10 September 2020

Genealogical digressions
illustrate the stupidity of
the arguments of racists

Ormond Castle in Carrick-on-Suir, Co Tipperary … an ancestral home of the Ormond Butlers – and of how many other Irish people? (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

During this late summer ‘Road Trip,’ our visit to the Ormond Castle in Carrick-on-Suir, Co Tipperary, last week reminded me of the persistent tradition in the Butler family that the friendship between Thomas Butler (1531-1614), 10th Earl of Ormond, and a young Queen Elizabeth I was more romantic than platonic.

‘Black Tom’ and ‘Good Queen Bess’ were distantly related – they were fifth cousins through the descent of her mother from Thomas Butler, 7th Earl of Ormond.

But this persistent tradition also alleges that Elizabeth had secretly given birth to one of Black Tom’s illegitimate sons, Piers FitzThomas Butler of Duiske Abbey, Co Kilkenny. His eldest son, Sir Edward Butler of Duiske, Co Kilkenny, was given the title of Viscount Galmoye in 1646.

Edmund Butler married his second cousin Anne Butler, whose father was a first cousin of ‘Black Tom.’ Their daughter Elizabeth married Luke Comerford of Callan. Anne was also a sister of Helen Butler who married her second cousin, Walter Butler, 11th Earl of Ormond, and of Eleanor Butler who married Morgan Kavanagh and was the mother-in-law of John Comerford of Ballybur Castle.

In this way, Luke Comerford of Callan had married a daughter of an alleged grandson of Black Tom and Queen Bess.

I digressed in my account of Ormond Castle by pointing out that by the early or mid-17th century, all the major branches of the Comerford family in Co Kilkenny and Co Wexford were intermarried with the Ormond Butlers.

However, as I pointed out, these are the normal rather than exceptional expectations in Irish genealogy, a point than can be made by adapting the projections in a new book by Adam Rutherford that I bought in the Book Centre in Wexford last week before heading on to Carrick-on-Suir.

The former Mall House, a former Comerford family home in Bunclody, Co Wexford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Adam Rutherford’s book, How to argue with a racist, was published earlier this year by Weidenfeld and Nicholson. In normal circumstances, I refuse to argue with racists. To argue with someone is to listen to their point of view with a willingness to concede that they may have valid points to make, and to be open to changing or modifying my own point of view. But I am unwilling to argue with racists. There are no valid supporting arguments to accept, there are no concessions to be made.

In fact, Dr Rutherford’s book is not arguing with racists; it is totally dismissive of racism, and points out the absurdity of all racist arguments.

One way he does this is through his critical examination of genealogy, its purposes and its methods, in Chapter 2, headed ‘Your ancestors are my ancestors’ (pp 67-107).

Adam Rutherford is a science writer and broadcaster with a PhD in genetics. He points out that in the study of genetics, there is an assumed generational time of 24 to 30 years, and he points out too that in every generation back through time the number of ancestors you have doubles.

What this means is that over a 500-year period, I have 1,048,576 ancestors. By 1,000 years ago, I have 1,099,511,627,776 ancestors – that is, over a trillion people, a number that is about 10 times the number of people that ever existed.

He says, ‘This apparent paradox reveals quite how incorrectly we think about our ancestry.’ Our family trees coalesce and collapse in on themselves as we go back in time. I certainly have a trillion positions on my family tree 1,000 years ago. But the further I go back, the more frequently these positions will be occupied by the same individual multiple times.

He points out that family trees coalesce with startling speed. ‘The last common ancestors of all people with longstanding European ancestries lived only 600 years ago – meaning that if we could draw a perfect family tree for all Europeans, at least one branch on each tree would pass through a single person who lived around 1400 CE. This person would appear on all our family trees, as would all of their ancestors.’

I have taken part in some of the programmes in the popular television series Who Do You Think You Are?. Rutherford recalls an episode in which the actor Danny Dyer found he was 22 generations directly descended from King Edward III in the 14th century. But, as points out, ‘the chances of anyone with longstanding British ancestry being similarly descended from Edward III is effectively 100 per cent. It is true for Danny Dyer, and it is true for the majority of British people too.’

The coat-of-arms of the Ormond Butlers above the entrance to Kilkenny Castle (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

Because of the historically smaller population in Ireland, and the even smaller population in south-east Ireland, it is possible to deduce from this argument that the descent of any branch of the Comerford family in Kilkenny, Wexford, Waterford and Tipperary from the Ormond Butlers is a normal rather than exceptional expectation in genealogical research.

Indeed, if Piers Butler was – as persistent rumours claim – a secret love child of Thomas Butler and Queen Elizabeth born almost 500 years ago – when we all have 1,048,576 ancestors – and if he has descendants in the Comerford family, then the chances of anyone with longstanding ancestry in south-east Ireland being similarly descended are effectively 100 per cent.

Rutherford goes back even further to reach what he calls the genetic isopoint. This is the point in history when the entire population is the ancestor of the entire population today. For the people of Europe, the isopoint occurs in the 10th century.

‘In other words, if you were alive in the tenth century in Europe, and you have European descendants alive today, then you are the ancestor of all Europeans alive today.’

The global isopoint comes out at around 3,400 years ago.

Genealogy helps me to find identify in community across time and space. But it also shows that there is no such thing as the concept pushed by the far-right as ‘racial purity.’ If I am descended from the Butlers, the Comerfords, the Comberfords or the Quemerfords, so too are you, in all probability. If you are descended from Edward III, Charlemagne and King David, so too am I.

As he says, it is ‘pretty much impossible for all Europeans’ to have no Jewish ancestors.

In the story of Abraham, the Lord brings him outside and says, ‘Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them.’ Then he says to him, ‘So shall your descendants be’ (Genesis 15: 5). It is true too that we are all descended from Abraham.

In a review in the Guardian earlier this year, Manjit Kumar wrote, ‘Every Nazi had Jewish ancestors. Discovering this fact alone is worth the price of Adam Rutherford’s engaging and enlightening new book.’

Kilkenny Castle … one of the ancestral homes of the Ormond Butlers (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

The Ormond Castle in
Carrick-on-Suir includes
Ireland’s Tudor treasure

Ormond Castle in Carrick-on-Suir, Co Tipperary, is the finest example of an Elizabethan manor house in Ireland (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

Patrick Comerford

As the late summer ‘Road Trip’ continued west from Wexford, across the dramatic new bridge at New Ross, we stopped at Carrick-on-Suir, Co Tipperary, to visit Ormond Castle on the banks of the River Suir on the east side of the town.

Ormond Castle is regarded by many as the finest example of an Elizabethan manor house in Ireland. It was built in 1565 by Thomas Butler, 10th Earl of Ormond, beside an earlier mediaeval riverside castle in honour of his distant cousin Queen Elizabeth I.

The magnificent great hall that stretches almost the whole length of the first floor of the house, is decorated with some of the finest stucco plasterwork in Ireland, with portraits of Queen Elizabeth and her brother Edward VI and many motifs and emblems associated with the Tudor monarchy.

Two tall towers on the north-east and north-west corners of the bawn date from the 14th and 15th centuries (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

The castle grounds include the ruins of a mediaeval bawn or fortified walled enclosure, with two tall 14th or 15th century towers on the north-east and north-west corners, while the main manor house building dates to the Tudor Period.

The mediaeval castle secured a strategic position on the River Suir, with access to Clonmel, the port of Waterford and the city of Kilkenny. At one time, the River Suir flowed right up to the gate of the castle, bring people and goods to and from the castle.

Edmund Butler acquired the town of Carrickmacgriffin (now Carrick-on-Suir) in 1315 after it was taken from the Wall family. His son, James Butler, became the first Earl of Ormond in 1328.

Thomas Butler (1531-1616), 10th Earl of Ormond, known as ‘Black Tom,’ succeeded to his family titles and estates in 1546 as a young teenager. He was a child in the court of Henry VIII, shared a tutor with the future Edward VI, and he was made a Knight of the Order of Bath at Edward’s coronation in 1546.

When Elizabeth I succeeded as queen in 1558, she appointed Thomas Butler as Lord Treasurer of Ireland, and is said to have referred to him as her ‘Black Husband’ because of his dark rugged looks. They were related through her mother Anne Boleyn, a great-granddaughter of the 7th Earl of Ormond. Elizabeth later made Thomas a Privy Councillor, a Knight of the Garter, and cancelled all his debts.

The manor house was the first Tudor manor house of its kind in Ireland (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

By then, ‘Black Tom’ had returned from England at the age of 22 and brought with him a taste for Elizabethan-style architecture. It is said Elizabeth promised to visit her cousin one day, and Thomas Butler added the Tudor manor house to the castle in hope and anticipation of that visit.

It was the first Tudor manor house of its kind in Ireland and it remains the best example of an Elizabethan manor house in Ireland.

The U-shape of the manor house surrounds a small courtyard that abuts the north of the castle’s bawn. The manor has two floors and a gabled attic.

The most notable achievement of recent restorations is the 100 ft long gallery on the first floor, where the ceiling had largely collapsed. This room, once hung with tapestries, has two majestic fireplaces. One chimneypiece bears a large stone over-mantel. Above it is the Ormond coat of arms with a Latin inscription proclaiming it was made in 1565, the seventh year of the reign of Queen Elizabeth. There are stucco representations of Queen Elizabeth flanked by Equity and Justice.

A plaster frieze runs much of the length of the gallery, depicting allegorical figures with heads of Elizabeth and her brother, Edward VI, and their family coats of arms. The ceiling plasterwork includes the Tudor Rose and other Tudor heraldic devices as well as the queen’s personal arms.

The decoration has less-than-subtle references to the queen in the plasterwork and paintings, and the initials ‘TO’ (Thomas Ormond) and ‘ER’ (Elizabeth Regina).

The visual impact can be compared with the long gallery (Photograph: Carrick-on-Suir website)

The visual impact can be compared with the long gallery in the Moat House, Tamworth, decorated in a similar fashion a few decades later to boast of a similarly distant kinship between the Comberford family and their guest the Prince of Wales, later Charles I.

A decorative frieze in the state rooms in Carrick-on-Suir incorporates much original material and comprises alternating panels of the Butler coat of arms, and various cartouche panels. Some carry the motto in old French Plus Pense que é Dére (‘To think more than is said’), a quotation from the French poet, Charles, Duke of Orléans.

There is original plasterwork in the ground-floor parlour too. The remains of a plasterwork frieze feature heraldic beasts, the falcon and the griffin, alternating with a device known as the Ormond or ‘Wake’ knot, sometimes called a Carrick knot.

Mullioned windows on the ground floor of the house (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

The manor house has mullioned windows on both floors to the front and oriel windows in the porch in the centre of the façade.

The U-shape of the manor house surrounds a small courtyard that abuts the north of the castle. The manor has two floors and a gabled attic.

Of course, Elizabeth never visited the castle that Thomas Butler had, apparently, so lovingly created for her. Much of his life was taken up with a fierce feud with Gerald FitzGerald, 15th Earl of Desmond. The two sides fought a pitched battle in 1565 at the Battle of Affane south of Cappoquin, Co Waterford, one of the stopping points on the first stage of this ‘Road Trip.’

Butler’s victory and his handling the political fallout helped to spark the Desmond Rebellions. This struggle in 1569-1573 and 1579-1583 desolated Munster for decades.

Near the end of his life, Thomas had fallen out of favour. Old and blind, he returned to his house on the Suir, always his favourite home. He lived to the age of 83, surviving Queen Elizabeth, his three wives and all his legitimate male heirs. He died on 22 November 1614 and is buried in Saint Canice’s Cathedral, Kilkenny.

In the 17th century, the house was a favourite residence of James Butler, Duke of Ormonde (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

In the 17th century, the house was a favourite residence of James Butler (1610-1688), 1st Duke of Ormonde. He was a grandson of Black Tom’s nephew, Walter Butler (1559-1633), who had succeeded as 11th Earl of Ormond in 1614. During the Duke of Ormonde’s time, the house then stood in extensive parkland and records show there was a deer park, orchards, gardens, a peach house, and a large stable of horses.

However, the Butler family abandoned the manor at Carrick-on-Suir after the first duke died in 1688, and so began a period during which various tenants came and went.

At first, these tenants were prosperous. A Waterford wine merchant named Galwey rented the castle in the 1780s. Later, Wogan, a solicitor, moved in. But Wogan demolished many of the old buildings from 1816 on. As each tenant was poorer than the last, the rooms were subdivided. What had been a seat of wealth and power become a mere shelter for the hungry. Ormond Castle’s decline was dramatic.

Nevertheless, the home remained in the hands of the Butler family until the mid-20th century. When the house was given to state in 1947, it was derelict though still roofed.

The site of the castle once stood on the banks of the River Suir (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

The house has been restored in recent decades of the Office of Public Works (OPW). Central to the restoration work has been the revival of the Renaissance plasterwork, which is some places was so badly damaged it required remoulding made from casts taken of the original.

More than 400 years after it was first built, the manor house remains dignified and elegant. A recent addition is a €270,000 interpretation scheme in the exhibition and audio-visual rooms. Two seven-minute animations tell the story from the perspective of both Black Tom and his first wife Elizabeth Berkley.

There is a persistent tradition that the friendship between Thomas Butler, 10th Earl of Ormond, and young Elizabeth was more romantic than platonic.

This tradition alleges that Elizabeth had secretly given birth to one of Black Tom’s illegitimate sons, Piers FitzThomas Butler of Duiske Abbey. His eldest son, Sir Edward Butler of Duiske, was given the title of Viscount Galmoye in 1646.

Edmund Butler married Anne Butler, and their daughter Elizabeth married Luke Comerford of Callan. Anne was also a sister of Helen Butler who married her second cousin, Walter Butler, 11th Earl of Ormond, and of Eleanor Butler who married Morgan Kavanagh and was the mother-in-law of John Comerford of Ballybur.

In this way, Luke Comerford of Callan had married a daughter of an alleged grandson of Black Tom and Queen Bess. Indeed, by the early or mid-17th century, all the major branches of the Comerford family were intermarried with the Ormond Butlers. But these are the normal rather than exceptional expectations in Irish genealogy, a point than can be made using the projections in a new book by Adam Rutherford that I bought in Wexford before heading on to Carrick-on-Suir.

But I digress. Perhaps I should explore this further in a separate essay later this evening.

A tapestry on the ground floor alludes to the genealogical links of the Butler family (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)