A memorial in Maids Moreton and an Irish-born rector’s strong family links with Co Limerick

The memorial to the Revd Bolton Waller Johnstone in Maids Moreton, decorated with an elaborate Celtic cross (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

I was in Maids Moreton, on the edges of Buckingham, twice in the past ten days, looking at the Old Rectory designed by the architect Edward Swinfen Harris (1841-1924) from Stony Stratford, visiting Saint Edmund’s Church, enjoying the timber-framed houses and thatched cottages, and researching the stories and legends of the ‘Maids of Moreton’, the sisters said in local lore to have given Maids Moreton its name.

In Saint Edmund’s Church in Maids Moreton, I noticed a brass tablet on the south wall with a very elaborate and decorated Celtic cross and the inscription below: ‘To the Glory of God and in loving memory of Bolton Waller Johnstone, MA, Rector of this Parish for 26 years who died Nov 8th 1903 Also of Charlotte Lydia his wife who died April 6th 1892. This Tablet is erected by their children RIP’.

At the time Swinfen Harris was working on the Old Rectory and the Victorian monument commemorating the ‘Maids of Moreton’ was being placed in the nave floor, the Revd Bolton Waller Johnstone (1823-1903) was the Rector of Maids Moreton.

He was an Irish-born priest, and I was interested in his connections with my former diocese and parishes: his parents, the Revd John Beresford Johnstone and Elizabeth Waller of Castletown Park, Co Limerick, were married in Saint Mary’s Cathedral, Limerick, where I was once the canon precentor.

His mother was a member of the Waller family whose monuments and memorials line the walls of Castletown Church, Kilcornan, where I was the priest-in-charge for five years. His siblings were born in Co Limerick and were baptised in Saint Michael’s Church, Limerick, while he was born in Kilkenny and educated at Trinity College Dublin.

The monument to Bolton Waller Johnstone is between the windows on the south wall of Saint Edmund’s Church, Maids Moreton (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The Revd Bolton Waller Johnstone, who died at the Rectory in Maids Moreton on 8 November 1892 at the age of 80, was the second son of the Revd John Beresford Johnstone, a former Rector of Tullow, Co Carlow, and Elizabeth Waller, a daughter of Thomas Waller of Castletown Park, Co Limerick. Bolton Waller Johnstone was named after his grandfather, Bolton Waller (1769-1854) of Castletown and Shannon Grove, an MP, High Sheriff, who owned large estates in the Castletown and Kilcornan areas near Pallaskenry, Co Limerick. The Waller family eventually sold off the Castletown estates in 1936.

Bolton Waller Johnstone was born in Kilkenny in 1823 and was named after his maternal grandfather, Bolton Waller (1769-1854) of Castletown. He was educated at Sherborne School and Trinity College Dublin. He was ordained deacon by the Archbishop of York in 1846 and priest by the Bishop of Durham in 1847. He was a curate in many parishes before becoming the perpetual curate (vicar) of Smithill (1850), curate of Holy Trinity, Marylebone (1851), and the Vicar of Farndon near Chester (1854). A year later, in 1855, Johnstone married Charlotte Lydia Coker (1823-1892), the eldest daughter of Captain Thomas Lewis Coker of Bicester House, Oxfordshire.

Johnstone became the Rector of Maids Moreton in 1877, and he remained there until he died 26 years later in 1903. During his time in Maids Moreton, Saint Edmund’s Church underwent a complete restoration, he installed the East Window and also oversaw the building of a new rectory, designed by Edward Swinfen Harris, and the expansion of the village school.

Bolton and Charlotte Johnstone were the parents of one son, the Revd Edward Aubrey Johnstone (1857-1928) and four daughters. During his final illness, his son, Revd Edward Aubrey Johnstone, carried out his duties, in the parish.

Two of his Irish-born sisters, Elizabeth Johnstone (1819-1895) and Sidney Janes Johnston (1820-1900), also came to live in the Rectory in Maids Moreton, and they too are buried there in the churchyard.

The monument to Bolton Waller (1769-1854), grandfather of Bolton Waller Johnstone, in Castletown Church (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Bolton Johnstone’s father, the Revd John Beresford Johnstone (1793-1860), was the Rector of Tullow, Co Carlow, and married Elizabeth Waller in Saint Mary’s Cathedral, Limerick, on 12 June 1806; he died in Dublin on 17 June 1860. She was a daughter of Bolton Waller (1769-1854) of Castletown and Shannon Grove, Co Limerick.

The Waller family of Castletown was descended from the regicide, Sir Hardress Waller (1604-1666), who was MP for Askeaton in 1634 and 1640 and one of the judges who passed the sentence of death on King Charles I in 1649. At the restoration of Charles II in 1660, all his friends deserted him, and he fled to France. When he returned to England, he pleaded guilty to regicide. His death sentence was reduced to exile, and he died in Jersey in 1666.

John Thomas Waller, MP for Limerick and High Sheriff, and his wife Elizabeth Maunsell were the parents of John Waller (1763-1836) of Castletown Manor and estate, who initiated the building of Castletown Church.

John Waller was succeeded by his brother, Bolton Waller, High Sheriff of Limerick, whose large estates in Co Limerick included lands in the parishes of Ardcanny and Kilcornan.

The monument to the Revd William Waller (1794-1863) in Castletown Church (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Bolton Waller’s son, the Revd William Waller (1794-1863), who was Elizabeth’s brother and Bolton Johnstone’s uncle, was the Rector of Kilcornan from 1842. He married Maria O’Grady, and inherited Castletown from his father in 1854, so that he was both lord of the manor and rector of the parish. He increased the Waller estates by buying up the neighbouring Bury estate.

William Waller’s son, the Revd John Thomas Waller (1827-1911), who was Bolton Johnstone’s first cousin, was also the Rector of Kilcornan, and was appointed to the parish by his father and predecessor.

John Waller was the secretary of the Irish Church Missions, and in that role he was an ardent and zealous evangelical who did much damage to community relations in West Limerick. He used vile language in his tirades, thrived on creating sectarian tensions and stirred up a riot in Pallaskenry in 1861. His land ownings extended to over 6,600 acres.

The monument to the Revd John Thomas Waller in Castletown Church (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

John Waller’s three sons were also clergymen. The Very Revd Edward Hardress Waller (1859-1938), who was born in Castletown, was the Rector of Athy, Co Kildare (1891-1913), a canon of Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin (1908-1913), before becoming the Dean of Kildare (1913-1928). During the Irish Civil War, when Erskine Childers was about to face the firing squad in Beggar’s Bush Barracks on 24 November 1922, he asked for Dean Waller to be present and to pray with him. He died in Delgany, Co Wicklow, in 1938.

Another son, the Revd John Thomas Waller, was the Rector of Saint Lawrence and Trinity Church, Limerick.

A third son, the Revd Bolton Waller, who was also born at Castletown Manor, was the Rector of Saint Munchin’s in Limerick (1892-1895), and died in Switzerland in 1897. His son, the Revd Bolton Charles Waller (1890-1936), was one of the early forerunners of the modern international peace movement.

Bolton Charles Waller was born in Cork and spent much of his childhood and teenage years on Meath Road and then Carlton Terrace in Bray, Co Wicklow. While he was a student at TCD, Bolton Waller wrote a prizewinning essay, ‘Paths to Peace.’ In the immediate aftermath of World War I, an American had created a prize fund for essays on better ways than war to deal with international conflict. The prize fund totalled £3,000, with a first prize of £1,000 and another £2,000 shared among the writers of rest of the ten best essays.

Bolton Waller’s essay, ‘Paths to Peace’ not only won first prize in the competition, but was also adopted by the League of Nations and subsequently by the United Nations.

Waller was an early advocate of the Irish Free State being admitted to the League of Nations, and was the secretary of the League of Nations Society Ireland. He went on to publish four titles on world peace: Towards the Brotherhood of Nations (1921), Ireland and the League of Nations (1925), Paths to World Peace (1926), and Hibernia, or the Future of Ireland (1928), as well as a 20-page pamphlet on Saint Patrick to mark the Patrician anniversary, Patrick – the Man (Dublin: APCK, 1932).

Bolton Waller was ordained deacon in 1931 and priest in 1932. He was the curate of Holy Trinity, Rathmines (1931-1936), Dublin, and then Rector of Saint John’s Parish, Clondalkin, Co Dublin (1936). But within six months of his appointment to Clondalkin he died in Kilpeacon, Co Limerick, in July 1936 at rhe age of 46. He is buried in Saint John’s Churchyard, Clondalkin.

A year earlier, his first cousin, John Thomas (‘Jack’) Waller (1889-1965), had demolished Castletown Manor, and in 1936 he sold the Castletown estate on behalf of his dying father, William Waller (1857-1937).

There are still traces of Castletown Manor and the Castletown estates in Kilcornan Parish, and memorials to members of the Waller family line the walls of Castletown Church. There is still a need for priests like Bolton Charles Waller who have a vision of finding alternatives to international conflict and a vision of working for world peace.

The walls of Castletown Church, Co Limerick, are lined with memorials to the Waller family (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Cosgrave and Edward Kavanagh, two priests from Clonegal with Comerford family links

Father Patrick Cosgrave (1849-1894) … was related to the Comerfords of Bunclody in multiple ways

Patrick Comerford

I have been writing in recent days on this blog about a number of Jesuit priests who were closely related to the Comerford family of Bunclody, Co Wexford, including Father James Comerford (1885-1963) from Ballinakill, Co Laois, and two brothers and their cousin from Bunclody, Father Brendan Comerford Lawler (1909-1993), Father Donald Comerford Lawler (1911-1984) and Father Ray Lawler (1921-2001).

All four were also related to Father Patrick Cosgrave (1849-1894), a priest in the Diocese of Kildare and Leighlin and former curate in Ballinakill, who was from Clonegal, on the borders of Co Carlow and Co Wexford, near Bunclody, and who was only in his mid-40s when he died. There were family links too with Father Edward Kavanagh (1848-1925), who was also from Clonegal.

Father Patrick Cosgrave was the Administrator of Carlow Cathedral while Bishop Michael Comerford was the coadjutor bishop; he was a curate in Ballinakill, Co Laois, where his cousin Eliza was the wife of the hotelier Charles Comerford; and he was related to the Comerford family in many ways that are almost difficult to count.

There was a nexus of families in Clonegal in the 19th century that includes the Comerfod, Cosgrave, Doyle. Finn, Kavanagh and McDonnell families, and close inter-marriages between these families made many people first, second and third cousins in a complex web of kinships that is often difficult to untangle.

Patrick Cosgrave was born at Orchard House, Clonegal, Co Carlow, in 1849. His father was Nicholas Cosgrave (1803-1893), of Clonegal, Co Carlow, near Bunclody; his mother was Elizabeth Anne Comerford (1813-1893), of Castlequarter, Clohamon, Bunclody, Co Wexford, a daughter of Martin Comerford (ca 1777/1778-1840) of Castle Quarter and Knockanure House, Clohamon, near Newtownbarry (Bunclody), Co Wexford, fifth and youngest son of Edmund Comerford (1722-1788).

Patrick Cosgrave’s paternal grandmother, Anne (née McDonnell) Cosgrave (1766-1842), was a sister of Austin McDonnell (ca 1767-1842) of Clonegal, whose daughter Elizabeth Finn was the mother of Eliza Finn (1845-1931), who married Charles Comerford (1847-1891) of Ballinakill. Elizabeth (Cosgrave) Finn’s sister, Margaret Cosgrave (1803-1894), married William Kavanagh and was the mother of Father Edward Kavanagh (1848-1925), who also features in this story.

Patrick Cosgrave was one of three teenagers who came to live with Peter Doyle (ca 1820-ca 1910) and his wife Mary (Cosgrave) (1803-1884) at The Wastegrass in Tullow, Co Carlow, in the mid-1800s. Peter Doyle, it is said, was closely related to Michael Comerford (1830-1895), coadjutor Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin, and Mary Doyle was Patrick Cosgrave’s aunt.

Peter Doyle’s father was also Peter Doyle (1804-1851); his mother, Eleanor McDonnell (1808-1870), was a sister of Elizabeth (McDonnell) Finn (1810-1891), whose daughter Eliza married Charles Comerford (1847-1891) of Ballinakill. Peter Doyle’s paternal grandfather, James Doyle (1769-1839), was originally from Clonegal.

The younger Peter Doyle had married Mary Cosgrave, a sister of Patrick Cosgrave’s father, Edward Cosgrave. Peter and Mary Doyle had no children and the three boys who came to live with them were attending the Patrician Monastery School in Tullow to prepare them to begin studying for the priesthood.

The three, who became priests, were: Father Patrick Cosgrave, his cousin Father Edward Kavanagh, and Father J Dawson, SM, Dublin. The first cousins Patrick Cosgrave and Edward Kavanagh were both from Clonegal, Co Carlow, and they were nephews of Mary (Cosgrave) Doyle. Patrick Cosgrave’s sister, Mary Cosgrave, also came to live with the Doyles at The Wastegrass. Peter Doyle promised a gold watch to the first of the three young men to become a priest. The watch was won later by Father Dawson.

Patrick Cosgrave was educated at the Patrician Monastery, Tullow, and then entered Carlow College (1865-1873). He was ordained in 1873 for the Diocese of Kildare and Leighlin. He was a curate in Tullow, Co Carlow, Philipstown (now Daingean), Co Offaly, Carlow, Ballinakill, Co Laois, and Baltinglass, Co Wicklow, and then became the Administrator of Carlow Cathedral (1883-1887), while Michael Comerford was the coadjutor bishop.

However, his health was not able for the strain of the work in the cathedral town. The bishop arranged for him to exchange places with his cousin, Father Edward Kavanagh, curate of Ballinakill (1887-1893), and so Patrick Cosgrave returned to Ballinakill, where his cousin Eliza Comerford was living.

Even in Ballinakill, Patrick’s health was not equal to the work. At the invitation of Dr MJ Murphy, parish priest of Kildare, he spent some months in Kildare, helping there with parish work. He became curate of Ballyfin on 14 December 1893. But again he fell ill, and he died three months later on 23 March 1894.

His mother, was Elizabeth (née Comerford) Cosgrave, had died four months earlier on 14 November 1893, at the age of 80. His father, Nicholas Cosgrave of Clonegal, died eight days later on 22 November 1893 at the age of 90. They are buried in the Cosgrave family tomb along with Nicholas Cosgrave’s parents, Edward Cosgrave (1759-1834) and Anne (née McDonnell) Cosgrave (1766-1842).

Patrick Cosgrave’s sister, Mary Cosgrave (1857-1938), later inherited the Doyle farm at The Wastegrass. She married Garrett Moore of Canonsquarter, Tullow. They were the grandparents of Garrett Moore, The Wastegrass (died 2015), Paddy Moore, Tullow Hill, Mrs May Fox, Castlebar, Co Mayo, Father Nicholas Moore, parish priest of Borris, Co Carlow (died 2004), Sister Bernie Moore, Irish Sisters of Charity, Zambia (died 2007, Dublin), Mrs Rita Kearney, Kilconnor, Fenagh, Co Carlow, and Father Eddie Moore, former parish priest of Naas, Co Kildare.

Patrick Cosgrave’s cousin, Father Edward Kavanagh (1848-1925), was also from Clonegal, near Bunclody. His father was William Kavanagh (1796-1877) of Ballyredmond; his mother, Margaret Cosgrave (1803-1894), was a daughter of Edward Cosgrave and Anne (McDonnell) Cosgrave, and so he was also a first cousin of the Jesuit Father James Comerford (1885-1963).

Father Edward Kavanagh was ordained in Maynooth in 1873. Having served in various parishes, he was appointed parish priest of Ballon, Co Carlow, in 1894. During his three years there he added two porches to the Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, erected a marble high altar and reredos, and built national Schools in chiselled granite. He took a strong part in the anti-Parnellite campaign.

Edward Kavanagh was later Parish Priest of Monasterevin, Co Kildare, where Bishop Michael Comerford had been parish priest. He died in Naas in December 1925.

The list of parish priests in the Roman Catholic parish church in Monasterevin, including Michael Comerford and Edward Kavanagh (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The Elvery family in Dublin and links with Sephardic refugees

‘The Elvery family, A memory’ by Dorothy Elvery Kay (1938)

Patrick Comerford

Last week, when I reposted a Guardian report on the Sephardic legacy of the Jewish community in Thessaloniki, my friend and former Irish Times colleague Seamus Martin drew my attention to the Elvery family, a famous Dublin business family, who claimed to be descended from Spanish or Portuguese Sephardic refugees who had changed their name in England from Alvarez to Elvery.

I was reminded of these stories yesterday as I passed the Elvery’s shop on Suffolk Street, near Grafton Street, and 7 Saint Stephen’s Green, where one of the most famous members of the family, the artist Beatrice Moss Elvery, also known as Beatrice Campbell and Lady Glenavy, had exhibited in the 1920s and 1930s.

In his book The Jews of Ireland (1972), Louis Hyman refers to Lady Glenavy and her autobiography, but he does not explore her family’s Sephardic roots.

The elephant that became a symbol of the family business in 1847 was a pun on the similar sounds of Elvery and Elephant. But it also distracts from the family’s original name. The Alvarez family were Spanish silk merchants who had migrated to England, perhaps through Amsterdam, and the name appears among Portuguese and Spanish families associated with the Bevis Marks synagogue from 1677.

Jacob Jesserun Alvares, for example, was a merchant living in Houndsditch when he appears in the synagogue records in 1677. Jacob Alvares, a member of Bevis Marks, was living in Bethnal Green by 1728.

One branch of the family anglicised their name to Elvery and moved to Dublin in 1847, as the sign over the shop in Suffolk Street continues to remind all. The family opened their first shop in Sackville Street, now O’Connell Street, and began a family business that still continues.

Elvery's shop on Suffolk Street … a Dublin business for almost 200 years (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2000)

One of the best-known members of the family was the artist Beatrice Moss Campbell (1883-1970), Lady Glenavy, a member of the Arts and Crafts Movements in Dublin and London. She was born Beatrice Elvery on 30 April 1883, the second of seven children of William Elvery, who owned the family business in Dublin, and Theresa (Moss), a singer and music teacher, whose parents were English Quakers.

Beatrice’s spent her early childhood spent in Carrickmines, Co Dublin, where her family were members of the choir in the local Church of Ireland parish church. The family moved to Foxrock in 1896.

At the age of 13, she was sent to the Metropolitan School of Art in Dublin in 1896. There she met the future Sir William Orpen, then aged 18. She concentrated on sculpture under John Hughes and had great success, winning the Taylor scholarship three years in a row (1901-1903).

Beatrice was the model for Orpen’s paintings ‘Colleen’ and ‘Bridgit’ in 1909. They remained life-long friends, and he encouraged her throughout her career.

Beatrice is known for her illustrations of Padraic Pearse’s work Iosogan (1907) Violet Russell’s Heroes of the Dawn (1913). From 1908 to 1924, she designed Christmas and other cards and calendars for the Cualla Press run by ‘Lily’ and ‘Lolly’ Yeats, which continued to be issued until after World War II.

Sarah Purser urged Beatrice returned to the Metropolitan in Dublin in 1904 to study stained glass. Purser had founded An Tur Gloine studio to train Irish artisans to make church stained glass windows. Of the 23 windows made by the studio for the Sisters of Mercy Convent in Enniskillen, Co Fermanagh, six were made by Beatrice Elvery in 1905-1906, when she was only 22.

She remained at An Túr Gloine for six years, executing windows for Saint Stephen’s Church, Mount Street, Dublin; Saint Nicholas’s Church, Carrickfergus; and a war memorial in Carrickmines Church. Her window for a convent in Gort, Co Galway, led to a critical review of Purser’s studio by WB Yeats.

In 1912, Beatrice married Gordon Campbell, whose father, Lord Glenavy, later became Lord Chancellor of Ireland. Gordon Campbell became secretary of the Department of Industry and Commerce in the Irish Free State and in 1922 moved with his wife and children to Clonard, Terenure. Within six months, their home was burnt down by anti-treaty forces – they were local men who are said to have allowed Beatrice to save the children’s Christmas presents.

Gordon Campbell inherited the title at his father’s death in 1931, when Beatrice became Lady Glenavy. She was elected a full member of the Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA) in 1934.

She had a studio in Kildare Street and taught for a time in the Metropolitan School of Art. She also joined the more radical Dublin Painters’ Society and held in February 1935 a one-person show at their premises, 7 Saint Stephen’s Green. She helped establish the Dublin Drama League and assisted Shelah Richards in the production of two plays in 1936.

‘The beautiful Miss Elvery’ exhibited with the Dublin Painters’ Society at 7 Saint Stephen’s Green (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

Her social life in Dublin was busy, and she was an active member of the United Arts Club. Her circle of friends included Samuel Beckett, George Bernard Shaw, DH Lawrence, Yeats, Countess Markievicz and Lady Gregory, who called her ‘the beautiful Miss Elvery.’

The Campbells moved to a large Georgian house in Rathfarnham about 1941, and 20 years later they moved to a smaller house in Sandycove. After Gordon died in 1962, Beatrice published her memoirs, And today we will only gossip (1964).

Beatrice died on 21 May 1970. She was survived by her two sons, the writer and humourist Patrick Campbell and the novelist Michael Campbell. Her daughter Bridget, an Irish international lacrosse player and a talented scientist, was killed by a bomb during the London blitz.

A portrait of the family by her sister Dorothy Kay (1938) shows in the background Orpen’s 1909 oil Colleen, for which Beatrice was the model.

Some of her works are exhibited in the Ulster Museum, the National Gallery of Ireland, the Hugh Lane Dublin City Gallery and the Crawford Municipal Gallery in Cork. Neither main museums in Ireland has paintings by Beatrice Elvery, and the major auction houses in both Ireland and England regard her paintings as rare.

Carrickmines Church has a lectern designed by her mother, Theresa Moss Elvery, and executed by Beatrice in Paris in 1926, as well as four windows by Beatrice. Paul Larmour describes her lectern as ‘a remarkable piece of organic art nouveau’ and says ‘there is nothing else like it in Ireland.’

The elephant has been associated with the Elvery family since they opened shop in Dublin in 1847 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

Two colourful curates in Tarbert and Ballylongford: 1, Sir William Augustus Wolseley

The former Rectory, Tarbert, Co Kerry … was this once the home of the Revd William Augustus Wolseley? (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

I have been the priest-in-charge of the Rathkeale and Kilnaughtin Group of Parishes since January 2017, which includes a large part of North Kerry, from Tarbert and Ballylongford to Ballybunion, to Listowel and Moyvane or Newtownsandes.

Officially, the name of Tarbert parish is Kilnaughtin, recalling the older church to west of Tarbert. So, there is a deeply-embedded sense of history and continuity in ministry here in Saint Brendan’s.

The list of my predecessors in this group of parishes defy the stereotypical images of Church of Ireland clergy. We are not all like the plummy caricatures of ‘the more-tea-vicars’ found on television dramas. The variety of backgrounds of my predecessors shows what a mixture we are, not only in the Church of Ireland, but throughout all society in Ireland. Each one of us is a beautiful part of the mosaic that goes to make up Irish identity, and we need every colour and tincture, every shade and hue, to make that picture complete.

One of the most eccentric of them was a former curate in Kilnaughtin and Glin, the Revd Sir William Augustus Wolseley (1865-1950). He was the curate here for almost 20 years, from 1888 until 1906. I was interested to hear about when I arrived because, although we are not related, there have been connections over the generations between the Wolseley and Comberford and families over the centuries.

The first of the Wolseley family to come to Ireland was William Wolseley from Wolseley in Staffordshire, who fought alongside King William III at the Battle of the Boyne. Eventually, the family acquired a large estate outside Tullow, Co Carlow, and named it Mount Wolseley, now known as a golf resort and wedding venue.

The family tree is difficult to untangle at times, but the head of the Irish family had the hereditary title of baronet, which entitled him to put ‘Sir’ in front of his first name.

Frederick York Wolseley … gave the Wolseley name to one of Britain’s most famous car marques

Probably the most famous of all the Wolseley family members was Frederick York Wolseley, who in 1895 started producing one of Britain’s most famous car marques – the Wolseley. The name dominated the British motor industry for eight decades until 1975, when the last car with the Wolseley name was produced.

His brother, Field Marshal Viscount Wolseley, was one of Britain’s most important general s in the late 19th century. He was born in Dublin, in retirement lived in the Royal Hospital, Kilmainham, and is commemorated in a very decorative monument in Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin.

The Revd William Augustus Wolseley was the curate in Tarbert and Ballylongford for almost two decades. While Wolseley was the curate here, Dean Robert Beatty (1833-1921) was the Rector of Kilnaughtin (1878-1921). Beatty lived in Glin, and the 1901 census shows Wolseley lived in Rusheen in Ballylongford, although he may also lived for a time in the Rectory in Tarbert.

William was born on 19 April 1865, the only son of Charles Wolseley (1809-1889) and a grandson of the Revd William Wolseley, Rector of Dunaghy (1831-1846), Co Antrim. He was descended through an obscure branch of the family from the first baronet, Sir Richard Wolseley, and his father, Charles Wolseley, could never have expected that his only son was going to become the heir to this family title.

This was a strongly clerical branch of the Wolseley family, and the young William had two uncles who were priests, including the Ven Cadwallader Wolseley, who was Archdeacon of Glendalough, a canon of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, and Rector of Saint Andrew’s, Dublin.

So, the young William was probably thinking of ordination from an early age, without any thoughts of a title or celebrity.

William Augustus Wolseley was educated in Rathmines at a then-famous school run by the Revd Dr Charles William Benson and at Trinity College Dublin, where he graduated BA in 1887. He was awarded the Wall Biblical Scholarship in 1888, and earned a first class Theological Exhibition in 1889 that entitled him to the Divinity Testimonium, then the basic qualification from TCD for ordination in the Church of Ireland.

Within a year, he was ordained deacon in 1888 by the Archbishop of Dublin, Lord Plunket, on behalf of the Bishop of Limerick, and he was appointed curate of this parish. A year later, he was ordained priest by Charles Graves, Bishop of Limerick, Ardfert and Aghadoe.

Saint Brendan’s Church, Kilnaughtin, where William Wolseley was curate for 18 years (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Wolseley remained a curate in this parish for 18 years until 1906. During his time in this parish, he supplemented his income as a tutor to the Hewetson family, and his name appears only once in the parish baptismal records in Kilnaughtin.

He may have spent most of his time in Hewetson family household. But I still wonder what brought Wolseley to Tarbert.

Wolseley remained a curate in this parish for 18 years before moving to West Australia in 1906. He worked in two parishes there until he moved to England in 1920 to work as the curate in parishes from 1921 to 1927.

So, he had been ordained for almost 40 years and was in his early 60s when he was still working as a curate in a small rural parish in the north of England. Not where an aspiring priest might have expected to be at that stage in his life, considering he came from a titled family with many senior clerics among his close relatives and a senior, distinguished general as his second cousin.

What did he do for the next five years, between 1927 and 1932? I am not sure what he was doing, but during that time he had the bishop’s permission to officiate in the Diocese of Durham.

He was the Vicar of Alnham in rural Northumberland from 1932. That year, at the age of 67, he married Sarah Helen Grummitt from Grantham in Lincolnshire, on 16 June 1932. A year later, in 1933, he inherited the Wolseley title in the most unexpected way from his very distant cousin.

The story is told in Alnham that the news came one day by post so that nobody but the Wolseleys knew about it. That morning, the butcher from Rothbury arrived in the village in his van and knocked on the vicarage door, calling: ‘Butcher Mrs Wolseley.’ There was no reply, so he tried again: ‘Butcher Mrs Wolseley.’ This time the response was: ‘Lady Wolseley if you please.’

Australian newspapers that reported his inheritance described him as ‘a rather eccentric clergyman, notorious wherever he went for the prodigious rate at which he preached.’ I am not sure yet whether this means that he preached too quickly, far too often, or that he preached for far too long … I am still hoping to find out in the parish records.

The 11th baronet retired from parish ministry in 1942. He was then in his late 70s, and he died at the age of 84 on 19 February 1950. He had no children and the title passed to yet another distant cousin, a cobbler living in a four-room flat in Bromborough, Cheshire.

Sir Dick Wolseley, the ‘elevator baronet’ (Source (Wikipedia, WP:NFCC#4)

Sir William’s immediate predecessor, Sir Dick Wolseley (1872-1933), the tenth baronet, who was his first cousin once removed and worked as an elevator operator or ‘lift boy’; and Sir William’s immediate successor, Sir Garnet Wolseley (1915-1991), the 12th baronet, was his second cousin once removed and was a cobbler, born into poverty on Merseyside.

All three inherited their family title through a bewildering set of circumstances in an entangled family tree.

When Sir John Richard Wolseley (1834-1874), 6th Baronet, died aged 40, he was succeeded by his brother Sir Clement James Wolseley (1837-1889), probably the last of the family to live at Mount Wolseley. The estate was sold for £4,500 in 1925 by Sir John’s daughters to the Patrician Brothers.

Meanwhile, the title of baronet passed out in an ever-widening circle of distant cousins, and even the printed and online versions of the family tree are confusing and show many inconsistencies.

The eighth baronet, the Very Revd Dr Sir John Wolseley (1803-1890), was the Dean of Kildare (1859-1890) when he inherited the title in 1889. But he held the title for only three months when he died on 26 January 1890. In all, seven successive holders of the title have died without immediate, direct heirs.

The title of baronet in the Irish branch of the Wolseley family to passed out in an ever-widening circle of distant cousins, and even the printed and online versions of the family tree are confusing and show many inconsistencies.

The eighth baronet, the Very Revd Dr Sir John Wolseley (1803-1890), was the Dean of Kildare (1859-1890) when he inherited the title on 16 October 1889. He only held the title for three months, and died on 26 January 1890. In all, seven successive holders of the title have died without immediate, direct heirs.

The tenth baronet, Sir Reginald Beatty Wolseley (1872-1933), known as Dick Wolseley, was the son of a Dublin doctor. He inherited the family title when his cousin died in 1923, but he never used this title. Instead, he sought anonymity in self-imposed exile, working as an ‘elevator boy’ at the Black Hawk Bank Buildings in Waterloo, Iowa, for 18 years and living as plain Dick Wolseley.

He married his mother’s nurse, they separated a day later, they divorced, the divorce was annulled, and as Sir Reginald and Lady Wolseley moved to England.

Dick, Sir Reginald, died 18 months later near Ilfracombe in Devon on 10 July 1933. Only a few villagers attended his funeral in Berry Harbour; 12 farmers carried his coffin, and his wife was dressed entirely in white. And so the title passed to his distant cousin, the Revd Sir William Augustus Wolseley (1865-1950), who became the 11th baronet.

When the former curate of Tarbert died in 1950, it was not clear who was going to inherit his title.

But the Wolseley lineage had become so distant and dispersed by then that Debrett’s Peerage began an international search for an heir to the title. It seemed at the time that the heir would be a very distant cousin and two Americans vied for the title: Noel Wolseley, of Manchester, New Hampshire, and Charles William Wolseley, of Brooklyn, New York. The search seemed to be reaching a conclusion when a widow living in Wallasey, near Liverpool, Mrs Mary Alexandra Wolseley (née Read), claimed the title on behalf of her son, Garnet Wolseley, a 35-year-old shoemaker.

It was soon discovered that Mary’s late husband was descended from a line in the family that many had thought had died out in the 19th century. Experts from Debrett’s examined the competing claims. The American contenders were ruled out, and the quiet, pipe-smoking bachelor cobbler became the 12th baronet of Mount Wolseley, Co Carlow.

At the time, Garnet Wolseley was earning £5.10s a week as a shoemaker and each day rode a bicycle to work in a backstreet shop. His wife, Lillian Mary Ellison, had worked in a greengrocers and as a telephone operator in Liverpool, and they had lived ordinary working-class lives in post-war England until a genealogical quirk transformed them into Sir Garnet and Lady Wolseley.

Sir Garnet died in Canada on 3 October 1991. Since then, the title has not passed officially to a 13th baronet. The presumed baronet, Sir James Douglas Wolseley from Texas, has not been able to prove his claims to the title successfully, his name is not on the Official Roll of Baronets, and so the Wolseley title has been considered dormant since 1991.

Mount Wolseley House near Tullow, Co Carlow … sold in 1925 for £4,500 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

These notes were prepared to accompany the first of two stories recorded at Saint Brendan’s Church, Kilnaughtin (Tarbert), Co Kerry, as part of ‘Poetry With Paddy, Summertime on the Steeple Road’:

An evening to talk about Faith in a Changing Climate

Patrick Comerford

We had an interesting introduction to Christian concerns for the environment last night at an ecumenical meeting organised by the Limerick and Killaloe Diocesan Council for Mission.

The Revd Andrew Orr, who has recently moved to Youghal, Cork, from Tullow, Co Carlow, was speaking in the Woodlands Hotel, Adare. He identified the environmental issues facing us today, including air pollution, climate change, habitat loss, biodiversity loss, soil destruction and desertification.

He pointed out that one species of animal or plant disappears every day, and spoke of how the world’s wildlife population has declined by 52 per cent.

Climate change since industrial revolution has seen humans putting increasing amounts of greenhouse gases into the climate, especially carbon dioxide, and an increase in global temperatures. It has been hotter in the past, in the time of the dinosaurs, but, I thought, ‘Look at what happened to the dinosaurs.’

Today, tens of millions of people are threatened with death in what some scientists are already warning could be ‘climate genocide.’ The changing climate will create an increase in the numbers of refugees and migrants, and will mean people cannot produce enough food

In Ireland, we are already experiencing an increase in winter storms and changes in temperatures are increasing in frequency and becoming much more common.

The island nation of Tuvalu has nowhere that is more than 6 ft above water, and the whole country is in danger of disappearing.

He quoted the author Lynn White who blames many attitudes and much resistance today on a common Judaeo-Christian interpretation of Genesis 1: 38, which allows people to believe that nature and the environment are there to exploit rather than to care for. Christianity is often anthropocentric, putting humans above nature, with a hierarchical view of creation that we have inherited without thinking about critically.

But there is a better way of thinking Biblically, he told us. Psalm 148 says all creatures are called to praise God and Psalm 96 tells us the seas and the fields praise God.

Speaking of the need to re-examine past ways of thinking about that passage in Genesis, he argued that the concept of dominion is about looking after creation and not about doing what you want to, and to subdue is to enable productivity and not about abusing it.

He pointed out that the Covenant with Noah later in Genesis is a covenant with all living creatures. The Sabbath for the Land, the Jubilee Year, was an important ecological theme, with the land being left fallow for one year in seven.

In the New Testament, Saint Paul speaks of Christ as ‘the firstborn of all creation … by whom and through whom all things were created’ (Colossians 1), and says ‘all creation is groaning … in labour pains’ (Romans 8: 22-23).

In the Incarnation, God becomes part of creation, and in the Resurrection we see the transformation of all creation. The theologian Margaret Daly Denton speaks of how appropriate it is that Mary Magdalene mistakes the Risen Christ for the gardener, for he is the Master gardener of creation, the new Adam in the new Eden.

Care for creation not optional nor is it a hobby, Andrew said, but it is an integral part of the Gospel, and he developed a Trinitarian reflection of God the creator, Jesus the first-born of all creation and the Holy Spirit animating all creation.

We have a unique responsibility for the well-being of creation (Genesis 1: 26, 2: 15) that is not just about stewardship, but about interdependence. The Lord loves righteousness and justice (Psalm 33: 5), so this includes climate justice.

He quoted Pope Francis and Pope Bartholomew, who have said, ‘We often speak of an environmental crisis, but the crisis is not in the environment, the crisis is in the human heart.’

He also spoke of the work of Eco-Church congregations and what can be done in parishes.

We can celebrate environment at Harvest Festivals, in the church’s worship and prayer, in creative worship, the practicalities of the bread we use at the Eucharist, asking where the flowers come from, buying fair trade coffee and tea, selecting appropriate hymns and music, and celebrating Creation time (1 September to 4 October).

Practical things to do include insulation, reading metres regularly, monitoring energy use, timers and thermostats, using energy saving light bulbs, fixing water drips and leaks, installing water-saving devices, using appropriate cleaning materials and paints, recycled paper and envelopes, Fairtrade tea and coffee, supporting local suppliers, catering, crockery rather than disposable cups and plate, compostable materials. Local materials promote the local economy and reduce food miles.

Church land can be managed in wildlife friendly ways that include minimal use of weed-killers and insecticides, and that value old trees, hedges, walls and stones. Native plant species benefit wildlife, and he spoke of the value of bird-feeding stations, bird-nest boxes, bat boxes, and piles of leaves that benefit insects and hedgehogs.

He also spoke of Eco-Congregation Awards, and challenged us to consider where we invest money.

In the discussion afterwards, I pointed out that the Anglican Communion’s Fifth Mark of Mission reminds us that God longs for harmony in the whole of Creation, not just in the human family.

There was an opportunity too to talk about Faith in a Changing Climate and other valuable and useful environmental resource from the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), of which I am a trustee.

Climate change is a complex subject. For some, the issue seems so big it’s hard to imagine we can do anything to help. Others assume the issue is being dealt with already by the UN, governments and aid agencies.

This 32-page advocacy and church resources booklet offers an introductory guide to climate change, stories that show how the world church grapples with climate change, and church resources, including prayers and a Bible study.

You can read it here or order printed copies for you and your congregation.

Download Faith in a Changing Climate (PDF)

Rachel Parry, USPG Global Relations Director, says: ‘It seems the issue is so huge that many people choose to simply ignore the issues – but this path leads to a dying planet. We need to act now.’

‘To stop climate change, developed countries must be forced to burn less fuel. The solution is simple, but governments are reluctant to take action.’

Find out more and get involved.

The Revd Sir William Augustus Wolseley (1865-1950), an exceptional curate in Kilnaughtin and Aughavallin

The Rectory, Tarbert … was this the home of the Revd William Augustus Wolseley while he was the curate in Kilnaughtin parish? (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)

Patrick Comerford

Tarbert Historical and Heritage Society,

7.30 p.m., 14 October 2017,

The Bridewell, Tarbert, Co Kerry

Introduction and context

I am sure I am like many of my colleagues who come to a new parish and wonder who our predecessors are. Since early this year [20 January 2017], I have been the priest-in-charge of the Rathkeale and Kilnaughtin Group of Parishes, and soon after was made Canon Precentor of the three cathedrals in these dioceses.

In some ways I feel blessed that I know or have known so many of my predecessors. But, because of the amalgamation of parishes over the years, and the closure of many churches in North Kerry and West Limerick, I am never going to truly find out who all my predecessors were.

I imagine many of them prayerful and faithful priests and men of prayer. But some of them were mere careerists and pluralists, some were mad or bad … or both. It is interesting to learn about my predecessors in these parishes, and one of the most eccentric of them was a former curate in Kilnaughtin and Glin, the Revd Sir William Augustus Wolseley (1865-1950).

The Wolseley Arms … near the former seat of the Wolseley family near Rugeley, Staffordshire (Photograph: fatbadgers)

My delight at finding him here over a century ago is partly due to a long-term interest in the history of the Wolseley family. Wolseley is in mid-Staffordshire, between Stafford and Rugeley, north of Lichfield. The coats-of-arms of the Comberford and Wolseley families are inverted reflections of each other, and the families were related by marriage in the 16th century.

Wolseley and Comberford are about 20 miles apart, and one of my earliest contracts as a freelance journalist was to interview Sir Charles Wolseley of Wolseley for the Lichfield Mercury and the Rugeley Mercury in the early 1970s.

We have been in touch again in recent years, and then during a family wedding at the end of last year, I spent a weekend at Mount Wolseley, the ancestral home of Sir William and some other intriguing and eccentric Wolseley baronets.

Mount Wolseley House near Tullow, Co Carlow … home to generations of the Wolseley family and sold in 1925 for £4,500 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

I think this evening you are going to enjoy some of my stories of these eccentric Wolseleys, including Sir William’s immediate predecessor, Sir Dick Wolseley (1872-1933), the tenth baronet, who was his first cousin once removed and who worked as an elevator operator or ‘lift boy,’ and Sir William’s immediate successor, Sir Garnet Wolseley (1915-1991), the twelfth baronet, who was his second cousin once removed and who was a cobbler, born into poverty on Merseyside.

The Wolseley family in Ireland

Wolseley Family Tree (Table I, Patrick Comerford)

The first of the Wolseley family to come to Ireland was William Wolseley from Wolseley in mid-Staffordshire. He fought alongside King William III at the Battle of the Boyne.

William Wolseley died unmarried. His nephew Captain Richard Wolseley (died 1724), was a younger son in the Wolseley family, and bought the 2,500-acre estate of Mount Arran from Charles Butler, Earl of Arran, renaming it Mount Wolseley, which is on the outskirts of Tullow, Co Carlow. He was the father of both Sir William Wolseley, who inherited as the fifth baronet of Wolseley, Staffordshire, and his younger brother, Sir Richard Wolseley, MP for Carlow (1696-1769), inherited Mount Wolseley and became an Irish baronet.

So, Sir Richard Wolseley was the ancestor of the Revd Sir William Wolseley of Tarbert. The Irish baronets were heirs to the English family title, while the present English line, represented by Sir Charles Wolseley (born 1944), the 11th baronet, is descended from the Irish branch of the family, and the Irish branch of the family is in the line of succession to the English title.

The family tree is often very difficult to trace, names are often inherited making it difficult to tell cousins apart, and the Irish title regularly passes to distant cousins time and again, complicating the line of succession.

Frederick York Wolseley … gave the Wolseley name to one of Britain’s most famous car marques

Probably the most famous of all the Wolseley family members was Frederick York Wolseley, who in 1895 started producing one of Britain’s most famous car marques – the Wolseley. The name dominated the British motor industry for eight decades until 1975, when the last car with the Wolseley name was produced.

The memorial to Field Marshal Viscount Wolseley in Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

His brother, Field Marshal Viscount Wolseley, was one of Britain’s most important military leaders. He was born in Goldenbridge, near Inchicore, Dublin, and in retirement lived in the Royal Hospital, Kilmainham. He is commemorated in a very decorative monument in Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin.

William Augustus Wolseley’s career

Dean Robert Beatty’s grave in the former Saint Paul’s churchyard in Glin, Co Limerick (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)

The Revd William Augustus Wolseley was the curate in Kilnaughtin with Aughavallin for almost two decades, from 1888 until he moved to Australia in 1906. While Wolseley was the curate here, Dean Robert Beatty (1833-1921) was the Rector of Kilnaughtin (1878-1921), and from 1891 appears to have lived in Glin.

Dean Beatty was related to Admiral Beatty of World War I fame. He was the Rector of Kilnaughtin with Aughavallin from 1878 and Kilfergus (Glin) was joined to his parish in 1891. A senior priest in the diocese, Beatty was successively Canon Treasurer (1903-1905), Canon Chancellor (1905-1911) and Dean of Ardfert (1911-1917). He lived at Carnaville, Glin, with his sisters Rebecca and Louisa, and never married. When he died on 7 February 1921 at the age of 88, he was buried in the churchyard at Saint Paul’s Church, Glin, where his headstone says he was ‘40 years Rector of Kilnaughtin Parish.’

So, we know a lot about Dean Beatty. But neither the standard reference books nor the popular accounts of the unusual circumstances of William Wolseley’s life give much attention to the almost two decades he spent in these Church of Ireland parishes in Tarbert and Ballylongford.

William was born on 19 April 1865, the only son of Charles Wolseley (1809-1889) and a grandson of the Revd William Wolseley, Rector of Dunaghy (1831-1846), Co Antrim, in the Diocese of Connor. He was descended through an obscure branch of the family from the first baronet, Sir Richard Wolseley, and Charles Wolseley could never have expected that his only son was going to become the heir to this family title.

This was a strongly clerical branch of the Wolseley family, and the young William had two uncles who were priests, including the Ven Cadwallader Wolseley, who was Archdeacon of Glendalough, a canon of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, and Rector of Saint Andrew’s, Dublin.

So the young William was probably thinking of ordination from an early age, without any thoughts of a title or celebrity.

Saint Brendan’s Church, Kilnaughtin, where William Wolseley was curate for 18 years (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)

William Augustus Wolseley was educated in Rathmines at a then-famous school run by the Revd Dr Charles William Benson and at Trinity College Dublin, where he graduated BA in 1887. He was awarded the Wall Biblical Scholarship in 1888, and earned a first class Theological Exhibition in 1889 that entitled him to the Divinity Testimonium, then the basic qualification from TCD for ordination in the Church of Ireland.

Within a year, he was ordained deacon in 1888 by the Archbishop of Dublin, Lord Plunket, on behalf of the Bishop of Limerick, and he was appointed curate of the parish of Kilnaughtin with Aughavallin in the Diocese of Ardfert and Aghadoe. In 1889, he was ordained priest by Charles Graves, the Bishop of Limerick, Ardfert and Aghadoe.

William Wolseley remained a curate in this parish for 18 years until 1906. During his time in this parish, he supplemented his income as a tutor to the Hewetson family, and his name appears only once in the parish baptismal records in Kilnaughtin.

He may have spent most of his time in Hewetson family household. But what brought Wolseley to this part of Ireland and to this diocese?

He was a second cousin of the Ven William Hulbert Wolseley (1821-1899), then Vicar of Kilrush, Co Clare (1862-1899) and Archdeacon of Kilfenora (1885-1899), and also, briefly, one of my predecessors in so far as he too was the Precentor of Killaloe (1857-1859).

But this connection was too remote to explain how William Wolseley came to this parish: at the time, Kilrush was less accessible from Tarbert than it is today, and the Dioceses of Limerick and Ardfert were not united with the Diocese of Killaloe until 1976, almost a century later.

William Wolseley remained a curate in this parish for 18 years before moving to West Australia in 1906. In Australia, Wolseley was the Rector of Ravensthorpe, West Australia (1906-1910), and then worked in Denmark, West Australia (1910-1920). He returned to England in 1920 to work in parishes in the Diocese of Durham and the Diocese of Newcastle. He was the Senior Curate of Christ Church, Felling (1921-1923), and Curate of Saint James, Burnopfield (1923-1927).

So, he had been ordained for almost 40 years and was in his early 60s when he was still working as a curate in a small rural parish in the north of England. Not where an aspiring priest might have expected to be at that stage in his life, considering he came from a titled family with many senior clerics among his close relatives and a senior, distinguished general who was his second cousin.

What did he do for the next five years, between 1927 and 1932? I am not sure what he was doing, but during that time he had the bishop’s permission to officiate in the Diocese of Durham.

He was the Vicar of Alnham in rural Northumberland from 1932. That year, at the age of 67, he married Sarah Helen Grummitt, daughter of William Cotton Grummitt of Grantham, Lincolnshire, on 16 June 1932. A year later, in 1933, he inherited the Wolseley title in the most unexpected way from his very distant cousin.

The story is told in the parish of Alnham that the news came one day by post so that nobody but the Wolseleys knew about it. That morning, the butcher from Rothbury arrived in the village in his van and knocked on the vicarage door, calling: ‘Butcher Mrs Wolseley.’ There was no reply, so he tried again: ‘Butcher Mrs Wolseley.’ This time the response was: ‘Lady Wolseley if you please.’

Australian newspapers that reported his inheritance described him as ‘a rather eccentric clergyman, notorious wherever he went for the prodigious rate at which he preached.’ I am not sure yet whether this means that he preached too quickly, far too often, or that he preached for far too long … I am still hoping to find out in the parish records.

The 11th baronet retired from parish ministry in 1942. He was then in his late 70s, and he died at the age of 84 on 19 February 1950. He had no children and the title passed to yet another distant cousin, a cobbler living in a four-room flat in Bromborough, Cheshire.

Inheriting the title

The Wolseley Family Tree (Table II, Patrick Comerford, 2017)

William Augustus Wolseley has direct connections with two extraordinary people as the immediate successor and the immediate predecessor, successively, of the ‘elevator baronet’ and the ‘cobbler baronet,’ all three inheriting a family title through a bewildering set of circumstances in an entangled family tree.

When Sir John Richard Wolseley (1834-1874), 6th Baronet, died aged 40, he was succeeded in the title by his brother Sir Clement James Wolseley (1837-1889), probably the last of the family to live at Mount Wolseley. The estate was sold for £4,500 in 1925 by Sir John’s daughters to the Patrician Brothers, who were founded in Tullow in 1808 by Bishop Daniel Delaney.

Meanwhile, the title of baronet in the Irish branch of the Wolseley family began to pass out in an ever-widening circle of distant cousins, and even the printed and online versions of the family tree are confusing and show many inconsistencies.

The eighth baronet, the Very Revd Dr Sir John Wolseley (1803-1890), was the Dean of Kildare (1859-1890) when he inherited the title on 16 October 1889. He only held the title for three months, and died on 26 January 1890. In all, seven successive holders of the title have died without immediate, direct heirs.

Sir Dick Wolseley, the ‘elevator baronet’ (Source: WP:NFCC#4)

The tenth baronet, Sir Reginald Beatty Wolseley (1872-1933), known as Dick Wolseley, was the son of a Dublin doctor, Dr Cadwalader Brooke Wolseley (1845-1884). He was born in Dunfanaghy, Co Donegal, and was probably less aware of the Wolseley title than the fact that he was a cousin of Admiral Beatty.

He inherited the family title when his cousin died in 1923, but he never used this title. Instead, he sought anonymity in self-imposed exile, working as an ‘elevator boy’ at the Black Hawk Bank Buildings in Waterloo, Iowa, for 18 years and living as plain Dick Wolseley.

That is, until his secret came out in May 1930. His mother’s dying wish was to visit her son who had become Sir Reginald Wolseley. She persuaded him to return to England. A day after her arrival in Iowa, Dick married his mother’s nurse, Marian Elizabeth Baker, a woman who was 18 years his junior. The day after their marriage, Marian returned to England on the understanding that he would follow her.

But the new Lady Wolseley realised that Dick, or Sir Reginald, was too set in his ways and that he was unwilling to move. He claimed he had taken the title and married her out of gratitude for the way she had cared for his mother. ‘I took the title for my wife,’ he said, ‘on marrying her out of gratitude for what she did for my mother. The title will be of advantage to her in English society. A lady is a lady over there.’

Dick obtained a divorce from Marian on the grounds that she had ‘harassed him’ with telegrams trying to persuade him to return to England. However, she was not going to give way too easily. She returned to Iowa and in January 1932, she persuaded him to move, their divorce was annulled and Sir Reginald and Lady Wolseley moved to England.

Dick, Sir Reginald, died 18 months later near Ilfracombe in Devon on 10 July 1933. Only a few villagers attended his funeral in Berry Harbour; 12 farmers carried his coffin, and his wife was dressed entirely in white. Lady Wolseley, who became a Justice of the Peace, died on 20 June 1934. Meanwhile the title passed to yet another distant cousin, the Revd Sir William Augustus Wolseley (1865-1950), who had succeeded as 11th baronet.

The Wolseley Family Tree (Table III, Patrick Comerford, 2017)

When the former curate of Kilnaughtin died in 1950, it was not clear who was going to inherit the title.

When he inherited the title, Sir Garnet Wolseley was then earning £5.10s a week as a shoe-maker and he rode on a bicycle to work in a backstreet shop each day when he became the 12th baronet.

By then, the Wolseley lineage had become so distant and dispersed that Debrett’s Peerage began an international search for an heir to the title. It seemed at the time that the heir would be a very distant cousin and two Americans vied for the title: Noel Wolseley, of Manchester, New Hampshire, and Charles William Wolseley, of Brooklyn, New York. The search seemed to be reaching a conclusion when a widow living in Wallasey, near Liverpool, Mrs Mary Alexandra Wolseley (née Read), claimed the title on behalf of her son, Garnet Wolseley, a 35-year-old shoemaker.

It was soon discovered that Mary’s late husband was descended from a line in the family that many had thought had died out in the 19th century. Experts from Debrett’s examined the competing claims. The American contenders were ruled out, and the quiet, pipe-smoking bachelor cobbler became the 12th baronet of Mount Wolseley, Co Carlow.

The new Sir Garnet’s wife, Lillian Mary Ellison, had been a telephone operator in Liverpool, and they lived ordinary working-class lives in post-war England until a genealogical quirk transformed them into international curiosities as Sir Garnet and Lady Wolseley.

Lilian and Garnet had been married on 12 August 1950 in Wallasey Town Hall in Cheshire. They had known each other for 12 years, since they worked together in a grocery shop in Wallasey. Now a genealogical quirk of fate transformed them into international curiosities as Sir Garnet and Lady Wolseley. A quiet, pipe-smoking cobbler had suddenly become the 12th baronet of Mount Wolseley, Co Carlow, but this new-found accidental status brought no wealth, property or privilege. Overwhelmed by the media attention, they emigrated in June 1951 to Canada, where Lady Wolseley’s uncle, Andrew Ellison, lived in Brantford.

‘In Canada, I hope to live the life of a lady,’ she said. But they soon found there are few class distinctions in Canada and they became merely objects of curiosity. They moved from one address to another, and Sir Garnet, who liked to be known as George, worked as a press operator at Cockshutt Farm Equipment and later as a gardener at the city parks department, until he retired in 1979. Lady Wolseley worked for a while at Bell Telephone and at a sweet shop.

Sir Garnet died in Canada on 3 October 1991. Lady Wolseley died at Brantford General Hospital at the age of 94.

Since Sir Garnet’s death, the title has not passed officially to a 13th baronet. The presumed baronet, Sir James Douglas Wolseley from Texas, has not been able to prove his claims to the title successfully, his name is not on the Official Roll of Baronets, and so the baronetcy has been considered dormant since 1991.

Robbing the Crown Jewels

The inscription on the vestry doors in Saint Bartholomew’s Church, Ballsbridge … erected in memory of Athelstane Wolseley, a former churchwarden and parish treasurer (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

For some time in Saint Bartholomew’s Church, Ballsbridge, I have noticed a wooden piece above the door into the sacristy, with a simple but fading carved inscription that reads: ‘A.G. Wolseley (1858-1933) In Christ.’ Above is a colourful image of the Visit of the Magi.

I wondered who he was and found myself on a trail the led through Edwardian scandals, the theft of the Irish Crown Jewels, a brutal murder during the Irish War of Independence and blackmail in this family of eccentric baronets.

Athelstane George Wolseley was born in Dublin in 1858, the son of Richard J Wolseley, an engineer, and his wife, Elizabeth Anne (née Hughes). He was a clerk in the Irish Law Commission and for many years he shared household arrangements with Sir Arthur Edward Vicars, Ulster King-at-Arms, who was at the centre of a scandal following the theft of the Irish ‘crown jewels’ from Dublin Castle in 1907.

Wolseley was at the centre of one of the early controversies involving Saint Bartholomew’s Church. In 1890, he presented a brass sanctuary cross to the church in memory of his mother, Elizabeth (née Hughes), who died on 13 May 1887. The Select Vestry agreed to the cross being placed behind the altar. Acting on behalf of the Protestant Defence Association, Colonel Fox Grant complained to the Diocesan Court in 1892. The controversy spilled over into the pages of the Irish Ecclesiastical Gazette (now the Church of Ireland Gazette), the Church Times, The Irish Times, the Daily Express and other daily newspapers.

Grant eventually took his case to the Court of the General Synod, which upheld his appeal in 1894, and the cross was moved to another position, but the controversy continued.

Sir Arthur Vicars … sacked after the theft of the Irish Crown Jewels from Dublin Castle

Wolseley and Sir Arthur Vicars had lived together for some time in the 1890s as guests of Canon Richard Travers Smith in Saint Bartholomew’s Vicarage on Clyde Road, and in 1897 Wolseley was the People’s Churchwarden of Saint Bartholomew’s. By the 1901 census, when Wolseley was 42, the Census shows he and Vicars were living at 80 Wellington Road.

Vicars was one of Ireland’s distinguished experts on heraldry and genealogy. He had a distinguished career until 1907 and the theft of the Irish Crown Jewels. As Registrar of the Order of Saint Patrick, Vicars had custody of the insignia of the order, also known as the crown jewels. They were found to be missing on 6 July 1907, four days before a visit to Dublin by King Edward VII.

A Viceregal Commission was set up in January 1908 to investigate the theft of the crown jewels. Vicars and his barrister Tim Healy, later Governor General of the Irish Free State, refused to attend the commission’s hearings. The commission’s findings were published on 25 January 1908, and Vicars was dismissed as Ulster King of Arms five days later.

The theft of the regalia also drew attention to the living arrangements of Wolseley and Vicars. The Earl of Aberdeen, who was Lord Lieutenant of Ireland and the last person to wear the regalia, was shocked when he read a secret police report alleging ‘scandalous conduct’ by the Ulster King of Arms.

Vicars was defended by his half-brother, Pierce Charles de Lacy O’Mahony, of Grangecon, Co Wicklow, relying on evidence given by Athelstane Wolseley, then the principal clerk in the Land Commission and a churchwarden of Saint Bartholomew’s.

Canon Richard Travers Smith (1831-1906) … Vicar of Saint Bartholomew’s (1871-1905)

Under questioning, Wolseley told O’Mahony: ‘I cannot conceive anyone bringing such an accusation against your brother … except for the purpose of blackmailing or from some malignant motive … I know what a high opinion [Canon Travers Smith] had of your brother.’

Some years ago, in a letter to The Irish Times in 2000, Gregory Allen compared ‘the hounding of Vicars with the treatment of Roger Casement in 1916.’ George Bernard Shaw recalled in 1927: ‘You could go nowhere in London at the time without hearing this scandal whispered.’

Vicars left Dublin and moved to Kilmorna, south of Tarbert and between Listowel, Co Kerry, and Athea. He married Gertrude Wright in Ballymore, Co Wicklow, on 4 July 1917. He continued to protest his innocence in the ‘Crown Jewels’ theft until his death, even including bitter references to the affair in his will.

When his house was ransacked in 1920, the raiders may have thought he had secreted away the Crown Jewels. His house was burned down in the night and he was shot dead before his wife on 14 April 1921. A week later, he was buried in Leckhampton, Gloucestershire. His widow never returned to live in Ireland.

In 1927, the recovery of the regalia, the Grand Master’s jewelled badge and star were offered in return for the payment of a ransom by President WT Cosgrave, but they have never been seen in public since then, and their whereabouts remain a mystery.

The Wolseley family grave in Mount Jerome, Harold’s Cross (Photograph: Yvonne Russell/Ireland Genealogy Projects Archives)

For his part, Athelstane Wolseley continued to live in Ballsbridge, and in 1908 and again in 1919, he was the Vicar’s Churchwarden of Saint Bartholomew’s, and People’s Churchwarden in 1914. He lived alone at 48 Wellington Road (1911, 1913). In 1928, as the Parish Treasurer of Saint Bartholomew’s, he organised a fund the defray the costs incurred by the Vicar, the Revd Walter Cadden Simpson, who had been strictly admonished by the Ecclesiastical Courts for infringing the canons of the Church of Ireland. Simpson had to pay the costs, which came to more than £500, but Wolseley’s fundraising, including £125 brought in through an appeal in the Church Times, met the costs within a year.

When Wolseley died some years later on 8 October 1933, he was buried with his parents Richard and Lizzie Wolseley and his elder brother William in Mount Jerome Cemetery in Harold’s Cross, Dublin. The new vestry doors in Saint Bartholomew’s erected in his memory in 1934 were designed by the architect and town planner Manning Robertson. Above the doors, the mosaic of the Epiphany is the work of Kate O’Brien and is a memorial to Canon Walter Simpson (1872-1958), former Vicar of Saint Bartholomew’s (1918-1951).

Vicars, with his genealogical expertise, ought to have known which branch of the Wolseley family his one-time companion was descended from, and that he was eventually in line to succeed to the family title, given the many Wolseley title holders who were dying without heirs. If he did know this, it is curious then that this line of descent never appeared at the time in either Debrett’s Peerage or Burke’s Peerage.

Even the printed and online versions of the family tree are confusing and show many inconsistencies. However, my own recent research confirms Athelstane Wolseley’s line of descent within the Wolseley family.

It is curious to note that had Athelstane Wolseley ever married and had children, the family title would have passed to his descendants instead of the former Merseyside cobbler, Sir Garnet Wolseley.

As for Mount Wolseley near Tullow, Co Carlow, when Sir John Richard Wolseley (1834-1874), 6th Baronet, died aged 40, he was succeeded in the title by his brother Sir Clement James Wolseley (1837-1889), probably the last of the family to live at Mount Wolseley. The estate was sold for £4,500 in 1925 by Sir John’s daughters to the Patrician Brothers. They ran it as a school, and today it is a popular golf resort and wedding venue and hotel.

Mount Wolseley House near Tullow, Co Carlow … sold in 1925 for £4,500 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

(Revd Canon Professor) Patrick Comerford is Priest-in-Charge of the Rathkeale and Kilnaughtin Group of Parishes. This paper was prepared for the Tarbert Historical and Heritage Society on 14 October 2017.

Following in the footsteps of an ‘eccentric’ and ‘prodigious’ curate

Inside Saint Brendan’s Church, Kilnaughtin, in Tarbert, Co Kerry … for two decades, the Revd Sir William Augustus Wolseley was curate (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

I was involved in my first service in Saint Brendan’s Church, Kilnaughtin, in Tarbert, Co Kerry, on Sunday morning [Sunday 29 January 2017], presiding and preaching at the Eucharist. Because this was the fifth Sunday in the month, this was also my first united service for the Rathkeale and Kilnaughtin Group of Parishes.

I am beginning to learn who my predecessors were in the four churches in this group of parishes, spread across west Limerick and north Kerry. I was delighted to learn that a former curate in Kilnaughtin was the Revd Sir William Augustus Wolseley (1865-1950).

He was the curate in Kilnaughtin with Aughavallin for 18 years, from 1888 until he moved to Australia in 1906. While Wolseley was the curate here, the Rector of Kilnaughtin was Canon Robert Beatty (1878-1911).

Neither the standard reference books not the popular accounts of the unusual circumstances of Wolseley’s life give much attention to the almost two decades he spent in these Church of Ireland parishes in Tarbert and Ballylongford. But Wolseley has direct connections with two extraordinary people as the immediate successor and predecessor, successively, of the ‘elevator baronet’ and the ‘cobbler baronet,’ all three inheriting a family title through a bewildering set of circumstances in an entangled family tree.

During a family wedding at the end of last year, I spent a weekend at Mount Wolseley, the ancestral home of these three fascinating Wolseley baronets. But I have had a long interest in the history of the Wolseley family.

The Wolseley Arms … near the former seat of the Wolseley family near Rugeley, Staffordshire (Photograph: fatbadgers)

Wolseley is in mid-Staffordshire, between Stafford and Rugeley, north of Lichfield. The coats-of-arms of the Comberford and Wolseley families are inverted reflections of each other, and the families were related by marriage in the 16th century. Wolseley and Comberford are about 20 miles apart, and one of my earliest contracts as a freelance journalist was to interview Sir Charles Wolseley of Wolseley for the Lichfield Mercury and the Rugeley Mercury over 45 years ago.

The first of the Wolseley family to come to Ireland was William Wolseley from Wolseley in Staffordshire. He fought alongside King William III at the Battle of the Boyne and later bought the 2,500-acre estate of Mount Arran from Charles Butler, Earl of Arran, renaming it Mount Wolseley. When William Wolseley died unmarried, the estate passed his nephew Richard Wolseley, who was MP for Carlow from 1703 to 1713 and a younger brother of Sir William Wolseley, 5th Baronet, of Wolseley, Staffordshire.

Probably the most famous of all the Wolseleys was Frederick York Wolseley, who in 1895 started producing one of Britain’s most famous car marques – the Wolseley. The name dominated the British motor industry for eight decades until 1975, when the last car with the Wolseley name was produced.

Mount Wolseley House near Tullow, Co Carlow … home to generations of the Wolseley family (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

When Sir John Richard Wolseley (1834-1874), 6th Baronet, died aged 40, he was succeeded in the title by his brother Sir Clement James Wolseley (1837-1889), probably the last of the family to live at Mount Wolseley. The estate was sold for £4,500 in 1925 by Sir John’s daughters to the Patrician Brothers, who were founded in Tullow in 1808 by Bishop Daniel Delaney.

Meanwhile, the title of baronet in the Irish branch of the Wolseley family began to pass out in an ever-widening circle of distant cousins, and even the printed and online versions of the family tree are confusing and show many inconsistencies.

The eighth baronet, the Very Revd Dr Sir John Wolseley (1803-1890), was the Dean of Kildare (1859-1890) when he inherited the title on 16 October 1889. He only held the title for three months, and died on 26 January 1890. In all, five successive holders of the title died without heirs.

The tenth baronet, Sir Reginald Beatty Wolseley (1872-1933) was the son of a Dublin doctor. He inherited the family title when his cousin died in 1923, but he never used his title. Instead, he sought anonymity in self-imposed exile, working as an ‘elevator boy’ at the Black Hawk Bank Buildings in Waterloo, Iowa, for 18 years and living as plain Dick Wolseley.

That is, until his secret came out in May 1930. His mother’s dying wish was to visit Sir Reginald and persuade him to return to England. A day after her arrival in Iowa, Sir Reginald married his mother’s nurse, Marian Elizabeth Baker, a woman who was 18 years his junior. The day after their marriage, Marian returned to England on the understanding that he would follow her.

But the new Lady Wolseley realised that Sir Reginald was too set in his ways and that he was unwilling to move. He claimed he had taken the title and married her out of gratitude for the way she had cared for his mother. ‘I took the title for my wife,’ he said, ‘on marrying her out of gratitude for what she did for my mother. The title will be of advantage to her in English society. A lady is a lady over there.’

He obtained a divorce on the grounds that his wife ‘harassed him’ with telegrams trying to persuade him to return to England. However, she was not going to give way too easily. She returned to Iowa and in January 1932, she persuaded him to move, their divorce was annulled and Sir Reginald and Lady Wolseley moved to England.

Sir Reginald died 18 months later near Ilfracombe in Devon on 10 July 1933. Only a few villagers attended his funeral in Berry Harbour; 12 farmers carried his coffin, and his wife was dressed entirely in white. Lady Wolseley, who became a Justice of the Peace, died on 20 June 1934. Meanwhile the title passed to yet another distant cousin, the Revd Sir William Augustus Wolseley (1865-1950), who had succeeded as 11th baronet.

He was born on 19 April 1865, the only son of Charles Wolseley (1809-1889) and a grandson of the Revd William Wolseley, Rector of Dunaghy (1831-1846), Co Antrim, in the Diocese of Connor. They were descended through an obscure branch of the family from the first baronet, Sir Richard Wolseley, and Charles Wolseley could never have expected his only son was going to become heir to this title.

This was a strongly clerical branch of the Wolseley family, and the young William had two uncles who were priests, including the Ven Cadwallader Wolseley, who was Archdeacon of Glendalough, a canon of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, and Rector of Saint Andrew’s, Dublin.

So the young William was probably thinking of ordination from an early age, without any thoughts of a title or celebrity.

William Augustus Wolseley was educated in Rathmines at the school run by the Revd Dr Charles William Benson and at Trinity College Dublin, where he graduated BA in 1887.

Within a year, he was ordained deacon in 1888 by the Archbishop of Dublin, Lord Plunket, on behalf of the Bishop of Limerick, and he was appointed curate of the parish of Kilnaughtin with Aughavallin in the Diocese of Ardfert and Aghadoe. In 1889, he was ordained priest by Charles Graves, the Bishop of Limerick, Ardfert and Aghadoe.

William Wolseley remained a curate in this parish for 18 years before moving to Australia in 1906. There he was the Rector of Ravensthorpe, West Australia (1906-1910), and Denmark West Australia (1910-1920), before returning to England in 1920 to work in parishes in the Diocese of Durham and the Diocese of Newcastle. He was the Senior Curate of Christ Church, Felling (1921-1923), and Curate of Saint James, Burnopfield (1923-1927), and later had permission to officiate in the Diocese of Durham.

He was the Vicar of Alnham in rural Northumberland from 1932. That year, at the age of 67, he married Sarah Helen Grummitt, daughter of William Cotton Grummitt of Grantham, Lincolnshire, on 16 June 1932.

A year later, in 1933, he inherited the Wolseley title most unexpectedly from his very distant cousin. The story is told in the parish that the news came one day by post so that nobody but the Wolseleys knew about it. That morning, the butcher from Rothbury arrived in the village in his van and knocked on the vicarage door, calling: ‘Butcher Mrs Wolseley.’ There was no reply, so he tried again: ‘Butcher Mrs Wolseley.’ This time the response was: ‘Lady Wolseley if you please.’

Australian newspapers that reported his inheritance described him as ‘a rather eccentric clergyman, notorious wherever he went for the prodigious rate at which he preached.’ I am not sure yet whether this means that he preached too quickly, far too often, or that he preached for far too long … perhaps I shall find out in the parish records.

The 11th baronet retired from parish ministry in 1942, and he died at the age of 84 on 19 February 1950. He had no children and the title passed to another distant cousin, a cobbler living in a four-room flat in Bromborough, Cheshire. Garnet Wolseley was then earning £5.10s a week as a shoe-maker and he rode on a bicycle to work in a backstreet shop each day when he became the 12th baronet.

The new Sir Garnet’s wife, Lillian Mary Ellison, had been a telephone operator in Liverpool, and they lived ordinary working-class lives in post-war England until a genealogical quirk transformed them into international curiosities as Sir Garnet and Lady Wolseley.

By then, the Wolseley lineage had become so distant and dispersed that Debrett’s Peerage began an international search for an heir to the title. It seemed at the time the heir would be a very distant cousin and two Americans vied for the title, Noel Wolseley, of Manchester, New Hampshire, and Charles William Wolseley, of Brooklyn, New York. The search seemed to be reaching a conclusion when a widow living in Wallasey, near Liverpool, Mary Alexandra Wolseley (née Read) claimed the title on behalf of her son, Garnet Wolseley, a 35-year-old shoemaker.

It was soon discovered that her late husband was descended from a line in the family that many had thought had died out in the 19th century. Experts from Debrett’s examined the competing claims. The American contenders were ruled out, and the quiet, pipe-smoking bachelor cobbler became the 12th baronet of Mount Wolseley, Co Carlow.

On 12 August 1950, the new baronet had married Lillian Ellison in Wallasey Town Hall in Cheshire. They had known each other for 12 years, since they worked together in a grocery shop in Wallasey.

A Wolseley memorial in Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

A genealogical quirk of fate had transformed them into international curiosities as Sir Garnet and Lady Wolseley. A quiet, pipe-smoking cobbler had suddenly become the 12th baronet of Mount Wolseley, Co Carlow, but this new-found accidental status brought no wealth, property or privilege. Overwhelmed by the media attention, they emigrated in June 1951 to Canada, where Lady Wolseley’s uncle, Andrew Ellison, lived in Brantford.

‘In Canada, I hope to live the life of a lady,’ she said. But they soon found there are few class distinctions in Canada and they became merely objects of curiosity. They moved from one address to another, and Sir Garnet, who liked to be known as George, worked as a press operator at Cockshutt Farm Equipment and later as a gardener at the city parks department, until he retired in 1979. Lady Wolseley worked for a while at Bell Telephone and at a sweet shop.

Sir Garnet died in Canada on 3 October 1991. Lady Wolseley died at Brantford General Hospital at the age of 94.

Since Sir Garnet’s death, the title has not passed officially to a 13th baronet. The presumed baronet, Sir James Douglas Wolseley from Texas, has not been able to prove his claims to the title successfully, his name is not on the Official Roll of the Baronetage, and so the baronetcy has been considered dormant since 1991.

Soon after Wolseley left Kilnaughtin, his rector, Robert Beatty became Dean of Ardfert (1911-1917). In Saint Brendan’s Church on Sunday morning, I searched in vain for any mention of the Revd Sir William Augustus Wolseley who had served this parish faithfully for almost two decades. And so I headed off in search of Tarbert Island and the Tarbert to Killimer ferry.