Kilmorey papers

Context

Creator(s): Needham family, Earls of Kilmorey, County Down

• Administrative History ↴

  The founder of the Kilmorey family's Irish estates, Sir Nicholas Bagenal, fled from Staffordshire to Ireland in 1539, having killed a man in a brawl. He entered the service of Conn O'Neill, 1st Earl of Tyrone, who obtained a royal pardon for him in 1544. By 1550 his prowess as a soldier had earned him the office of Marshal of the King's Army in Ireland and a place on the Irish Privy Council. Nicholas’s son Sir Henry married, in 1577, Eleanor, third daughter of Sir John Savage of Rock Savage by Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Thomas Manners, of Rutland. His eldest son, Arthur, [was] a minor [when his father was killed leading a disastrous attack on his brother-in-law, Hugh O'Neill, 2nd Earl of Tyrone, at the Battle of the Yellow Ford, near Armagh, in 1598]... . Arthur Bagenal married Magdalen, eldest daughter and co-heiress of Sir Richard Trevor of Trevallyn. The only issue of this marriage was a son, Nicholas, who married, in 1671, Sydney, daughter of Roger Grosvenor of Eaton, in Cheshire, ancestor of the present Duke of Westminster. In 1686 he married secondly Lady Anne Charlotte Bruce, sixth daughter of the 2nd Earl of Elgin. They had one child, Elizabeth, who married Rev. Henry Rowlands, author of Mona Antiqua. Nicholas Bagenal was Member for Anglesey in 1673 and died leaving no male issue, thus ending the male line of his family. By his will, dated 13 November 1708, he divided all his estates in Anglesey, Carnarvon and elsewhere in England and Wales, and also in Down, Louth and Armagh in the Kingdom of Ireland, to his cousins, Edward Bayly of Gorsewen in the county of Carnarvon, and Robert Needham of the Isle of Jamaica. In 1715/16 a partition of the estate took place by which Sir Edward Bayly took the Carlingford [estate] and a moiety of some [Co. Down] townlands with the Welsh property, while ... Needham took the Newry and Mourne estate. ... The genealogy of the senior, or Kilmorey, branch of the family is well-documented in successive Peerages; and as the Kilmoreys did nothing in particular during the 17th and 18th centuries (except die young) Following the original grant of the Lordships of Newry and Mourne to Sir Nicholas Bagenal in the reign of Edward VI, a patent of 1613 (D2638/A/9) confirmed '... to [his grandson] Arthur Bagenal Esq., his heirs and assigns, the town of Newry, with all the demesne lands ... of the dissolved monastery, the manor, lordship, and castle of Greencastle, the lordship, country or territory of Mourne with two islands in the main sea; the manor of Carlingford with the monastery and its appurtenances, and the lands of Cooley; the ferry between Carlingford and Killowen; the customs and anchorage, and certain customs of goods and merchandise imported into or exported from Carlingford; the territory of Omeath, and all wrecks of sea happening on these properties. By virtue of his patent the proprietor is entitled to the tithes of the Lordship of Newry, and has the right of presentation to the rectory ...'.{D2638/E/6-7.} After the partition of 1716 and whatever sales of land took place in the 1760s, the townlands in the Mourne, or Kilkeel and Greencastle, estate of the Needham family, as itemised in a rental of 1810 (D2638/G/81) -Extracted from a full account of the Kilmorey Papers in the PRONI catalogue: https://www.nidirect.gov.uk/proni

• Archival History ↴

  Although the largest single deposit of papers - particularly family correspondence - was received in 1993, over a long preceding period components of the archive had been deposited in PRONI by various members and agents of the Kilmorey family, under the reference numbers D1268 and D2965 (part) as well as D2638. These have now all been merged under D2638. This leaves only two other components of the archive, which 'strayed' into the possession of depositors other than the Kilmorey family and, their agents, and bear reference D3514 and T1513 respectively.

• Immediate Source Acquisition ↴

  Donation