THE ANTIQUARIAN: James Butler, 3rd Earl of Ormond & Catherine FitzGerald

Of the great Anglo-Irish houses to come to prominence after the invasion of Ireland, two families figure as the most influential in the island’s colourful and dramatic history: The Butlers of Ormond and the Fitzgeralds of Desmond & Kildare.  The following record concerns the two great houses of the Butler Earls of Ormond and the Fitzgerald Earls of Desmond; it provides a new insight into a conflict that history largely records as simply one involving land and power.

The exact cause of the feud is still unknown to historians.  In his theses on the Earls of Desmond, Keith Alan Waters cites possible sources of friction being land disputes in the 1370s that involved Waterford and Desmond holdings in the Ormond liberty of Tipperary (129).  The two families had at one time been on very good terms.  They had been allies in confrontations with the de Burgh and le Poer families and in 1359, Gerald FitzMaurice, the 3^rd Earl of Desmond, married Eleanor Butler, the daughter of James Butler the 2^nd Earl of Ormond.  In that same year, Gerald joined his father-in-law, then Justiciar of Ireland, on a campaign in Leinster against native Irish insurgents (Waters, 110-111).  By the 1390s, however, Gerald’s brother-in-law, the 3^rd Earl of Ormond had succeeded his father and exasperated an already aggravated situation by having an affair with his niece, Catherine, who was the daughter of his sister, Eleanor, by Gerald, the 3^rd Earl of Desmond (Waters, 130).

The Butlers & the Desmond Geraldines 

In the 1920s the historian W.F. Butler discovered an old manuscript book of pedigrees that appended its genealogy of the Butlers with a legend regarding this illicit affair.  The story itself is rife with inaccuracies, yet, when corrected, it not only acknowledges the actual event but through its dramatic embellishments testifies to what must have been its scandalous notoriety.  According to the narrative the affair began this way: 

     While James Butler, 3^rd Earl of Ormond, was convalescing at his Carrick estate from an 
     unnamed illness, he was visited by his English wife the Countess, daughter of Lord Welles; 
     his niece, Catherine; and their ladies in waiting.  At one point in the visit, the Countess and 
     some of her women went for a stroll leaving Catherine and a portion of the ladies with 
     the Earl.  Trying to cheer him up, the ladies began exchanging pleasantries with the Earl and, 
     as the author describes it, “bandying words” (Butler, 10).  Noticing, suddenly, that one of 
     the Countess’ dresses was lying about in the antechamber, Catherine left the room to try it 
     on.  The women, following, began gathering about her so that the Earl finally asked what 
     all the commotion was about.  Stepping out of the group to stand in full view of her Uncle, 
     Catherine herself replied: “‘They are laughing about seeing me in this English dress…And 
     my lord,’” she continued, archly, “‘if it is an English dress that makes English women 
     beautiful to Irish men, then I think I must seem beautiful myself…One thing is certain,’” 
     she looked at him and smiled, “‘I’d make you a better Countess than that English hag you
     have’”(Butler, 10).

The narrative goes on to reveal that word of the affair raced through the country and, of course, greatly troubled her parents, the 3^rd Earl and Countess of Desmond.   After the death of her mother in 1396 and her father in 1398, the narrative suggests that James Butler’s wife remained in Waterford while Catherine was openly spending a lot of time at the Carrick Estate of her Uncle.

As mentioned earlier, the narrative confuses and contradicts its own chronologies and the particular individuals involved, but it does give enough detail to provide for the proper corrections.  In this way, it links the death of Catherine’s brother, John, the 4^th   and new Earl of Desmond, to a planned meeting in which John demanded satisfaction from his Uncle over the issue of his sister.  Both history and the narrative provide the same details of John FitzGerald’s death: that while crossing the river Suir, he was accidentally thrown from his horse and drowned.  The narrative, however, specifies that it was associated with the illicit affair between his Uncle and sister.  It is at this point that the legend embellishes, as W.F. Butler remarks, like something out of the “annals of the Italian Renaissance” (14). The story adds that on the same day that the meeting with her Uncle led to her brother’s death, Catherine sought to improve her position by having a priest poison and kill the Countess of Ormond.  This part of the story, of course, has no historical basis.

It does appear, however, that the two did enter into some sort of contractual relationship and that the affair did produce at least one child: James “Gallda” Butler, who became the ancestor of the Barons of Cahir.  That some sort of legal agreement had been reached is corroborated by the fact that early in the sixteenth century Sir Piers Butler, the head of the house of Cahir, was claiming property “on the strength of some papers from the third Earl to Catherine Fitzgerald” and that an exchange of letters shows his kinsmen, the seventh Earl of Ormond, looking into the matter for him (Butler, 13).

James Butler, 3^rd Earl of Ormonde died on 7 September 1405 and was described as a mighty strong man, “the head of the chivalry of Ireland” (Webb).  After the affair, Catherine Fitzgerald went on to marry a man named John FitzThomas and became the ancestress of the MacThomas’ of Knockmone---the date of her death is unknown.

"So, how does Ireland look to you now?!"

NOTE: For a more detailed history on the FitzGerald House of Desmond and another family legend, see the original children’s book Thomas FitzMaurice & Desmond the Ape available now at Blurb by clicking on the provided link located at the right of the screen.

Butler, W.F.  “An Irish Legend of the Origins of the Barons of Cahir.”  The Journal Of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, Sixth Series, Vol. 15, No. 1

            (Jun. 30, 1925), pp. 6-14. JSTOR.  Web. 23 Jun. 2011.

Waters, Keith Alan (2004).  The Earls of Desmond in the Fourteenth Century, Durham Theses, Durham University.  Available at Durham E-Theses

            Online: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/2818/

Webb, Alfred.  A Compendium of Irish Biography: Comprising Sketches of Distinguished Irishmen, Eminent Persons Connected with Ireland by

            Office or by Their Writings.  Dublin: M.H. Gill & Son, 1878.

VIGNETTE: Cartoon

ASIDE: Crews Missile, Hamlet & Death of a Salesman

The e-mail message that the self-described middling father Nick Crews sent to his offspring has become a cause célèbre.  David Brooks, in his article for the New York Times, states, that in Britain, Crews has become “a hugely popular folk hero”(2).  The reason for this, the author goes on to say, is that many parents are “delighted that someone finally had the gumption to give at least one set of over privileged slackers a well-deserved kick in the pants”(Brooks, 2).

The Crews Missile, as it is now known in Britain, is the modern day father’s version of the Network rant by TV Anchorman Howard Beale: “‘I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!’”  In the email sent to his children, Crews outlines the bitter source of disappointment each of his children has been to both their parents.  Issues outlined are failed marriages, failed careers and a blatant lack of responsibility shown to his own children’s offspring, whom Crews describes as seven beautiful grandchildren. 

The detraction against Crews’ rant, according to the article, is that tirades such as these simply do not work (Brooks, 2).   The author states, “people don’t behave badly because they lack information about their shortcomings.  They behave badly because they’ve fallen into patterns of destructive behaviour from which they’re unable to escape” (Brooks, 2).  The remedy then “is to maximize some alternative good behaviour” (Brooks, 2).  This follows an understanding of human behaviour that William Shakespeare, whom Freud called the first psychologist, examined over four hundred years ago.

Juxtaposing two scenes from the great playwright’s dramatic work Hamlet provides clear insight into the relationship between character flaw and habit.  While observing his drunken Uncle at a party, the young prince Hamlet makes the following observation on his Uncle’s propensity for alcohol: 

                        So oft it chances in particular men

                        That for some vicious mole of nature in them,

                        As in their birth, wherein they are not guilty,

                        (Since nature cannot choose his origin)

                        By the o’ergrowth of some complexion…

                        Their virtues else, be they as pure as grace…

                        Shall in the general censure take corruption

                        From that particular fault.

                                                                        (Act 1.4. 24-36).

The stamp of his Uncle’s weakness for alcohol, according to the playwright, overtakes the other virtues of the man and left unchecked, either through bad habit or lack of reason, corrupts the entire man.  Later, the young prince provides his mother with a remedy to her own natural defect---lust for Hamlet’s Uncle.  He tells his mother to no longer go to his Uncle’s bed even though she desires it:

                        Assume a virtue, if you have it not.

                        Refrain tonight, And that shall lend a kind of easiness

                        To the next abstinence; the next more easy;

                        For use almost can change the stamp of nature… 

                                                                                    (Act 3.4. 161- 169)

                                                                                   

Basically, the act of performing good actions will eventually transfer to the custom of doing good and so become a part of one’s nature through the re-directed power of habit. 

However, the Crews missile is not necessarily intended to be a guide to the errant offspring it is directed at.  The letter can and should also be viewed from the perspective of a man who will no longer accept responsibility for his adult children’s behaviour by being a party to it.  This also has literary precedence. 

In Arthur Miller’s great play Death of a Salesman, Linda Loman confronts her eldest son about his immature behaviour.  She tells him that if his life is to have direction then he, himself, must provide it:  “‘A man is not a bird, to come and go with the springtime’” (Miller, 54).  Chastising her son for roaming the countryside at the age of 34 and only returning to his father’s home when he desires respite, she attempts to impress upon him that the true mark of an adult is in the acceptance of responsibility for his own life.  She tells him that, even though death feels far away to a man in his thirties, the reality is that he has parents who are now in their sixties and so the support they have always provided for him will eventually be unavailable.  In the most definitive part of the exchange she gives her son an ultimatum about his disrespectful conduct toward his father and the future of their relationship:  “‘You’ve got to make up your mind now…Either he’s your father and you pay him that respect, or else you’re not to come here’”(Miller, 55).  Since her 34 year old son would never expect to seek refuge in another man’s home while at the same time treating that man with disrespect, Linda is essentially telling her son that the same expectations should apply to his father in his father’s home.  Essentially, at the age of 34, the home of one’s parents should no longer be considered the rightful home of the child, just as the opposite is true for the adult child’s own home with respect to his parents. 

In this same way, it can be argued, Crews abdicates his connection to adults that he no longer respects irrespective of their blood ties to him.  His folk hero status is ironically indicative of the traditional attitude that elder generations have stereotypically held for younger generations that come after them. Whether the negative estimation of today’s youth is actually true or not is debatable.  If only for a chuckle, however, it is amusing to compare today’s over privileged generation with that group of individuals who came of age during the Second World War, known as The Greatest Generation.  

What, for example, would the D-Day invasion look like if it took place in 2012?

Brooks, David. “How People Change.”  The New York Times, 26

     November 2012. Early Ed.: The Opinion Pages. Online.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/27/opinion/brooks-how-people-change.html?ref=opinion&_r=1&

 “Hamlet.”  William Shakespeare: The Complete Works.  Ed. Alfred  Harbage.

      NewYork: Penguin Books, 1969.

Miller, Arthur. Death of a Salesman. New York: Penguin Books, 1977.

THE ANTIQUARIAN: Sir Bartholomew Burghersh & Cormicy Castle

A legacy of William the Conqueror, who became King of England in 1066 while still Duke of Normandy, the Hundred Years’ War was a conflict waged for control of the throne of France.  The war began in 1337 when Edward III refused to pay homage to Phillip VI of France.  The French king responded by confiscating Edward’s lands in Aquitaine.  As a result, Edward III (who was the son of Isabella, the daughter of Phillip IV of France) declared that he was the rightful heir to the French throne; with this challenge to the legal succession of the Kingdom of France, the first phase of the conflict began and only ended in 1453.

One of the most distinguished soldiers to have participated in the conflict was Sir Bartholomew Burghersh, the younger.  He was the son of Lord Bartholomew Burghersh, the elder, who laid the family’s esteemed foundation as both a man of military and diplomatic genius.  The younger Burghersh’s career rivaled his father’s and began in 1339 when he accompanied Edward III on his expedition to Flanders.  The younger Burghersh participated in such campaigns as Brittany, Crecy, Gascony and the siege of Calais.  His personal letters have provided scholars with one of the few trusted eyewitness accounts of the famed Battle of Poitiers and in 1350 he was chosen “to be one of the first knights companions” in the newly instituted Order of the Garter (Stephen, 335).   

Considered one of the great Barons of his age, an event involving Sir Bartholomew Burghersh at the Seige of Rheims is recorded by Sir John Froissart in his chronicle on the history of England.   After reconnoitering the great Castle of Cormicy and concluding that it could not be taken by assault, Froissart reports that Burghersh ordered the undermining of the castle’s most formidable defensive structure, a large square tower “whose walls were very thick”(Froissart, 128).  Starting at a great distance from the tower, so as to keep the operation secret, the miners worked night and day to advance to a great depth under the tower and so, unnoticed, push upward.  When the miners had secretly replaced the secure footings of the tower with their own wooden props and the report was sent back to Burghersh that the tower could be thrown down at his command, the great knight mounted his horse and advanced to the castle.    The defender of the castle was Sir Henry de Vauix, the black armoured knight of Champagne, and after being summoned by his guards at the request of Burghersh, the French knight came forward and called down from the battlements, asking the English knight what he wanted. “’I want you to surrender,’ replied Burghersh” (Froissart, 128).  Laughing, Sir Henry de Vauix inquired what would possess Burghersh to suppose they would surrender from such an impregnable fortress as Cormicy.  To this the English knight responded, “if you were truly informed what your situation is, you would surrender instantly…” (Froissart, 128).  De Vauix, still skeptical, was then persuaded, on Burghersh’s assurance of safety, to come down and witness the true nature of the great tower’s precarious situation.  When de Vauix saw that the castle’s strongest defensive position was now only held up by wooden props in the control of the English, he thanked Burghersh for his gallant offer of surrender and the entire garrison was taken prisoner.  Without a single loss of life, England gained possession of the great castle of Cormicy.

Sir Bartholomew Burghersh died in 1369 and was buried in the lady chapel of Walsingham Abbey.

"No really...I think, you are going to want to see this!"

Froissart, Jean et al.  Chronicles of England, France, Spain & the Adjoining Countries. Trans. Thomas Johnes.  New York: John B. Alden, 1884.

Stephen, Leslie and Sidney Lee.  Dictionary of National Biography.  Vol. 7.  London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1886.

LITERARY CORNER: "The Planter's Daughter"

When night stirred at sea

And the fire brought a crowd in,

They say that her beauty

Was music in mouth

And few in the candlelight

Thought her too proud,

For the house of the planter

Is known by the trees.

Men that had seen her

Drank deep and were silent,

The women were speaking

Wherever she went---

As a bell that is rung

Or a wonder told shyly,

And O she was the Sunday

In every week.

-         Austin Clarke

"So what do you think the Poet is trying to say?"



Note: For an interesting discussion on the above poem, go to

http://liladubois.wordpress.com/2007/10/16/poetry-analysis-the-planters-daughter/

Clarke, Austin. “The Planter’s Daughter.”  The Celtic Quest: An Anthology from Merlin

            To Van Morrison.  Ed. Jane Lahr.  New York: Welcome Books, 2007.

THE ANTIQUARIAN: The Blarney Stone & Castle

An iconic symbol of Ireland, Blarney Castle has become the most famous of the many strongholds of the MacCarthy family.  In his record of the MacCarthys, Daniel MacCarthy Glas said of this illustrious family: “Their history commences with the first page of authentic Irish records and is as well attested as the history of any royal house in Christendom.”  The Annals of the Four Masters records that ““thirty of the Kings of Ireland and sixty-one of her Saints descended from the MacCarthys, and to them belongs the matchless glory of producing the first Christian King in Ireland…”

There is a tradition that prior to the Anglo-Norman invasion Dermot MacCarthy Mor, King of Desmond, had a timber hunting lodge built on the present site of Blarney Castle; in the twelfth century, this was followed by the building of a stone structure.  However, the first identifiable archeological evidence places the site’s current structure with the powerful cadet branch of the senior MacCarthy Mor line known as the Lords of Muskerry.  Construction of the castle is dated to the mid fifteenth century, with its builder most widely believed to be Cormac ‘Laidir’ mac Taidgh, the MacCarthy lord of Muskerry. 



North side of Blarney Castle with projecting oriel window from the Earl's Chamber (Photo by Mike Schenk)

The legend of the Blarney Stone is intimately linked to both the castle and the family that possessed it.  The actual stone “is a block of limestone a metre long, mounted high up on the wall of the keep, just below the battlements on the south side” (Castleden, 102).  Various legends have been attached to the origins of the stone. Believed by many to be one half of the Stone of Scone, one legend reports that King Robert the Bruce of Scotland gifted Cormac Mor MacCarthy, Prince of Desmond, the stone in recognition of his having sent 5000 infantry to aid the Scottish king at the Battle of Bannockburn.  Another idea is that since the Stone of Scone originated in Ireland, the Blarney Stone may simply be that part of the stone that never left and so acted as a crowning stone for the Eóghanacht Irish kings. 

Harkening back to Celtic Ireland’s ancient past, more magical myths of the Blarney Stone exist.  One explanatory myth takes place in the eighth century and involves a powerful druid who has two daughters, Cleena and Aoival (Samuel et al, 71).  As the story goes, Cleena is “exceptionally eloquent and beautiful and is the ‘Queen of the Fairies in South Munster’”(Sameul et al, 71).  She falls in love with one of the MacCarthy chieftains who does not return her love.  After he is killed in battle, “she finds he has fallen on a stone on the side of the Lee, into which his blood has soaked [and] because she spends many hours there weeping and kissing the stone” her magic gifts are “transferred to it “(Samuel et al, 71).  A continuation of this particular myth involves the builder of Blarney Castle, Cormac ‘Laidir’ mac Taidgh, who is worried about a litigation he is involved in.  Cliodhna, Queen of the Fairies, visits the worried Lord in the night and instructs him to “kiss the stone he will see facing him when he first wakes up and goes out (Samuel et al, 71).  Unbeknownst to him, the stone is the same one that his ancestor had died upon and so it had been brought up from the banks of the Lee.  Cormac ‘Laidir’ does as Cliodhna instructs and wins the court case.  “He then carries the stone to the top of the castle and hides it so that no one else will be able to match him in eloquence” (Samuel et al, 71). 

This connection between the stone and eloquence is enhanced by a historical episode that occurred in the 16^th century.  Wanting all the chiefs of Ireland to occupy their lands under title from her, Elizabeth I became exasperated by the cunning way in which Cormac Teige MacCarthy, the then lord Muskerry, continued to tactfully agree to do so whilst cleverly avoiding any actual legal concession.  After yet another round of negotiation and more brilliant political maneuvering by Lord Muskerry, it is reported that in a frustrated rage the Queen stormed from the room and shouted, “Blarney!  What he says he never means.  It’s the usual Blarney!”(Castleden, 103).

 

"You want me to do what to the stone?!"





Castleden, Rodney.  Castles of Britian & Ireland. London: Quercus, 2012.

MacCarthy Glas, Daniel.  Historical Pedigree of the Sliochd Feidlimidh, The MacCarthys Of Gleanmacroim. England: Exeter, 1849.

Samuel, Mark and Kate Hamlyn.  Blarney Castle: Its History, Development and Purpose. Cork: Cork University Press, 2007.

THE THINKER: Ancestor Syndrome

In the preface to her book The Ancestor Syndrome, the psychotherapist Anne Ancelin Schutzenberger cites an entry from Roman Law to explain the theory and practice of transgenerational psychotherapy:  “The dead pass down to the living”(xii). 

The approach is historically rooted in Sigmund Freud’s study of the unconscious and its manifestations.  On “the archaic heritage of human beings” Freud said, “not only dispositions but also subject matter” such as “memory-traces of the experiences of earlier generations” can be transmitted transgenerationally (Schutzenberger ,5).  It is, then, the work of the transgenerational psychotherapist to go beyond what is transmitted consciously in a family from one generation to another and to bring to light what is transmitted unknowingly (Schutzenberger, 3-4).  By discovering and expressing a repressed family secret, for example, the patient can be freed from a neurosis that has been inherited. 

In an article for The New York Times, Dr. Darold A. Treffert explains the phenomenon of genetic memory with the following analogy:  “In the animal kingdom, we accept without question migration patterns that birds are born with which they never learned.  The monarch butterfly makes a trip from Canada to Mexico to a 23-acre spot, and they take three generations to get there” (Carvajel, 3).  Essentially, the author of the article goes on to say, “genes have memory” and the “lives of our grandparents --- what they breathed, saw and ate --- can directly affect us decades later” (Carvajal, 2). 

According to Transgenerational Theory then, present day behaviours can be linked to ancestors in an individual’s family tree.  By discovering those links, the individual uncovers the source of impelled repetitions that continue down the generational chain.  Through understanding an individual’s ancestral past, the theory argues, the individual acquires ownership of both their experience of that past as well as their own present.

"My ancestors were gentry...All I'm hardwired to do is ride horses and the occasional housemaid!"

Carvajal, Doreen. “In Andulalusia, on the Trail of Inherited Memories.” 

            The New York Times, 17 August 2012. Early Ed.: Science. Online.

Schutzenberger, Anne Ancelin.  The Ancestor Syndrome: Transgenerational  

            Psychotherapy and the Hidden Links in the Family Tree. London:

            Routledge, 1998.