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From: "STEPHANIE STEPHENSON" <>
Subject: [DWYER-L] Fw: Chapter XIX - The O'Dwyers in Ireland, 1691-1803
Date: Wed, 14 Jun 2000 13:40:03 +0100





>From "The O'Dwyers of Kilnamanagh: The History of An Irish Sept" by Sir Michael O'Dwyer, published London, 1933.

Next will be the Land War in Tipperary, in two parts.

Stephanie.


CHAPTER XIX


THE O'DWYERS IN IRELAND, AFTER

A.D. 1691 TO EMMET'S REBELLION

(1803)


The triumph of William and Orange and of the Protestant cause at the Boyne, Aughrim and Limerick extinguished the last hopes of the Irish and Anglo-Irish Catholics. More than 20,000 of those had taken up arms for James II followed him into exile.

Nearly all the old Irish had lost their ancestral lands by the various confiscations extending down to 1691; while the cruel penal laws prevented them from acquiring land in their own country for a century, debarred them from a career in the State service or the professions, proscribed their religion and reduced them to a state of helotry. The history of Ireland in the eighteenth century is dismal reading; there was hardly a flicker of life in what was left of the old Irish. The attempts of the Old Pretender in 1715 and of the Young Pretender in 1745, which again rallied the Highland clans and the Jacobites of the north of England to the Stuart cause, left the Irish in Ireland cold; they had neither the will nor the power to strike another blow.

Charles Edward, when he embarked at St. Nazaire in July, 1745, on the great adventure, was accompanied by many Irish officers in the French service, notably Colonel O'Sullivan, who commanded the Irish-French contingent at Prestonpans and Falkirk, Sir Thomas Geraldine, Sir Thomas Sheridan, Colonel Lynch and Captain O'Neil, besides two Irish chaplains (O'Donnell's The Irish Abroad), but from Ireland itself he had no support. Lecky's remark that at home they (the Irish) had sunk into torpid and degraded pariahs, hardly puts the case too strongly. Ireland had ceased to be a country where those with the traditions of a vigorous and not inglorious past of many centuries could breathe freely, and it is not surprising to find that down to the French Revolution the best of those sought a life of adventure in the armies of Europe.

One tragic result of the breakdown down of the tribal system and of the expropriation and dispersion of the tribal Chiefs and free tribesmen is that from 1690 down to the end of the eighteenth century the records of most of the old families have disappeared, and the gap thereby caused in the continuity of genealogies is almost impossible to fill. This is certainly the case with the old owners of Kilnamanagh. One of them, a descendant of the Connor O'Dwyer of Bally-Coniske (Ballagh) who had received Letters Patent for his estate from James I, appears after the Restoration to have got back some fraction of his lands, whether as owner or lessee from the Crown (Custodium) is not quite clear. The Duchess of Ormond, writing to her brother-in-law, Captain Matthew, who was looking after Ormond's interests in Tipperary, on May 7, 1672, makes this reference to his case:


"I was as ignorant of the bargains my Lord (the Duke) made with Mr. Dwyer for the lands of Bally-Coniske as I was of that of Nanagh, but I shall be more careful in future."

The published Ormond MSS. throw no further light on the matter. But Vol. II, p. 475, gives a list headed "Council Office, Dublin, of the names of all such persons of the Popish religion within the kingdom of Ireland, who have leave to bear or carry arms in 1705." There are only 121 names in all, of whom the following are in Tipperary:

 These are mentioned in the Patent of 7 James I to Connor O'Dwyer.

"Butler Colonel Thomas Kilcash }

" Colonel James Kilcash }

Dwyer Captain Thomas Ballaconisk } 1 sword.

Kennedy Captain John Polnorman } 1 Gun.

Matthews George, Senr. Thurles } 1 Case of pistols each.

" George, Jnr. Thurles } "

Travers Thomas Thurles }

Purcell Colonel Nicholas Loughmore }

Dated Council Office, Dublin 30 March 1705. By order of His Grace the Lord-Lieutenant and Council."

The Captain Thomas Dwyer in this list is probably the son of "Mr. Dwyer" in the Duchess of Ormond's letter of 1672.

The list was among the records destroyed in the great fire of 1711, for on March 18, 1714, a proclamation was issued recalling the existing licences so that new ones might be issued. The new list contains 134 names of Catholics entitled to carry arms, and those of Tipperary are:

Hacket James Esq. Lisnea.

Matthews George Esq. Snr. Thurles.

Morris Nicholas Loughmore.

Purcel Colonel Nicholas Loughmore.

Ryan John, Esq. Inch.

The names of Butler and Dwyer have disappeared. Till the end of the eighteenth century little is heard or known of the O'Dwyers in Tipperary.

A list of Freeholders of the County for the year 1756 - of which there is a copy in the Office of Arms - shows six of the name. One branch, probably in order to acquire the civil rights then denied to Catholics, appears to have conformed to the Established Church two centuries ago, for we hear of an attorney of the name practicing in the county and owning lands in the Barony of Clanwilliam - adjoining Kilnamanagh. Hiss will, proved in 1794, was destroyed with the other old wills catalogued in Vicar's Prerogative Wills in the Four Courts in 1922; but an abstract in the Office of Arms shows that he left no son but two daughters, one of whom married a Chadwick, a family of English origin long settled in Tipperary.

Probably it is to this Protestant branch that O'Donovan refers in his note to the Four Masters record for 1585 stating that Philip O'Dwyer, the then Chief of Kilnamanagh, had been summoned to Elizabeth's Parliament of that year. The note runs: "There is a Col. O'Dwyer of Ballyquirk Castle in the parish of Lorrha, Barony of Lower Ormond in the Co. of Tipperary, but the Editor does not know his descent."

This refers to General Henry Dwyer who, after serving in the India Mutiny and later as a Civil administrator in the Punjab, where his name still lingers, took a property of about 900 acres in Lorrha on a perpetual lease from the owner, Mr. Worth Newenham, and lived in Ballyquirk Castle till his death in 1869. He left two daughters, who were married in England, and two nephews, John de Burgh and Henry - sons of the Rev. George Dwyer, Rector of Ardrahan, Co. Galway - whom he brought up. By his will he left the property to a cousin, Philip Anthony Dwyer of the Co. Clare and the tenant-right to his nephew, John de Burgh Dwyer. This John de Burgh, who was a man of local influence, died in 1901, leaving his interest in the property to his only daughter, Ella de Burgh Dwyer. When on her way to her relatives in England she was a passenger by the ill-fated S.S. Leinster, which was torpedoed on October 10, 1918. Her body was recovered and is buried at Lorrha. So ended this branch of the family. It has been stated that General Henry Dwyer claimed descent from Philip, the last Chief of Kilnamanagh, but the writer has found no authority for this statement.

The destruction of the wills of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, including those of Derby O'Dwyer, the then Chief, and several prominent O'Dwyers of the period 1610-40 (only the names are given in the Office of Arms indices), followed by the break-up of the Sept in the Cromwellian Confiscation, has made it very difficult to pursue the family history. The difficulty has been aggravated by the fact that for Catholics the registration of births - as shown in baptismal registers - was only haphazard down to 1830, and to make matters worse, many of the old parochial records - such as they were - were destroyed in the Four Courts in 1922, while those kept more or less irregularly by the parish priests have in many cases disappeared. Those of the parish of Lattin, in which there is a strong O'Dwyer colony, including the writer's family, were burned in the fire in the Parish Clerk's house, fifty years ago. We have therefore to fall back on tradition, not a very safe guide, and on the evidence of locality to connect the O'Dwyers and Dwyers of today with their ancestors of Kilnamanagh.

The descendants of those transplanted beyond the Shannon in 1654-6 are still to be found on the land in the neighbourhood of Ennistymon and in the Barony of Tullagh. The family tradition of the Ennistymon group is that "after Cromwell," three O'Dwyer brothers arrived on the south or Kerry side of the Shannon estuary; they had no boat to cross, so killed three of their horses and made a boat of skins. They landed at Carrigaholt, West of Kilkee, where one of the brothers died. The others had to "fight their way" through Clare, and settled, one near Ennistymon and the other in Tullagh, East Clare, where their descendants are now fairly numerous. The names "Donogh and Edmund" are common, as in Kilnamanagh. This tradition may be based on the transplantation of the two families from Kilnamanagh that received grants in Ardskeagh and Tullagh in the transplantation.

See p. 269.

A few families appear to have been transplanted to Galway, but so far their descendants, if any, have not been traced there. Near Cloonduff in Co. Mayo there are twelve families of "Devirs" (lately changed in some cases to De Vere), who may be the descendants of transplanted "Dwyers," for their tombstones show "Conor Dwire died 1815."

and

"Mary O'Hara alias Dwire died 1835."

The descendants of those that were not transplanted and did not go abroad as soldiers, are now mainly to be found on the land in Kilnamanagh, and are even more numerous in Clanwilliam. Lecky (Vol. I, p. 345) gives a vivid description of the

"Ejected proprietors whose names might be traced in the annals of the Four Masters and who might be found in abject poverty hanging round the land which had lately been their own and still receiving a secret homage from their old tenants.

"Those fallen and impoverished Chiefs naturally found themselves at the head of the discontented classes and for many years after the Commonwealth, and again after the Revolution, they and their followers under the names of Tories and Rapparees waged a king of guerilla warfare against their successors."

He instances the fact - based on the Presentments of Grand Juries - that in 1760 a formidable party of agrarian criminals, under a leader known as Captain Dwyer, committed numerous outrages in Tipperary.

Arthur Young, in his travels in Ireland in the later part of the eighteenth century, had this interesting reference to conditions in Munster.

"All the poor people are Roman Catholics, and among them are the descendants of the old families who once possessed the country, of which they still preserve the full memory, insomuch that a gentleman labourer will regularly leave to his son by will his Master's estate!"

The Rebellion of 1798 had little reaction in Tipperary. But Michael O'Dwyer (born in 1771), who, according to O'Hart, belonged to the Kilnamanagh Sept, played an active part in it, and later in Emmet's abortive rising of 1803, as a guerilla leader in the Wicklow Mountains. He is described in the Dictionary of National Biography as a handsome, intelligent man, possessed of some fine traits of character. In the rebellion he joined the band of the famous rebel, Joseph Holt, but later became leader of a band of his own. His exploits against the Yeomanry are still remembered in the romantic valleys of Glanmalure and Imale, and formed the theme of a thrilling volume which the present writer read some sixty years ago, but which is now out of print. For years a price was on his head; but he eluded all attempts at capture and steadily increased his following. The final phase came when he brought a force of 500 men to Rathfarnham, outside Dublin, to join in Emmet's rebellion: but he refused to take part in the attack on Dublin which took shape in the cold-blooded murder of Lord Kilwardine - one of the Judges. The rebellion was called off, for Emmet was not the man to countenance murder. After the failure of his mad enterprise Emmet was for a time concealed in the house of O'Dwyer's niece, Anne Devling, but was later captured, tried and hanged. O'Dwyer withdrew with his band to the Wicklow Hills, where he held out for five months more. After many hairbreadth escapes, which form the theme of stirring ballads (as in the case of John O'Dwyer of Cromwell's days, and John O'Dwyer of the Glen, after the fall of Limerick in 1691) by Katherine Tynan and T.D. Sullivan, he finally surrendered to Captain Home on December 17, 1803. The Belfast News-Letter of December 23, 1803, gives a graphic description of this "notorious mountain robber." He was, of course, liable to the death penalty, but "was sentenced only to transportation on the grounds of the humanity he had displayed" to his captives. Grattan erroneously stated that he died on the convict ship which was to convey him to New South Wales before the vessel started. He arrived there safely, and on his release some years later was joined by his wife. He finished his adventurous career as Chief of the Police in Sidney (a post which he held for fifteen years) - a curious end for a famous outlaw! He died in 1821, or, according to the Dictionary of National Biography, in 1826, and was buried in the Dominican Monastery there.

End.


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