The exotic canon and count in Georgian Limerick who lived a bacchanalian life

Bourchier’s Castle on the shores of Lough Gur, once at the heart of the Co Limerick estate of the Fane and de Salis families (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

Patrick Comerford

I was writing last night about Sir James Fitzgerald of Lichfield and his family who lived at Castle Ishen in Co Cork and laid bizarre but unchallenged claims to a title that had been created originally 200 years earlier for another Fitzgerald family that lived at Springfield Castle in Co Limerick.

Their claims were accepted throughout the late Georgian and Victorian eras – who would challenge the claims of a family that included one of Nelson’s admirals, two cathedral deans, a number of peers, and one of the largest titled landowners in Co Cork.

Titles both fanciful and romantic are found among the clergy too. At one time, for example there were not one but two priests in the Diocese of Limerick and Ardfert who claimed the title of ‘The O’Hanlon’ or head of the O’Hanlon Clan, although, as far as I can see, they were not related to each other apart from having the same family name.

But despite all the peers, baronets, knights and family chiefs among the priests and bishops in these dioceses, none had honorifics that sound quite as exotic as those of Canon Henry Jerome de Salis – and none, probably, should have faced the safe scrutiny as he deserved when it comes to Christian beliefs and dogma.

Henry Jerome de Salis (1740-1810) was the second of four sons of Jerome (Hieronimus) de Salis, 2nd Count de Salis-Soglio. His mother, the Hon Mary Fane, was the eldest daughter of Charles Fane (1676-1744), MP for Killybegs (1715-1719) and later 1st Viscount Fane and Baron Loughguyre (sic).

The Loughguyre name in the titles held by Henry’s grandfather refer to Lough Gur in Co Limerick, where the Fane family had inherited part of a large estate, shared with the Montagu family, Earls of Sandwich – as in Lord Sandwich who invented an early English example of ‘fast food.’

Henry’s father, Jérôme de Salis, 2nd Count de Salis-Soglio (1709-1794), sometime British Resident (ambassador) in the Grisons, was also known as Hieronimus, Gerolamo, Geronimo, Harry or Jerome. The Emperor Francis I gave his father, Peter de Salis, and all his descendants were given the title of Count in the Habsburg or Holy Roman Empire by the Emperor Francis I in 1748.

Henry Jerome de Salis was born at Hanover Square in London on 20 August 1740. With two of his brothers, Charles and Peter, he went to Eton, and from there he went on to Queen’s College Oxford (BA 1761, MA 1765, BD and DD, 1777).

Henry de Salis, count and canon, was ordained deacon and priest within five days in Saint Munchin’s Church, Limerick (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Through his Fane family connections in Ireland, Henry moved to Limerick, and he was ordained deacon in Saint Munchin’s Church, Limerick, on 1 November 1763 and priest five days later on 6 November by James Leslie, Bishop of Limerick. He was still only 23, but immediately his uncle Lord Fane secured his appointment as Prebendary of Kilpeacon and Vicar of Fedamore and Crecoragh in the Diocese of Limerick in 1763, and he was appointed Vicar-General of Diocese of Ardfert in 1766.

He was a young count and canon, and retained these positions until 1774, and he also became a chaplain to King George III.

But these were probably sinecures that enhanced his income, and he probably spent very little time in his parishes in this diocese. In a letter to his father in Harley Street, from Oxford on 24 September 1771 he describes ‘Lord le Despencer’s Festival at West Wycombe’ in bacchanalian terms: ‘… a newly erected Temple of Bacchus was opened in the true antique Taste.’

We went on to say, ‘The Statue of the God was crowned, and was invoked in Verse by the High Priest Montfancon and other Books of antiquities were consulted for proper Ornaments, with which Mr Dance the Painter decorated the Bacchanalians. Our Pan and Silenus were inimitable …’

He recalled that 3,000 or 4,000 people were present, and that ‘it really was a fête worthy of Versailles.’ It was probably also a fête that today would have been deemed incompatible with holding his positions in the Church of Ireland.

But de Salis continued to hold his church positions in this this diocese until 1774, when he became Rector of Saint Antholin, Watling Street, a Wren church in the City of London that was eventually demolished in 1874.

His parents appointed him gamekeeper of their manor of Dally, otherwise Dawley, near Hayes, Middlesex, in 1775. His kinsman, the fifth Earl of Chesterfield, also made him Vicar of Wing in Buckinghamshire in 1777.

Shortly after his appointment to Saint Antholin, he was married there on 17 November 1775. The Limerick and Ardfert clerical succession lists do not name his wife, but she was Julia Henrietta (Harriet) Blosset, the daughter of a Huguenot merchant in Dublin. Their only child, a daughter Henrietta, died at the age of five.

De Salis was a Justice of the Peace for Buckinghamshire, and had many secular interests. His private collection once included William Hogarth’s The Beggar’s Opera, later in the Tate Gallery.

But in his later years he seems to have been a genuinely religious man and was a subscriber to both the Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge (SPCK) and the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (SPG), now the Anglican mission agency USPG. He continued to hold his parishes in London and Buckinghamshire until he died on 2 May 1810.

Later in the 19th century, the Co Limerick estates of the Count de Salis still extended to over 4,000 acres in Co Limerick, with a further and 3,663 acres in Co Armagh.

The shores of Lough Gur, Co Limerick … the lake gave its name to one of the Fane family titles (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019; click on image for full-screen view)

The church at Lough Gur where blind harpers and poets are buried

The ruins of the ‘New Church’ on the shores of Lough Gur in east Co Limerick (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

Patrick Comerford

On my way to Lough Gur in east Co Limerick two weeks ago, I stopped to visit the ruins of the ‘New Church.’

Despite its name, the ‘New Church’ dates from 1679, when it was built to replace an older church built in the 15th century. The estates of the Earls of Desmond were confiscated in the 1580s and their estate at Lough Gur became the property of the Bourchier family, Earls of Bath.

The church built by the Earls of Desmond was listed as a ruin by 1642, but it was restored by Rachael Bourchier (1613-1680), Countess of Bath, in 1679, a year before her death, and became known as the ‘New Church.’ The formidable Lady Bath had inherited Bourchier’s Castle and her husband’s large estates at Lough Gur when Henry Bourchier, 5th Earl of Bath died in 1654, and she ensured they were inherited by her favourite nephew, Sir Henry Fane (1650-1706), as his guardian.

Inside the ruins of the ‘New Church,’ facing the East End (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

The present structure is a simple rectangular building. When it was built, it was endowed with a chalice and patten with the inscription, ‘The guift of the Right Honourable Rachael Countess Dowager of Bath to her chapel-of-ease Logh Guir, Ireland 1679.’

The church served as a Church of Ireland parish church, a belfry was added, and Lady Bath also presented vestments, a pulpit cloth, a Bible and copies of the Book of Common Prayer, and she provided an endowment of £20 a year for a chaplain.

The famed blind poet, bard, harper and composer, Thomas O’Connellan from Co Sligo, died in Bourchier’s Castle in 1698 while he was a staying there as a guest. There is a local tradition that he is buried at the churchyard in an unmarked grave near the north east gable.

The ruins of the ‘New Church’ were conserved by the Count de Salis in 1900 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

The church was a ruin once again in the 19th century, but was conserved in 1900 by Sir John Francis Charles de Salis (1864-1939), 7th Count de Salis, who had inherited a large part of the Bourchier or Bath estates at Lough Gur 1871.

The Count de Salis had a long, distinguished career as a British diplomat, serving in Brussels, Madrid, Cairo, Berlin, Athens, Montenegro and at the Vatican as Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary on a special mission to the Holy See in 1916–1923. He was also a Justice of the Peace for Limerick and Armagh, and Deputy Lieutenant for Co Limerick.

The church ruins are quite plain but the church has a picturesque setting on the shores of Lough Gur. It is a simple rectangular plan church measuring 17 metres by 6.4 metres internally, with a two-light, pointed arched window in the east gable.

A pointed singl- light window with an external hood mould on the south wall of the church (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

On the south wall, close to the east gable, there is a pointed single light window with an external hood mould. There are two much larger 17th century window openings in the south wall on either side of the door.

On the north wall there are traces of a second building, probably a vestry or sacristy, with a door leading from the chancel of the church.

The differences in stonework indicate the different phases of restoration and repair. Parts of masonry, including pieces of a shattered double arched window, are scattered throughout the graveyard.

The local poet and historian Owen Bresnan (1847-1912), who composed Teampall Nua and Sweet Lough Gur side, is also buried in the churchyard. Both he and Thomas O’Connellan are commemorated in a plaque erected on the church wall in 1991.

A plaque on the east wall commemorates Thomas O’Connellan and Owen Bresnan (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

A missing sandwich at Lough Gur and a glass of wine in Cambridge

A glass of white wine on a summer afternoon on King’s Parade, Cambridge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

Patrick Comerford

Last week, I spent a little quiet time on King’s Parade in Cambridge, enjoying the summer sunshine, the view of King’s College Chapel, the passing pleasures of families celebrating graduations, and lingering over a welcome glass of white wine.

The wine list at the Cambridge Chop House is quite unique in Cambridge as it focuses on the Languedoc-Roussillon region of France. They have visited the region many times and have met most of the wine makers on their list.

But this restaurant had another unique feature: in the men’s rooms downstairs, they were playing soundtracks of Blackadder.

In ‘Ink and Incapability,’ the second episode of the third series (1987), Blackadder and Baldrick are supposed to be rewriting a lost manuscript of Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary.

I walked in to hear this exchange:

Blackadder: Now, Baldrick, go to the kitchen and make me something quick and simple to eat, would you? Two slices of bread with something in between.

Baldrick: What, like Gerald, Lord Sandwich had the other day?

Blackadder: Yes, a few rounds of geralds.

Playing recordings of Blackadder on a loop in any restaurant or bar is one way to leave a long queue outside the men’s rooms. But I still had that glass of summer wine on King’s Parade to pay attention to.

Of course, there was no Gerald, Lord Sandwich, and the Cambridge Chop House is not the sort of place to include sandwiches on its menu.

But the sandwich owes its name to John Montagu (1718-1792), 4th Earl of Sandwich, who inherited large estates on the shores of Lough Gur, Co Limerick, including Bourchier’s Castle.

Bourchier’s Castle is a ruined five-storey tower house on the shores of Lough Gur, Co Limerick (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

I had spent the previous Saturday afternoon visiting Lough Gur, 10 km south of Limerick. Admittedly, we had brought no sandwiches with us, but Lough Gur has a visitors’ centre, with a car park and picnic area, though no café or restaurant.

Beside the picnic area on the lake shore, Bourchier’s Castle is a ruined five-storey tower house. It was also known as Castle Doon and guarded the northern approach to Knockadoon on Lough Gur.

Bourchier’s Castle was built in the 16th century by Sir George Bourchier (1535-1605), a son of John Bourchier (1499-1561), 2nd Earl of Bath. The family benefitted from royal patronage, and John Bourchier was a cousin of Anne Seymour, Duchess of Somerset and sister-in-law of two queens, Jane Seymour and Catherine Parr.

Sir George Bourchier acquired 18,000 acres in Co Limerick from the estates of the Earls of Desmond by Elizabeth I in 1583. He was MP for King’s County (Offaly) in 1585-1586, and he built his castle at Lough Gur in 1586.

George Bourchier had a large family, including two sons buried in Saint Canice’s Cathedral, Kilkenny. His vast estates in Co Armagh and Co Limerick were inherited eventually by his fifth son, Henry Bourchier (1587-1654).

Henry Bourchier was educated at Trinity College Dublin (BA 1605, MA 1610), and was elected a fellow of the college in 1606. Although a distant heir, he became the 5th Earl of Bath in 1636 at the death of his first cousin once removed, Edward Bourchier (1590-1636), 4th Earl of Bath. During the English Civil War in the 1640s, Henry was a royalist and was jailed for his support for Charles I.

Henry died in 1654, and was buried in Tavistock, Devon. He had no male heirs, and his large estates in Ireland and England passed to his wife, Lady Rachael Fane (1613-1680), a daughter of Francis Fane, 1st Earl of Westmorland. The Co Limerick estate alone, which spilled over into Co Tipperary, covered 12,800 acres (52 sq km) and included the manors of Lough Gur and Glenogra.

As Dowager Countess of Bath, Rachael Fane was a formidable woman. One writer says, ‘She was a great lady and a busybody, and her cloud of kinsfolk held her in fear as their patroness and suzerain … a masterful woman, she lived feared and respected by her numerous kindred whom she advanced by her interest at court.’

She secured her husband’s Irish estates for her nephew, Sir Henry Fane (1650-1706), as his guardian. His son, Charles Fane (1676-1744), was MP for Killybegs (1715-1719). On the strength of his large estates in Co Limerick and Co Armagh, including Lough Gur, he was given the titles of Viscount Fane and Baron Loughguyre [sic] in 1719.

The estates and titles, including Lough Gur, passed to Charles Fane’s son, Charles Fane (1708-1766), 2nd Viscount Fane, a Whig MP and British ambassador in Florence. But this Charles Fane had no male heirs either, and when he died his Irish estates were divided between two sisters: Mary Fane who married Jerome de Salis (1709-1794), 2nd Count de Salis; and Dorothy Fane who married John Montagu (1718-1792), 4th Earl of Sandwich.

John Montagu was a direct descendant of Sir Sidney Montagu, whose brother James Montagu (1568-1618), was the first Master of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, and later Dean of Lichfield and Bishop of Bath and Well.

But John Montagu was known as one of the most corrupt and immoral politicians of his age. It was he – and not Blackadder’s Gerald – who gave his name to the humble sandwich and to the Sandwich Islands. But part of the Blackadder joke is that the word sandwich is not included in Johnson’s Dictionary, which was published in 1755.

There is no public access to Bourchier’s Castle on the shores of Lough Gur, Co Limerick (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

At the time of Griffith’s Valuation, the Earl of Sandwich held lands in the parishes of Ballinlough, Glenogra and Tullabracky, Co Limerick. The Limerick estates of the Earl of Sandwich amounted to 3,844 acres in the 1870s, while the Count de Salis owned over 4,000 acres in Co Limerick and 3,663 acres in Co Armagh.

Other branches of the Bourchier family lived nearby at Kilcullane, Baggotstown and Maidenhall, Co Limerick. James David Bourchier (1850-1920) from Baggotstown, Co Limerick, was a journalist and political activist. He was active in the cause of Bulgarian independence and the unification of Crete with the modern Greek state. He has given his name to a street and a metro station in Sofia, and to other landmarks throughout Bulgaria.

The Sandwich Islands have since been renamed Hawaii, but the humble sandwich remains. Even if it’s not on the menu at the Cambridge Chop House, I must take a sandwich with me to Lough Gur on another weekend, and spend more time exploring the archaeological sites around the lake and close to Bourchier’s Castle.

A summer afternoon on the shores of Lough Gur, Co Limerick (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019; click on image for full-screen view)