Disentangling family trees to find who really was the true Earl of Roscommon

Patrick Comerford

I was telling stories earlier this week about the Dillon family, how they intermarried with the Fitzgibbon family of Mountshannon House, near Castleconnell, Co Limerick, and how they were related to some of the interesting, prominent Catholic families in Staffordshire.

The Dillons are a long-tailed Anglo-Norman family in Ireland, dating back to about 1185, and once had substantial lands and estates in Meath, Westmeath, Longford and Roscommon.

With such a long-tailed family tree, it can only be expected that at times it became difficult to disentangle the different branches of the family, and family members and genealogists alike became so confused that the claims to one of the family titles, Earl of Roscommon, were hotly contended on many occasions on the floor of the House of Lords at the end of the 18th century, and on more occasions in the early 19th century in the House of Lords in Westminster.

The title of Lord Dillon, Baron of Kilkenny West, was given to James Dillon, Chief Baron of the Irish Exchequer, in 1619, and he became the first Earl of Roscommon, a title in the Irish peerage in 1622.

James Dillon (1605-1649), 3rd Earl of Roscommon, was a brother-in-law of the ill-fated Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Stratford, the ill-fated Lord Deputy of Ireland.

Wentworth Dillon (1637-1685), 4th Earl of Roscommon was a courtier, poet and critic who was held in such esteem in his lifetime that he was buried in Westminster Abbey. His uncle, Cary Dillon (1627-1689), 5th Earl of Roscommon, was a professional soldier, politician and courtier, and was friendly with Samuel Pepys, who refers to him several times as ‘Colonel Dillon’ in his Diary.

His grandson, Robert Dillon, 7th Earl of Roscommon, married Angel Ingoldsby, a great-granddaughter of Hardress Waller the regicide. When his brother, John Dillon (1702-1746), 8th Earl of Roscommon, died in 1746, it was obvious the Dillon family tree was widespread and tangled, and even the branch of the family that held the title of Earl of Roscommon, was tangled and difficult to follow clearly.

The title lay dormant and unclaimed for decades. Although his third cousin, Robert Dillon, a Marshall in the French army, was later identified as the rightful heir, he never assumed the as 9th Earl of Roscommon, and died in Paris in 1770. The claim to the title then passed to his younger brother, John Dillon (1720-1782). John was the youngest son of Patrick Dillon of Knockranny, Co Roscommon, who had died in 1745. But John’s three older brothers had died one after the other, and John was next in line to inherit the family titles.

But John Dillon died not inherit any lands or estates, and despite holding the title he could not take his seat in the House of Lords in Dublin because he was a Roman Catholic. It appears John was married twice. His first wife was Catherine Fallon from Kyle, Co Roscomon, and they were the parents of three daughters, Margaret, Dymphna and Helen, who married local men, but no son to succeed him in the titles.

When Catherine died, John moved back to Knockranny to live with his niece, Dymphna McDonnell, the daughter of his sister Christine and her husband Edward McDonnell. But while he was living with Christine, John met and fell in love with Bridget Mullaly, a local young woman who was working in the McDonell household.

Despite the disparity in their social status, John and Bridget set up house together in Kilronan some time in the 1750s, and became the parents of five more children. The question was not only whether John and Bridget married before their son Patrick was born on 15 March 1769 – but, did they ever marry at all?

By general agreement, it was accepted that at least the first two of their five children, Mary and Luke, were ‘born out of wedlock.’ But did they marry before Patrick and the other two children, Nancy and Thomas, were born?

After John Dillon, 10th Earl of Roscommon, died in 1782, there were two prolonged investigations by the Irish House of Lords in Dublin in the 1792 and 1793 to determine the legitimacy of Patrick Dillon (1769-1816), and to hear the rival claims to the title by Robert Dillon of Rath, King’s County (Offaly), a descendant of the seventh son of the first Earl of Roscommon and the next male heir in the line of descent.

Patrick Dillon was born on 15 March 1769, and at first the House of Lords seemed to agree in 1792. But a distant family member, Charles Dillon-Lee (1745-1813), 12th Viscount Dillon, spoke on the floor of the house in 1793, and called for more evidence in favour of Patrick’s claims.

Fresh evidence was produced claiming that the local parish priest, Father Daniel Early, had at first refused to conduct a wedding. But a neighbour’s butler gave evidence that he intervened on behalf of the couple in 1766, imploring James Brady, Bishop of Ardagh and Clonmacnoise, to instruct Father Early to marry the couple. The butler said Early conceded and conducted the wedding ceremony in the front parlour of the couple’s home Carrownanalt in 1766, in the presence of a mere fistful of witnesses.

The evidence also claimed that Bridget was known locally as Mrs Dillon after 1766, and as Lady Dillon or the Countess of Roscommon after her husband become the tenth earl in 1770.

The evidence was challenged, however, by John Dillon’s nephew, James Begg, and his niece, Dymphna McDonnell, who supported Robert Dillon’s claims.

Finally, in March 1793, the House of Lords in Dublin found in favour of Patrick Dillon, and he was recognised as the legitimate 11th Earl of Roscommon. He married Barbara Begg and they were the parents of one daughter, Lady Maria Dillon. But there were no sons, and – once again – no obvious heirs to the Roscommon titles.

Patrick Dillon, 11th Earl of Roscommon, died on 17 November 1816. Robert Dillon had died in the intervening years, and the titles became dormant once again. Robert Dillon’s claims to the titles now passed to Michael Robert Dillon (1798-1850), whose grandfather, James ‘Surgeon’ Dillon, was a first cousin of Robert Dillon, and he too was descended from the seventh son of the first Earl.

Michael James Robert Dillon was born on 2 October 1798, almost four months after the death of his father, also called Michael Dillon. Michael Dillon senior had been a captain in the Dublin Militia and was killed at the Battle of New Ross during the 1798 Rising in Co Wexford.

The younger Michael Dillon spent 12 years trying to prove his claim to the title until 1827-1828, when the House of Lords in Westminster decided that he was the rightful heir to the Earldom, and so he became the 12th Earl of Roscommon. In its ruling, the House of Lords decided against the claims of Francis Stephen Dillon, who had been an inmate in a debtors’ prison, and claimed descent from the third son of the first Earl of Roscommon.

Michael Dillon, 12th Earl of Roscommon, married Lady Charlotte Talbot (1805-1843), a half-sister of John Talbot (1791-1852), 16th Earl of Shrewsbury, who married Maria Theresa Talbot of Castle Talbot, Co Wexford, and who became the great patron of AWN Pugin.

Michael and Charlotte were married on 19 August 1830 and had an only child, James Dillon, who was born in 1831 but died in infancy that year. Charlotte died on 21 November 1843 and Michael Dillon died on 15 May 1850 at the age of 51.

Once again, the title of Earl of Roscommon became dormant. Some genealogists regard the title as extinct, but with such a tangled and difficult family tree it may well be that somewhere among the extended Dillon family there is another Earl of Roscommon.

As for Charles Dillon-Lee (1745-1813), 12th Viscount Dillon, whose intervention on the floor of the House of Lords eventually secured the Roscommon title for his distant kinsman Patrick Dillon in 1793, he was the son of Lady Charlotte Lee, heir to the Lee line of Earls of Lichfield. His grandson, Gerald Lee-Dillon-Lee, married Lady Louisa Fitzgibbon of Mountshannon House, changed his name to Fitzgibbon, and became part of the stories of the decline of a great house that I was telling earlier this week.

The House of Lords in Westminster heard contested claims to the title of Earl of Roscommon in the 19th century (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Why did two people marry each other twice in two different churches?

The Church of the Holy Name on Beechwood Avenue, Ranelagh … a memorial in the south porch recalls a family disinherited because of a Catholic marriage (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)

Patrick Comerford

During my visit to the Church of the Holy Name on Beechwood Avenue earlier this week, I realised how this church was a fashionable venue for suburban weddings in south Dublin about 100 years ago.

Two former Taosaigh were married here – Seán Lemass and Charles J Haughey – and Padraic Pearse was supposed to be the best man at the wedding here of another 1916 leader, Thomas MacDonagh and Muriel Gifford in 1912, but he forget to turn up on the wedding day.

But a plaque in the south porch also recalls another wedding – or rather, the two weddings of the parents of John French. Their first wedding caused a social stir and resulted in the children being declared illegitimate; the second wedding served to illustrate the dying pangs of the Penal Laws many decades after Catholic Emancipation, and stirred a lengthy debate about who were the legitimate heirs to an old family title.

That brass plaque in the south porch also conveys the tragic consequences of World War I for one family:

In loving memory of
The Honble John French RM
Queenstown,
who died 23 May 1916, and his children
Major Charles John French,
King’s Shropshire Light Infantry,
Died of wounds in France 2 July 1916.
Valentine Douglas French
Died of wounds in France 16 June 1915, and
Ismay Fetherston French who died at Carrig, Queenstown, 7 August 1909
Laura Mary O’Hara Died 10th March 1919
Erected by his Wife and Children.

The Hon John French (1853-1916) was born into a landed and titled family on 13 March 1853, the eldest son of Charles French (1790-1860), 3rd Baron de Freyne of Coolavin. The family lived at Frenchpark House, near Boyle, Co Roscommon, and for many generations members of the family sat in the Irish House of Commons as MPs for Co Roscommon.

John French, MP for Co Roscommon, was about to be given a seat in the Irish House of Lords as Baron Dangar in 1775, but he died before the peerage was formally created.

His younger brother, Arthur (1728-1799), also an MP for Co Roscommon, turned down the offer of the peerage originally intended for his brother. But eventually a title came into the family when his grandson, Arthur French (1786-1856), MP for Roscommon (1821-1832) was made Baron de Freyne, of Artagh, Co Roscommon, in 1839.

But Arthur and his wife Mary McDermott had no children, and when Arthur was widowed it became obvious that the title would die with him. So, he was given a new but similar title in 1851 as Baron de Freyne, of Coolavin in Co Sligo. This time, however, his younger brothers, John, Charles and Fitzstephen French, were named as heirs to the title, in the hope that this branch of the French family would never be without a titled representative.

Lord de Freyne died in 1856, five years after the new title had been created. The older title, dating from 1839, died out, but the newer title, handed out in 1851, and was inherited by his first younger brother, the Revd John French (1788-1863), who became the second Baron de Freyne.

The second Lord de Freyne was Rector of Grange Sylvae or Goresbridge in Co Kilkenny, and seems to have been more interested in breeding Irish red setters than attending to his parish or to politics in the House of Lords.

When he died in 1863, the family title passed to the next surviving brother, Charles French (1790-1868), as the third Lord de Freyne. Unlike his elder brothers, Charles French was happily married and had a large family of seven children, six sons and a daughter, and so it seemed there would be no problem of the family estates, totalling almost 30,000 acres in the west of Ireland, and the family title having male heirs to ensure succession to both. Or so it seemed.

On 13 February 1851, when he was in his 60s and when it still looked unlikely that he would ever inherit a title or have children, Charles French married a local woman, Catherine Maree, daughter of Luke Maree from Fairymount. She has been described as a ‘peasant girl’ who was born around 1830 or 1831. He was more than three times her age: she was 20 and he was almost 61 and the marriage was performed by a local Catholic priest.

Catherine may have been pregnant at the time of the marriage, and Charles and Catherine quickly had three children, one after another:

1, Charles French (1851-1925).
2, John French (1853-1916).
3, William John French (1854-1928).

But by the time William was born on 21 April 1854, it had become obvious that Charles and his children were in line to the family title and estates, the legal validity of the marriage was questioned. She was a Roman Catholic and he was a member of the Church of Ireland, and the surviving legacy of the Penal Laws, even in the 1850s, meant a member of the Church of Ireland could only legitimately marry in the Church of Ireland.

The obscure interpretation of the law was causing scandals in society and eventually legislation was needed to rectify a legal anachronism and injustice when the marriages of Barry Yelverton and the succession to the title of Lord Avonmore were challenged in the courts in 1861-1864.

And so, Charles and Catherine were quietly married a second time in 1854, perhaps in the hope of legitimising their four children, and ensuring succession to the title and estates.

This time the wedding took place on 17 May 1854 in All Saints’ Church, Grangegorman, Dublin, and was performed by the Revd William Maturin. Charles gave his address as the Albert Hotel, which was in Dominick Street, Dublin, and his occupation as ‘late captain’; Catherine gave her address as Anna Villa, North Circular Road, which technically made her a resident of the parish. He was then 63 and she was 23; he describes himself as a bachelor, she as a spinster, although their fourth child had been born within the previous month. She was illiterate and signed the register with an X.

All Saints’ Church, Grangegorman … Charles French and Catherine Maree were married here for a second time in 1854 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Charles and Catherine went on to have four more children, three sons and a daughter:

4, Arthur French (1855-1913).
5, Richard Patrick French (1857-1921).
6, Robert French (1858-1920).
7, Mary Josephine French (1859-1919), who married in Saint Andrew’s Church, Westland Row, Dublin, Valentine Joseph Blake (1842-1912) of the Heath, Queen’s Co (Co Laois); she died at 39 Waterloo Place, Dublin, on 20 February 1919.

Lord de Freyne celebrated his 68th birthday on the day his youngest son was born in 1858. He died on 28 October 1868, and in 1869, all six of his sons arrived as boarders at Downside Abbey, the Benedictine-run Catholic public school in Somerset, near Bath.

They were all to be educated as Catholics, despite the confusion of their parents’ marriages.

But it was still uncertain which son was going to succeed to the family title. The Yelverton case had been heard and appealed, and new legislation on legitimacy had been enacted. The Roll of the House of Lords, which was issued each year, shows blanks against the name of the holder of the de Freyne peerage in 1875 and 1876, indicating that the matter was still undecided, and the estates were administered on behalf of the family by Valentine Dillon, whose daughter later married John French.

Eventually, however, lawyers decided the 1851 marriage was invalid and any children born in that marriage were illegitimate. The first four children continued to use the prefix ‘The Hon,’ indicating they were the legitimate children of a peer. But Arthur French, the first son born after the 1854 marriage, succeed as 4th Baron de Freyne. The former Catherine Maree died on 13 November 1900.

Arthur French was known as a cruel landlord and ruled his estate and his family with a rod of iron. In 1902, when his tenants refused to pay their rent, he took leading members of the Irish Party to court, accusing them of incitement.

The fourth Lord de Freyne had the doubtful pleasure of reading his own obituary in The Times on 11 September 1913. On 23 September 1913, The Times, reported: ‘Lord de Freyne, whose death was wrongly announced last Thursday week, died yesterday morning at his residence, Frenchpark, Co Roscommon, in his 59th year.’

When he died, Frenchpark and the title passed to his eldest son, Captain Arthur Reginald French. In 1902, as a 23-year-old, this Arthur was also at the centre of a society scandal that the London evening newspapers called ‘a romance of the peerage’ when he married an 18-year-old barmaid and single mother, Annabel Angus, in Rothes in Scotland.

He was a lieutenant in the Royal Fusiliers with mounting mess debts. She was already the mother of a small child, and had a brief marriage to another officer that had ended in a quick divorce.

But they had no children and the future Lord de Freyne soon grew tired of his wife. Less than three years after their marriage, he went to New York and spent his days and nights drinking in the Bowery. When he disappeared, leaving his luggage in a New York hotel, his family and former friends feared that he had been kidnapped or murdered.

After a search that lasted several weeks, he was found at Fort Slocum on Long Island, where he had enlisted as a private in the US army. When he succeeded to the title in 1913, he was an American soldier in the Philippines. He returned to Frenchpark, but without Annabel. When World War I broke out, he returned to the army, and was killed in action at the Battle of Aubers Ridge in Flanders in 1915.

He is among four members of this family who died in World War I and are named in plaques in the Catholic Parish Church in Frenchpark: Edward Fulke French (1886-1919), who fought in the Dardanelles and died a prisoner of war in Mainz; George Philip French (1890-1915), killed in action in Flanders; and Ernest Aloysius French (1894-1917), who died of wounds in Flanders in 1917.

Meanwhile, his uncle John French, the second son who was excluded by law from inheriting the titles and estates, was living in Cobh (Queenstown), Co Cork. John French was a Resident Magistrate or JP for Co Kerry (1892-1898), Co Limerick (1898) and Co Roscommon.

On 26 July 1877, he married Nannie Dillon. They were the parents of 10 children, six of whom survived, but two of those sons died within weeks of each other in World War I, and this is the family commemorated in the south porch in the Church of the Holy Name in Beechwood Avenue.

World War I took a severe toll on this branch of the French family. John French was also a distant cousin of two key players in the 1916 Rising, Charlotte French (1844-1939), better known as Madam Despard, who spent a lot of time at Frenchpark, where her father was born, her brother General John French (1852-1925), who was involved in suppressing the 1916 Rising and became Lord Lieutenant of Ireland and Earl of Ypres. The three were also distant cousins of Douglas Hyde (1860-1949), the first President of Ireland, who is buried in the churchyard at Frenchpark, where he spent much of his childhood and where his father was the rector.

But the 1916 connections are closer, for the Church in Beechwood Avenue was also the venue for the wedding of the 1916 leader Thomas McDonagh and Muriel Gifford. Padraic Pearse was supposed to be the best man at that wedding, but forget to turn up … and that too is a story for another day.

Updated and corrected: 09.05.2020

‘There’s something in the core of me that needs the West to set it free’

Standing on the beach in Keel at noonday today (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

Patrick Comerford

Normally, a walk on the beach is a good exercise for body, soul and intellect at the weekend. Two weeks on the beach brings on an added bonus. But this weekend I managed to visit six beaches – five on Achill Island, and a sixth at Mulranny on the way back to Dublin.

In all, it was more than a 680 km round trip from the Braemor Park in Dublin to Achill Island, off the west coast of Co Mayo, and back again, getting back to Dublin late this evening [Saturday, 16 February 2013].


Strokestown House ... the Palladian house built in the 18th century by the Pakenham Mahon family (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

Four of us left Dublin just after noon on Friday and headed west to visit Achill Island. After a brief stop to take some photographs in Edgeworthstown for future research, our first real half-way stop was for a late lunch in Co Roscommon at Strokestown Park House, the 18th century Palladian home of the Pakenham Mahon family until 1981, and now the home of the Famine Museum.

The house was built by Thomas Mahon MP (1701-1782) on lands granted to his grandfather, Nicholas Mahon, in the late 17th century.


The spectacular cliff view on the Atlantic Drive on the south coast of Achill Island on Friday evening (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

By the time we got to Castlebar, the rain was beginning to come down, and the road out through Burrishoole and Newport was shrouded in mist. By the time we got to Mulranny, it was difficult to see down onto the long stretches of beach or out to Clew Bay, and we decided to continue on the road.

But darkness had not yet fallen by the time we reached Achill Island, and after crossing the Sound we took a detour south along the Atlantic Drive, through Kildavnit, passing the ruined castle associated in legend with Grace O’Malley the pirate queen, by the small quay at Cloghmore, up above the cliffs at Ashleam, and on to Dooega.

We joined the main road to Keel again at Cashel, and, as we passed by the signs to Dugort and the Strand Hotel, I realised that it is a full year since I was last in Achill, when we returned for Martin Walsh’s funeral.

There was a time when Achill was a much-favoured retreat when I wanted to get away and needed a quiet place and write, and found it in the Strand Hotel in Dugort.

I suppose I am a little surprised that as Achill has become more accessible with easier roads from Dublin, I have been here less and less frquently. As we drove across the island, I realised how deserted in winter Achill is.

At Keel, as darkness closed in, we called in to seeTom and Una McNamara. The McNamara family once ran the Boley House, which was the finest restaurant in Achill in its heyday in the 1980s and 1990s.

After dinner in the Achill Cliff House Hotel in Keel, we drove back to Dugort hoping to find a little music and some Friday night life. The Strand Hotel was in complete darkness, but we stll had a short stroll on the beach below and listened to the gentle waves beneath the night skies.

Eventually, we ended up in the Valley House, where a violent incident in the late 19th century inspired John Millington Synge’s play, The Playboy of the Western World.

Back in the Achill Cliff Hotel in Keel, as I thought of the day ahead of us today, I was reminded of the reasons I returned to Achill so often in the past and was reminded of the words of Oliver St John Gogarty:

There’s something sleeping in my breast
that wakens only in the West.
There’s something in the core of me
that needs the West to set it free.


Looking back on Keel from Lake Corrymore (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

Through the night we could hear the Atlantic wind howling across the island, and the waves crashing against the rocks and the pebbles on the shore at Keel.

By morning, much of the mist had lifted, and it was dry. Despite the chill in the wind, it was good weather to see more of Achill Island, and we drove up past Captain Boycott’s House up to Corrymore Lake for a view back across much of the island.


785Standing on the beach at Keem Bay this morning (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

From Corrymore, we took the steep road down to Keem Bay, where the beach was deserted, but the water was sparkling and there were clear views across the seas, with streaks of silver light in the skies and on the sea.


Looking back at Keem Bay this morning (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

As we climbed back up the road from Keem, we wondered what we were looking at in the water below ... basking sharks? a pair of dolphins? or just rocks?

We stopped in Keel again to have a look at the beach in the daylight. We lingered a little before turning north again, to visit the Deserted Village below Slievemore and to hear again the stories of “booleying” and the impact of the famine in the 1840s.

Further east, still on the slopes of Slievemore, we drove up by Grey’s and the former Slievemore Hotel in the former mission colony built in the mid-19th century by the Revd Edward Nangle.

We were delighted to find the door into Saint Thomas’s Church was was open, thechurch had been reroofed, and a new organ has been installed.


Looking down onto the beach at Dugort towards the Strand Hotel (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

We had another look at the beach at Dugort, below the Strand Hotel, and recalled the many many years I stayed in the Strand Hotel time-on-end and went to church in Saint Thomas’s. There were happy memories of many people who had ministered and worshipped in this church over the decades – some of them buried in the churchyard.


A clever sign at the Golden Strand (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

We stopped again at the Golden Strand at Masterson’s. A sign for the restaurnant once said: “Slow Down. Good Food Ahead.” But a clever dollop of what paint had been applied recently, making a witty thrological point worthy of the Vicar of Dibley.

Here we enjoyed yet another lengthy beach, and once again miles and miles of golden sand stretched before us and the golden grass allowed us to imagine that Spring might soon arrive.


Looking toward’s Inisbiggle from the small jetty at Bull’s Mouth (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

The road east through Dooniver brought us to Bull’s Mouth, where we stood at the small jetty where two currachs were tied up and another two or three were upended. We stood in wonder for a while beside this tiny beach as we gazed across the narrow water and its deceptively strong currents and cdounter currents to the tiny island of Inisbiggle that lies between Achill and the mainland coast of Co Mayo.

We stopped once again at Achill Sound to buy the morning newspapers, but all four of us decided against visiting the so-called “House of Prayer.”


Standing on the edge of the causeway at Mulranny that leads out into Clew Bay (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

We stopped at the Mulranny Park Hotel for lunch, and then eventually made that good on that long-standing promise to visit the beach below, with its panoramic views out to Clew Bay.

The steep steps below the hotel lead down to a causeway that seems to stretch out infinetly to Clew Bay. We could have lingered longer. I must return in summer to enjoy the visit in the evening sun.

There was one more stop along the way – to visit Saint Nathy’s Cathedral in Balaghdereen. It had been dark for many hours by the time we got back to Dublin tonight.