nicknamed the 'Billy Ruffian') under family friend Admiral Lord Nelson at the battle of the Nile some years earlier. The Darbys were to cast an intriguing new angle over the Pennefather family, not least on account of Susan's younger brother, John Nelson Derby (1800 - 1882) who co-founded the Plymouth Brethren in 1832, an evangelical group of travelling preachers who believed strongly in the power of the Holy Spirit. John Nelson Darby was born at Westminster and christened an Anglican with Admiral Nelson standing as one of his godfathers; hence the use of 'Nelson' as a middle name. He was educated at Westminster School and Trinity College Dublin, where he graduated in 1819 as Classical Medallist. He was called to the Irish Chancery Bar but soon felt that being a lawyer was inconsistent with his religious belief. He instead chose ordination as an Anglican clergyman in Ireland and, in 1825, he was ordained deacon of the established Church of Ireland. The following year he became a curate and distinguished himself for his successful ministry among the Roman Catholic peasants of his parish in Calary, near Enniskerry, County Wicklow. He later claimed to have won hundreds of converts to the Church of Ireland. Such conversions ended when William Magee, Archbishop of Dublin, ruled that converts were obliged to swear allegiance to George IV as rightful king of Ireland. In October 1827, he was thrown from a horse and badly injured. He duly convalesced with his sister's family, sometimes in Dublin and sometimes in their home at Temple Carig in Delgany. The accident compelled him to give up his curacy at Calary but he later stated that it was during this time that he recognized that the "kingdom" described in the Book of Isaiah and elsewhere in the Old Testament was entirely different from the Christian church. Darby did not formally declare his separation from the Church of Ireland until 1832, at the Powerscourt Conference, an annual meeting of Bible students organized by his friend, the wealthy widow Lady Powerscourt (Theodosia Wingfield Powerscourt). That conference was also where he first described his discovery of the "secret rapture", a theory which proposes that Christ will snatch away his true believers from this world without warning. He became a regular at Plymouth, which he first visited in 1830, and one of the most prominent members of the Brethren. During the 1840s he went on several missions to the continent, visiting Germany, Switzerland, Holland and Italy. In later life he made similar trips to Canada, the United States, the West Indies, New Zealand and Hawaii, bringing thousands of people into the Brethren's fold. Among Darby's protoges were two men he tutored who would themselves serve as tutor to the Pennefather boys - first Joseph Charles Philpot and later Francis William Newman.
[An outline of Darby's biographical development can be found in two recently published essays: “Influences in the early development of John Nelson Darby” in Crawford Gribben, Timothy C.F. Stunt [eds], Prisoners of Hope? : Aspects of Evangelical Millennialism in Britain and Ireland, 1800-1880 (Carlisle [Paternoster Press] 2004) and “John Nelson Darby: Contexts and Perceptions” in Crawford Gribben, Andrew Holmes, [eds], Protestant Millennialism, Evangelicalism and Irish society, 1790-2000 (Basingstoke; New York [Palgrave Macmillan] 2006).]
In 1829 Edward Pennefather presided over the trial of six men accused of membership in the Whiteboys (Buachailli Bana), a secret oath-bound society founded in Tipperary in 1761. At night they would gather in small groups and set about levelling banks and ditches on Anglo-Irish estates to enable tenant farmers to avail of free grazing. They wore white shirts so they could recognise one another in the dark. In time their list of grievances expanded to include resistance to the payment of tithes to the Protestant church and a demand for fixed and fair rents. It is unlikely that Pennefather had any sympathy for the Whiteboy cause. After he took over Rathsallagh, he continued with William Ryves policy of prohibiting tenants to sub-let. In the 1829 trial, the Whiteboys were defended by Daniel O'Connell, the man who had secured Catholic Emancipation earlier that year. Four of the accused were sentenced