by Tim Robinson
Of course all biography is potentially interminable, and our brief lives demand brief pieties. Fortunately, without going beyond the first few chambers of the archival labyrinth, we can know something of these Fitzpatricks, thanks to the nineteenth-century Galway historian James Hardiman. Among the generous stuffing of miscellaneous information in the appendices to his 1846 edition of Roderic O’Flaherty’s West or H-Iar Connaught. is this:
In the early part of the last century the family of “Fitzpatrick, of Aran,” was one of the most opulent families of this part of Ireland; but the name is now extinct, or sunk in poverty. It may, however, be curious to trace it a little, in consequence of its having been, with some probability, supposed to be a branch of the ancient and noble stock of Upper Ossory. It appears … that in A.D. 1642, Richard Fitzpatrick was seneschal of Ibrickan, in the County of Clare, and receiver there for the Earl of Thomond; also, that Teige (Thady) Fitz-Patrick resided there at the time. Ibrickan lies next to Aran. In A.D. 1686, John Fitzpatrick, gent., resided at Loughmore … in the south island. His son Richard, in the same year, married Joan French, of Spiddle … Richard died A.D. 1701, leaving four sons, Scander, Denis, Peter, Patrick. John, the father, died A.D. 1709, at the house of his son-in-law, George Morris, in the west suburb of Galway … leaving chattels to the amount of £6000, and £1500 in silver and gold, which he kept in a cellar of his in that town. John had a second son, Edmond, who married Annable Martin, of Dangan, and died about A.D. 1717, leaving a son, Rickard. Annable his relict intermarried with Michael O’Flaherty, the son of our author [i.e. Roderic O’Flaherty]. Rickard represented Galway in the Irish Parliament for several years, and died A.D. 1761, without issue. Edmond Fitzpatrick, his nephew, sheriff of Galway, A.D. 1769 and 1797, left an only son James, who died without issue. Whether any of the name now exist the Editor has not ascertained.
In the reign of Charles I, Sir Stephen Fox granted leases of the islands of Aran to John and Richard Fitzpatrick, at £500 per annum; and afterwards made them abatements in the rent, for losses sustained on account of the frequent landing of the enemy’s privateers on those islands, and committing depredations there. In A.D. 1713, Sir Stephen, in consideration of £8200, conveyed the islands to Patrick French of Monivea and Edmund Fitzpatrick, of Aran, one moiety to the former, and the other to the latter, their heirs and assigns, for ever. Patrick French was trustee for Simon Digby, Lord Bishop of Elphin, whose moiety was granted, by lease for ever, to Edmond Fitzpatrick, at £280 per annum. On 15th February, 1744, Rickard Fitzpatrick, in consideration of £2050, released his moiety of the three islands to Robert French, in trust for Robert Digby of Landenstown, his heirs and assigns, for ever.
Identification of the various places, persons and times mentioned in this skeletal history will add some flesh and much blood to it, even if the resonant title “Seneschal of Ibrickan” may lose some of its spectral glamour. First, the surname Fitzpatrick: this is a pseudo-Norman anglicization of the Irish Mac Giolla Phádraic, son of the devotee of Patrick, and the ancient sept of that name was particularly associated with Ossory, in what is now County Laois. Fitzpatricks were prominent in Galway in the seventeenth century, and Hardiman’s History of Galway lists several of that name among the sheriffs and mayors of the city. Nevertheless the above implies that the Aran Fitzpatricks derive not from Galway but from Clare, where in 1642 it appears that a Richard Fitzpatrick was seneschal of Ibrickan and receiver for the Earl of Thomond. (Thomond, from Tuadh-Mhumhain, north Munster, included County Clare, of which Ibrickan was a barony situated on the coast a little south of Inis Oírr. The Earl of Thomond would have owned most of Ibrickan, and the intermediary between him and his tenants would have been his seneschal or steward and receiver of rents.) And this fact “appears” out of the fog of slaughter, for in 1642 there was civil war in England, and Ireland was in rebellion. The Catholic gentlemen who had taken up arms against the King’s Dublin government in 1641 had claimed to be protecting him and themselves against the ferociously anti-Catholic Parliament he was struggling with in England. By October 1642 Parliament had gone to war with Charles I, and had decided upon the final subjection of Ireland; the “Confederate Catholics” had met in Kilkenny to concert the rebellion, but were themselves divided between those who were ready to treat with the King’s forces in Ireland and those who cared nothing for King or Parliament but only for the Catholic cause. Barnaby, the Sixth Earl of Thomond, was a descendant of the O’Briens who had ruled Munster for centuries before the imposition of the English feudal system from which his title derived its legitimacy. But in the native hierarchy of the O’Briens he was not the mightiest, and in the rip-tides of rebellion he had to handle the ship of his own state very carefully, for, according to a contemporary account,
… the Brians in the county of Clare (not withstandinge the crubbing of the earle of Tomond to the contrary) observing the cause of comotion in the whole Kingdome to be one, and the oathe sworn by the Irish now in armies to be just and lawfull, thought it a blemish in their honors not to be conformable therto in defence of religion, Kinge and Kingdome joining hands together, whither Tomond would or not, took all the forts and castles that belonged to Protestants or puritans in all the countie …
It was Barnaby’s ancestor the Fourth Earl, loyal to his upbringing in Elizabeth’s court, who had brought in English settlers to his estates, creating a lasting fear among his Catholic neighbours of a Protestant plantation, at their expense, on the Ulster model. Some of these settlers were small yeoman farmers, others middlemen leasing large areas of land and subletting in smaller lots, and there were thirty or more small castles or towerhouses owned by such Englishmen in the county. The Sixth Earl had refused them permission to form themselves into a force against the rebels, and had warranted the captains of his own Irish army to disarm those of the English who did not dwell in castles. At the outbreak of fighting and pillaging the English inhabitants of unprotected farms fled to the shelter of the English-owned castles. When these strongholds were picked off one by one, the survivors in many cases fled to the Earl’s great castle of Bunratty, for he was trying to keep on terms with England—no easy task when its King and Parliament were at war—and at the same time with his powerful O’Brien cousins who had sided with the Catholic Confederation.
What might have been the role of the seneschal of Ibrickan—remembering his Old Irish family connections, and his long-established daily dealings with his Lord’s English tenants—in such events? As it happens, the only reason Hardiman (representing History, for our purposes here) notices the existence of Richard the seneschal is that he is named in a deposition given in the following year by a John Ward about the sack of his father’s castle of Tromra in Ibrickan. It was Colonel Edmund O’Flaherty of Connemara (as recounted in Pilgrimage) who led the assault, sailing via Aran from Galway where he had been engaged in the siege of the English fort. Ten years later, the rebellion having been crushed by Cromwell’s army, the fate of Tromra was recalled during O’Flaherty’s trial. The Colonel confessed as follows:
… that deponent and his company went in their boats to the countie of Clare, to a castle called Trennrowe, which was possessed by one Mr. Ward, whom he heard was an honest gentleman, and never heard of him before, and neither doth know of what religion or nation he was of; and came to said castle in the beginning of the night … they made some shotts from the castle at him, and continued suteing all night, with which shotts some of his men were wounded. And saith, they could not find the doore nor window of the said casle that night, but eleven of his men went to the hale which was joyning of the castle, thinking to get in, whereupon they threw stones from the topp of the castle, by which one of his men was wounded and bruised in his arm, and another in his back, and also they let falle a bundle of straw upon said halle by which it was burned, and the next morning they sett on to storm the castle, in which storm one of his men was killed, and three wounded. And saith he continued seige to the said castle, from Sunday night to Wednesday morning, at whi
ch time conditions were made by John Ward for his own life, which said John this examinent employed as a messenger to his father in the castle, desiring him to take quarter several times, but the answer of Peeter Ward was, that he would nott take the quarter of Belleek or Sruell.
Being further examined, he saith, that … the sonne and heire of the said Peeter came oute on tuesdaye, and was slained in the way…. And saith, that Peeter Warde did keep his chamber in the castle, from Tuesday night until Wednesday morning, and that the said Peeter Ward’s wife was slaine by a shott through the window of the said chamber, but who made the shott he knoweth not. And further saith that he ordered his men to keepe the said Peeter Warde awake, with intention to give him quarter, and the said Peeter Warde making a thrust out of the dorre with some weapon, was taken by the arme and drawen foorth, and there slained. And further said that he defended himself in his chamber, for foure and twenty hours after the rest went foorth. And saith, that he and his companie plundered the said house, and divided it, havinge first carried the said plunder to Straw island.
Peter Ward’s badger-like desperation in defence dominates this scene of war—war on a horribly intimate and domestic scale, up and down stairs, in and out of chambers—and it is only through his son John, who made conditions for his own life, and survived to make his deposition of 1643, that we glimpse our quarry:
The said Edmond continued siege to the said castle for three daies and three nights … murthered the said Alson and George … caused the castle to be fired … the said Peter Ward was then traytorously murthered, who together with the said Alson and George was stripped and they three buried in or neere the castle walls, from whence … they were removed and enterred in the parish church. Yeet notwithstanding the Mass-preist caused their corps to be digged up againe and buried without in the churchyard, for noe other cause but that they saide no unsanctified or hereticall corps of protestants (as they tearme them) must remaine within their churches. This deponent likewise saith, that the said Edmond O’Fflahertie was abetted, councilled, and assisted in the said rebellious and traytorous designe, by [among others] Richd. Fizpatrick (seneschall of Ibrackane aforesaid, and then and now receaver to the Earle of Thomond within the said Barony). That he saw and observed the said parties in armes at the seidge of the said castle, and divers times consulting and advising howe to surprise the same …
By the end of the Parliamentarians’ vengeful campaign of 1651–52 most of Clare had been left “totally ruinated and deserted by the inhabitants thereof,” and we do not know how Rickard the seneschal came through, or whether he suffered any penalty for his part (if he was actually involved) in the massacre of his neighbours and clients at Tromro. The next generation of Fitzpatricks was located, not in Clare, but in Aran. The earliest of them to be commemorated on the Cill Éinne monuments are the John Fitzpatrick who Hardiman says died possessed of a cellarful of riches, his wife Sara and son Rickard. One assumes, without proof, that John is the son of Rickard the seneschal, and therefore, cynically, that the latter had done well out of the war.
Aran, of course passed into Protestant hands after the Cromwellians’ victory. By 1686 John and his son Rickard were leasing the islands from a Sir Stephen Fox, former Paymaster of the Forces under Charles II. John was living in “Loughmore,” which is Ceathrú na Locha, the quarter of the lake, the nearest part of Inis Oírr to the Clare coast. Nowadays this would be regarded as an eccentrically reclusive address for a rich man, but at that period seaways were still more passable than land routes, and Inis Oírr, commanding a principal opening of Galway Bay, probably saw much traffic. Infestations of French privateers, though, were grounds for abatement of rent. John died in February and Sara in November of 1709—but the year began in March until the calendar reform of 1754, so it was John, not Sara, who was widowed. Hence no doubt, Sara’s separate little monument, made redundant by Patrick and Margrett’s later and grander retrospective memorializing but for some reason left standing.
In the next generation the family fortunes were assured by intermarriage with three of the fourteen great merchant families known as the Tribes of Galway. Rickard married Joan French of Spiddal (An Spidéal, a village nine miles west of Galway), a sister married George Morris (one of whose descendants, Lord Killanin, takes his title from the Parish of Cill Ainthín, west of Spiddle), and the second son Edmond married Annable, daughter of Richard Martin, the famous “Nimble Dick” who had obtained much of the vast territories confiscated from the O’Flahertys in Connemara and, although a Catholic, had been confirmed in possession of the largest directly owned estate in the Three Kingdoms.
In 1713 Fox sold Aran to Edmond Fitzpatrick and Simon Digby, the Protestant bishop of Elphin, and Bishop Digby leased his moiety to Edmond, who thus became effectively the landlord. Edmond died in about 1717, leaving a son, another Rickard or Richard. Edmond’s widow soon married the historian Roderic O’Flaherty’s son Michael. This must have been a troubled alliance, for her father Nimble Dick Martin had swindled Roderic out of five hundred acres, the only portion of the former O’Flaherty lands remaining to him after the post-Cromwellian settlement, and Michael was pursuing the matter through the courts at the time. In the event, her husband won his case against her father, and in 1736 assigned the estate to his stepson, Rickard Fitzpatrick.
This Rickard (or Richard, again) became sheriff of Galway in 1730, so he was probably the first of the family to become, at least in form, a Protestant. The trade of the city had been savagely curtailed by penal legislation against its Catholic merchants, and by the Wool Acts passed by the English Parliament in 1689 and 1698, prohibiting the exportation of woollen goods from Ireland. While Rickard was sheriff an attempt was made by the Galway council to persuade Parliament to designate the city as a port for the exportation of wool; this failed, but no doubt the council, which included several people sympathetic to the oppressed Catholic interest, turned a blind eye to certain moonlight activities, and in 1737 an informer reported to the authorities as follows:
Richard Fitzpatrick of Aran Esq. has so much a year from the King and he sees all this wool transported and he gives the runners no hindrance, for he has done well by the runners; he gets good bribes from them.
The accusation of corruption did him no harm, it seems, for in 1738 he was elected Mayor and later became one of Galway’s two representatives in the Irish Parliament. In 1744 he sold his moiety of the islands to the Digbys, and died in 1767 without issue.
According to Hardiman, Edmond Fitzpatrick, sheriff of Galway in 1769 and 1797, was the nephew of Rickard, but this conflicts with accounts implying that Rickard was an only son; perhaps this Edmond was a son of Rickard’s cousin Patrick (of the monument). Edmond himself had one son, James, who died without issue, and since Hardiman (who was born in 1790 and was the librarian of Queen’s College, Galway) did not know of the existence of any of the family in his own times, it must, as he says, have sunk into obscurity.
But it seems that it was not extinct. There are Fitzpatricks in Aran today—one family in Gort na gCapall and another in Cill Rónáin—and the evidence for a link between the former, at least, and the old “Fitzpatricks of Aran” is tenuous, but somehow convincing. I quote from an unpublished history of Aran written by the Parish Priest, Fr. Thomas Killeen, at the behest of his Archbishop in 1948:
There is an Aran tradition that the Fitzpatricks lived in Aran till 1798 in the house later occupied by Martin O’Malley…. Páidín Ó Confhaola of Inishmaan, now nearly 80, told me that one day he was in Clare with his father a fuireacht caladh [storm-bound]. They met a very old man, who asked if any of the Fitzpatricks were still there. Páidín said there was a family of that name in Gort na gCapall. “Yes,” said the old man, “the family had to fly in the year of the Fleet Franncach, and one of them went to Gort na gCapall.” This meeting must have been in 1880—90 and the old man’s birth 1800—10…. What they did in 1798 is unknown.
One might guess that what they did in that “Year of the French” was to
harbour rebels, for after the French fleet landed at Killala in Mayo and unleashed an unsuccessful Irish rebellion, many of the “United Irishmen” fled into the mountains of Connemara from the yeomanry’s revenge on Mayo, and some even crossed to Aran. It is said that a French officer was hidden by the O’Flahertys of Cill Mhuirbhigh, and if the Fitzpatricks were implicated in something of that sort they may well have had to leave the neighbourhood of the Cill Éinne garrison and bury themselves among the peasantry.
By what narrow paths between the gulfs of oblivion does even the basis of this speculation come down to us! An archbishop has the happy idea of asking his clergy to write up the history of their parishes; most of them never get down to the uncongenial task, but the Aran priest finds his vocation in it. An old islander recalls for him a tale heard in his youth while waiting for the wind to drop, in Fisherstreet, which he would have known as Sráid na nIascairí, near Doolin in County Clare. The tale is one an old Clareman remembers being discussed over his head when he was a child, not long after the Year of the French. And the hearsay that has been handed down in this way could well be mistaken, just as the accusation concerning the seneschal at the sack of Tromra could well be false.
As to the rest of the people named on the monuments, by juggling dates and ages I arrive at this: of Patrick, that he was, most likely, one of the four sons of Richard the son of John; of the three youths who died in one winter, that they were probably the sons of Patrick and Margrett (two of their names occur in Hardiman’s account among those of Patrick’s brothers, and whether this means he had evidence unavailable to me, or merely got as confused as I did in this maggoty-headed antiquarian pursuit of the lost generations, I cannot tell); and finally of Florence, died 1709, nothing.