Genealogical trails and tales in November’s ‘Church Review’

Patrick Comerford

My monthly column in the Church Review in November 2020 takes a light-hearted look at some genealogical quirks and fantasies.

The Church Review, edited by the Revd Nigel Waugh, Rector of Delgany, Co Wicklow, is the diocesan magazine in Dublin and Glendalough.

In a two-page feature in the November edition, I tell the story of finding two books in an Irish bar in Crete that brought me on a genealogical trail from Comberford in Staffordshire to Saint John’s College in Cambridge.

There are stories too of two rival claimants to the invented title of ‘The O’Hanlon’ or chief of the O’Hanlon Clan – both contemporaries and priests in the Church of Ireland diocese of Limerick and Killaloe, and of Lady FitzGerald of Lichfield, who stood apart from the poor Irish immigrant parishioners in Lichfield. However, her husband’s claim to a title was based on a tissue of genealogical fantasies and lies that link back to Springfield Castle in west Limerick.

But more about these genealogical tales and trails tomorrow afternoon (HERE).