The Pierse Family Book
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Pierse THE PIERSE FAMILY by John H. Pierse FROM NOTES COMPILED, MADE, BOUND & PUBLISHED BY THE AUTHOR: ELTHAM, LONDON 1950 (Edited and with a Foreword by Richard G. Pierse, March 2006) ii "... Pierse (Fitzmaurice), ancestor to the families of Ballymac-Equim, Crossmcshane and Meenogahane, who changed their name to Pierse about the latter end of Queen Elizabeth's reign, and yet subsist...." 'Peerage of Ireland' by Mervyn Archdall Edited by John Lodge, 1789. iii iv THIS BOOK without permission is respectfully dedicated to Dick and Mary Pierse of Listowel and Meenogahane without whose helpfulness, kindness and generosity it would indeed never have been written v CONTENTS Page Editor's Foreword ix Preface xi Author's Note xv I THE NAME PIERSE 1 II FITZMAURICE PEDIGREES 7 III THE GERALDINES 21 IV KERRY AND THE FITZMAURICES 35 V PIERS FITZ MAURICE 59 VI KERRY IN THE 14TH AND 15TH CENTURIES 67 VII THE DESMOND REBELLION 75 VIII AFTERMATH 99 IX THE CATHOLIC INSURRECTION AND AFTER 117 X THE 1641 REBELLION 134 XI THE CROMWELLIAN SETTLEMENT 146 XII RESULTS OF THE CROMWELLIAN SETTLEMENT 164 XIII TROUBLES OF THE RESTORATION 177 XIV JACOBITES AND WILLIAMITES 183 XV WILD GEESE XVI PENAL DAYS XVII THE LAW SUIT OF DE LACY PIERSE VERSUS O'BRIEN XVIII YEARS OF STRUGGLE XIX MODERN TIMES XX PLACES AND PERSONS (with separate index) XXI SUMMARY XXII MISCELLANEOUS EXTRACTS FROM RECORDS 191 Glossary Bibliography Index Appendix: The English Branch of the Pierse Family of North Kerry 197 vi LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS* Page PIERSE OF CO. KERRY, HERALDIC ACHIEVEMENT Frontispiece I PEDIGREE OF FITZMAURICE, BARONS OF KERRY, c. 1615 9 II PEDIGREE OF FITZMAURICE, BARONS OF KERRY, MIDDLE 17TH C. 11 III SHIELDS-OF-ARMS FROM LODGE'S PEERAGE 15 IV SHIELDS-OF-ARMS OF EARLY LORDS OF KERRY 28 V THE GERALDINES, GENEALOGICAL CHART 33 VI MAP OF IRELAND SHOWING KINGDOMS c. 1168 VII MAP OF PROVINCE OF MUNSTER,, 13th CENTURY VIII MAP OF CO. KERRY SHOWING BARONIES IX MAP OF NORTH KERRY SHOWING LANDS OF LORD OF LIXNAW IN 13TH C. PHOTOGRAPH OF MOLANIFFE CASTLE FROM THE SOUTH EAST 51 PHOTOGRAPH OF MOLANIFFE CASTLE: NORTH WALL FROM N.W. 51 PHOTOGRAPH OF BALLYMAC-EQUIM CASTLE 61 X DOWN SURVEY MAP, c. 1654 - THE BARONY OF CLANMAURICE IN THE COUNTY OF KERRY (WEST PORTION) 166 XI DOWN SURVEY MAP, c. 1654 - THE BARONY OF CLANMAURICE IN THE COUNTY OF KERRY (ENTIRE) 167 XII DOWN SURVEY MAP, c. 1654 - THE BARONY OF IRAGHTICONNOR IN THE COUNTY OF KERRY 168 A NOTE OF THE IRISH SUITORS, c. 1583 (P.R.O.) CERTIFICATE OF ARMS OF JAMES PIERSE ESQ. OF CO. KERRY (Facie) CERTIFICATE OF ARMS OF JAMES PIERSE ESQ. OF CO. KERRY (Dorso) ARMS OF JAMES PIERSE ESQ., OF BALLYNAGARAGH, CO. KERRY PEDIGREE OF GENERAL RICHARD PIERSE (Original) PEDIGREE OF GENERAL RICHARD PIERSE (Restoration) PEDIGREE OF DE LACY OF LIMERICK * Editor's note: This list of illustrations, handwritten with many corrections, includes some that do not exist in the surviving typescript. Three photographs that are included in the typescript have been added to the list. vii viii FOREWORD BY THE EDITOR suppose that I have known for a long time that it would one day fall to me to write a foreword I to this book. Not that I, or anyone else in the family as far as I know, had ever seen the work before my Uncle Jack's death in 2002 (John Herbert Pierse, 1921-2002). However, I certainly knew of the book by reputation, mainly through my parents who had both had a part in its creation (my father as a collaborator - much of the search of Index Registers mentioned in the Preface was in fact done by him - and my mother as a typist of parts of the manuscript). However, it was only after Jack's death, that I finally came to see and read the book for the first time and then had to decide what should become of it. Over the last couple of years, I have received a number of inquiries from people, in Ireland, Australia and elsewhere, all interested in the Pierse family. Prompted by this, and the more general interest in genealogy that Jack's work seems to have anticipated, I decided that the best thing would be to create a version of the book for the web to make it accessible to everyone. The work itself, of course, is incomplete. Of the nineteen main chapters in the list of contents (excluding the last three numbered chapters, which are in the way of appendices) only the first fourteen actually exist in the typescript that I inherited. What of the remaining chapters? In 1950, when Jack (then aged 28) seemed to be preparing the book for publication, the whole thing looked fully mapped out. Did he encounter problems with the later chapters and become disillusioned with it, or was it merely pressure of other work that led him to abandon it? I doubt if we will ever know now. In later years, he was certainly reluctant to talk about it. I have many fond memories of my Uncle Jack. He was the official family photographer and one of my earliest memories is of having my photo taken by him, in my parents' front room, sitting very still and staring blankly into the lens. His photos are still very haunting. Much later, when I turned 21, it seemed that Jack (who was my Godfather) had completely forgotten my birthday. However, on a family trip to his Horsham home, some months later, he surprised me by taking me out to a local shop and buying me a beautiful (and expensive) chess set, with inlaid wooden board and green and white chessmen, resin copies of medieval originals. It is still one of my treasured possessions. This is just one of many examples of his generosity. Other things that I will always remember are his joviality and his enjoyment in telling a story. Sometimes, on the telephone, he could get carried away and go on for hours. While I was an Undergraduate at Oxford, I invited him up once for a few days to visit me in College. He spent some time in the Bodleian Library researching something, but what I don't recall. We went to Formal Hall in College which he enjoyed, but the trip was a fairly uneventful one and I would have thought not especially memorable. However, for some reason, it seemed to have a special significance to him and, in later years, he would frequently recall, in nostalgic tones, "the time when I came to visit you in Oxford". ix In undertaking the job of preparing this typescript and transferring it into a machine-readable document, I have tried to do as little actual editing as possible. Of course, there was never a question of my attempting to complete the work. To steal what Jack so modestly says of himself in the Preface to this work: "I have not the literary ability or the intimate knowledge" to undertake the task. Instead, I have attempted simply to preserve exactly what Jack wrote. In the main, the typescript (double sided on yellowing 10'' by 8'' paper with hand-written corrections) was scanned onto my computer without trouble using a Canon scanner and the OCR software Omnipage. The main difficulty was with footnotes, mostly added to the typescript in pencil or pen; these all had to be typed in by hand. In many cases, footnotes are marked in the text but were never written. I have left these as they appear. In other cases, a footnote appears at the foot of the page but no mark appears in the text. Here, I have had to use my common sense to determine where the mark should go. In the typescript, the footnotes are numbered per page in the first chapters and later per chapter. I have chosen to number them consecutively through the whole document. In a very few cases, I have added an (unnumbered) editorial note to explain a decision I have taken, but I have tried to keep this to a minimum. I have corrected obvious spelling errors. Jack had a, now unfashionable, fondness for exclamation marks and I have preserved all these! Finally, I have included, as an Appendix to the book, a piece (also incomplete) that Jack wrote on "The English Branch of the Pierse family". This survives as a handwritten draft that Jack lent my father, some years before his death. Whether this was ever intended to be a part of the book or not, I can't say. However, it does cover parts of the more modern history, especially concerning the de Lacy court case, that were intended to feature in the book and so it seems appropriate to include it here. In his Preface, writing in 1950, Jack states that "my two brothers and I are the sole male representatives of our generation in Great Britain today". Jack married Betty Chandler in 1961 (a kind and quiet-spoken woman, she became a devout Quaker and died in 1990) and they subsequently adopted two children, Ann (Annie) and Jim, although they had none of their own. Jack's older brother Ted (Edward George Pierse, 1919-1988) had one son, Michael (b. 1957), and his younger brother Reg (my father, Reginald Frederick Pierse, b. 1923) had two sons, Richard (b. 1954) and Simon (b. 1956) and one daughter, Jane (b. 1962). None of our generation however has produced a male heir and so (although I have three lovely nieces, Rosie b. 1994, Anna b.