O Callaghans Eviction to County Clare - Hell or to Clare

Introduction

Reenie O Donovan from Clare wrote a very interesting article on the O Callaghans evictions from Cork, following the Cromwellian conquest, and their settlement on their allocated land in County Clare. This part of their resettlement is not well known in their homeland and Reenie’s article is a most welcome account from their new home. Reenie wrote the article for the Shannon Archaeological and Historical Society a number of years ago. I came across the article and got permission to include it on our website and it is very informative even to someone who has read up on the O Callaghan saga. The name of the article was “Hell or to Clare” and I am most grateful to Reenie and the Shannon Archaeological and Historical Society for their permission to include it on our website.

On the map of the O Callaghan holdings in County Clare you will see a small village, O Callaghans Mills, located in the middle of their holding, a village named after the O Callaghans who were major millers and quarry operators, skills they brought with them from Cork. I am convinced that the old grist corn mill in Lombardstown was already on the land ceded by the O Callaghans to the Lombard family in 1620. O Callaghans Mills is a noted hurling club in county Clare but credit for that expertise cannot be seriously credited to the O Callaghans.

Donie O Sullivan Feb 2024

HELL OR TO CLARE – By Reenie O Donovan

Donogh O’Callaghan, Chief of his name, A Transplanter. R. O’Donovan

Donogh O’Callaghan, a Cork man who spent the last quarter century of his life in Co. Clare where he founded a dynasty. He played an important part in the turbulent events of the mid seventeenth century. His story and that of his family is similar to that of many transplanted Clare and Connacht families.

The O’Callaghan clan was driven out of its long-established territory in the barony of Kinalea southwest of Cork City by the Anglo Normans shortly after their arrival in Ireland. The clan then settled on the banks of the Blackwater to the west of present day Mallow, and at one time controlled 50,000 acres, known as Pobul Uí Cheallacháin in the barony of Duhallow. The principal seats of the clan were at Dromaneen and Clonmeen Castles.

The imposition of English Common Law on Ireland and the consequent changes in the laws of inheritance effectively broke up the ancient Gaelic clans forever. Under the Brehon Laws land was owned by the clan not by the individual chieftain who controlled a portion called the mensal lands during his life-time. On the chieftain’s death the mensal lands were redistributed among the ruling families and did not pass as a right to his heirs. During the chief’s life-time his potential successor, his Tánaiste, was chosen from among his kindred within a certain degree of blood relationship. Both chief and successor were chosen for their leadership qualities. Security of tenure did not exist. After ‘surrender and re-grant’ had been imposed on the Irish chiefs, the surrendering chief was given his mensal lands for himself and his heirs for ever. In the case of the O’Callaghans, Conor of the Rock O’Callaghan surrendered his lands to the Crown in 1594 and five days later they were re-granted to him and his heirs, under English Common Law. Thus in 1631 when the son of Conor the surrendering chief died, his only child, a twelve year old girl, Elena O’Callaghan of Clonmeen near Banteer, Co. Cork found herself in possession of a vast estate. Her maternal grandfather was James Butler, 2nd Lord Dunboyne and her great grand-father was Conor, Earl of Thomond. In the year of her father’s death Elena married her cousin Donogh O’Callaghan of Dromaneen Castle also a grandson of a chieftain. Elena’s and Donogh’s common ancestor was Tadhg Rua Bacach, chief of the clan who died in 1537.

COLONEL DONOGH

Donogh O’Callaghan was born in Dromaneen Castle about two miles west of Mallow, on the Blackwater. He and Elena lived at her home Clonmeen Castle, after their marriage. Their combined estates amounted to over 12,000 acres of prime Munster land in the Blackwater Valley, with additional tracts of bog and mountain land.

During the first ten years of their marriage, Ireland was relatively peaceful and prosperous yet with undercurrents of frustration and resentment against English administration under Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford.

On 23 October 1641 the Irish in the north rose in arms against the English and Scottish colonists and within a short time disturbance was widespread throughout the country.

Donogh and his four brothers were present at the siege of the English garrison of Mallow early in 1642 and Donogh was a colonel at the battle of Cloghleigh a little later. All five brothers, together with the principal Munster insurgent leaders were outlawed at Youghal assizes in August 1642. No account of the reversal of their outlawry can be traced.

The English King, Charles I, was preoccupied trying to overthrow the Puritan dominated parliament and could only spare a small army to send to Ireland. The aggressively anti-Catholic parliament, without the King’s consent, passed an Act on 11 February 1642, whereby two and a half million acres of Irish land, to be confiscated at the end of the war, were offered as security to those who should advance money towards raising and paying an army for subduing the rebels in Ireland. The subscribers, called adventurers, were members of Parliament, merchants and tradesmen of the city of London and of other English cities. The act was popularly called The Adventurers Act, an essential clause of which forbade any clemency to the Irish, otherwise the investors would have no guarantees. Unequivocal victory was essential to them.”

The landowners of Ireland, the heirs of the Gaelic chieftains and the Old English Catholics, descended from earlier settlers, heard of the Adventurers’ Act with alarm. They met the Catholic clergy, lawyers and merchants in Kilkenny and together set up a provisional government, the Catholic Confederation of Kilkenny which was formally established on 24 October 1612. It consisted of a Supreme Council of 24 members, 6 from each province and a General Assembly. The Confederation recognised the English King as head of state and adopted the motto ‘Hiberni unanimes, pro Deo. Rege et Patria – Irishmen united for God, King and Country. The principal aims of the Confederation were the restoration of confiscated lands, liberty of conscience and equality of status for Catholics and the repeal of Poyning’s Law (1494-5) which made the Irish parliament subservient to the King and Council in England.”

Donogh O’Callaghan made a significant contribution to the affairs of the Confederation of Kilkenny. He was one of the six Munster members of the Supreme Council – most of whom were representatives of Old English Catholic families, which had lived in Ireland for generations.

Between its foundation in 1642 and its dissolution in January 1649 the Confederation spent two thirds of its time engaged in peace negotiations. Donogh was one of the representatives of the Confederation who helped to negotiate the Cessation of Arms in 1643-a truce which lasted a year, and in 1648 he was a special Ambassador from the Confederation to Ormond, the Lord Lieutenant, in further peace negotiations.” His signature appears on some of the correspondence emanating from the Supreme Council in the state papers of the period.” The 1643 Cessation appears to have been an uneasy one with many minor breaches judging by correspondence which passed between military leaders on both sides at the time. A parliamentarian officer complained to his superior that at a meeting of both sides at Ballybeg near Mallow “Donogh O’Callaghan…. and others for the Irish…. came to the meeting with two hundred armed men. Yet the officer in command at Liscarrol garrison, in North Cork writing to Sir Philip Percival said “In truth…. I find Do. O’Callaghane, in our intercourse of quarter, to be one of the moderatest, most rational men amongst them and a strict observer of the Articles of Cessation, or a seemer to be so.”

Lord Inchiquin, writing to Donogh in 1644 begins “Having always found you more reasonable than most I desire to correspond fairly with you. During this period Donogh had power to issue warrants and passes to people who wished to travel far from home, for example he issued a pass to a group of 12 Mallow butches to attend a Clare Fair in Thomond to buy cattle.

Archbishop Rinuccini. Papal Nuncio

In the summer of 1645 Pope Innocent X appointed Archbishop Rinuccini who landed at Ardtully near Kenmare in October and Rinuccini proceeded to Kilkenny. On the way he was entertained by ་Lord Muskerry at Macroom, by the O’Keeffes at Dromsecane and at Clonmeen by Donogh O’Callaghan “chief of his name, who entertained with rare magnificence, the crowd of nobles and gentry who flocked thither to do homage to the representative of the Holy See. From Clonmeen, the Nuncio, doubtless gratified by his reception in the Co. Cork, proceeded to Kilmallock. Local tradition claims that the dinner service used by the O’Callaghans for the occasion was of gold plate.

In the spring of 1646 a section of the Parliamentarian fleet arrived in the Shannon and sent a garrison to Bunratty Castle to intercept trade on the river. The Confederation sent a large force to dislodge the garrison and the siege of Bunratty ensued, in which the Confederates were victorious. The officers in command were Lord Muskerry, General Purcell, General Stephenson, and Colonel Purcell. With these were associated Alexander MacDonnell and Donogh O’Callaghan of Clonmeen.

HELL OR CONNACHT

The execution of King Charles I in 1649 ended the English Civil War. England became a commonwealth ruled by Parliament with Oliver Cromwell as the Lord Protector. Cromwell arrived in Ireland in August 1649 with the intention of subduing the Irish rebellion. His campaign was swift, terrible and decisive. He departed in May 1650 leaving Ireland reduced to the status of a conquered colony. However Parliament did not declare the rebellion subdued for another two years. Then the lands of the defeated Irish were declared confiscated under the Adventurers’ Act of 1642 and preparations were made for a vast settlement of the country. A survey was carried out by Sir Wm. Petty, mathematician and physician to the forces to ascertain who held the confiscated land before 1641 and on what conditions, so as to give a proper title to the new grantees. The Act for Settling Ireland was passed in the English Parliament in August 1652. It bears the cumbersome title ‘An Act for the speedy and effectual satisfaction of the adventurers for lands in Ireland and of the arrears due to Soldiery there, and of other public debts, and for the encouragement of Protestants to plant and inhabit Ireland’. Under this Act Connacht and Clare were to be set aside for ‘the habitation of the Irish nation’ where they were to transplant themselves with wives, children and servants before May 1654. The order was confined to proprietors of land and their families, especially those who had taken a part in the rebellion or who had helped the rebels in any way and those who did not “show constant good affection” to the Parliamentarians. “The landless, those whose goods were valued at £10 or less, could either go with the landowners as tenants into the new areas, or as servants, or they could remain behind as hewers of wood and drawers of water to the new landowners.

Connacht and Co. Clare was chosen as the area of transplantation because it was surrounded by water, the sea and the Shannon, except for a stretch of land ten miles wide which could be protected by a series of forts. A one mile strip (originally four miles) called The Mile Line was reserved for military settlers around the perimeter of Connacht and Clare to confine the transplanted and to cut them off from relief by sea. The baronies of Lower Tulla and Upper Bunratty were allotted to Irish widows and orphans of English extraction. The Irish were forbidden to live in the towns of Connacht. 500 acres around Clarecastle and lands of a ‘mile compass’ about Carrigaholt were reserved for the English.

CO. CLARE IN THE SPRING OF 1654

Co. Clare was reduced to a wilderness after the war; famine and disease were widespread. Much of the land had not been cultivated. Beef had to be imported from Wales and mutton was so scarce a licence was required to kill a lamb. According to Prendergast only about forty townlands out of thirteen hundred, and these mostly in the barony of Bunratty, could be said to be inhabited in June 1653. To make the desolation more complete, an order was issued to destroy nearly all the castles. “A man named Edmund Doherty had his bill for £82-10s (sic) vouched as correct by the Commissioners at Loughrea, for demolishing thirteen castles in the County of Clare at £2-10s each castle.” Problems were compounded by the arrival of the plague on board an English vessel in Galway in August 1649. It claimed over 30,000 lives during the following 3 years, many of them in Limerick. No doubt Co. Clare was also ravaged by it.

Large numbers of Claremen had been killed in the war, especially at the Battle of Knocknanuss near Kanturk when no quarter was given by the victorious Parliamentarian army under Lord Inchiquin. Between 4,000 and 8,000 were slain according to different accounts. The list of prisoners taken includes several Clare officers mainly of the MacNamara and O’Brien families.

By 1654 40,000 of the remaining Irish army departed to join the armies of Spain, Austria, Poland and elsewhere, countries not hostile to England. Shipping was provided by the English to transport them. A Col. Mac Namara is recorded as having taken a regiment from Clare with him.

Government agents were employed to seize widows and orphans, the families of the departed soldiers, the destitute and prisoners for transportation to Barbados and the English plantations in America. “It was a benefit to the people removed, who might thus be made English and Christians; and a great benefit to the West India sugar planters, who desired the men and boys for their bondmen, and the women and Irish girls in a country where they had only maroon women and negresses to solace them. Daniel Connery, a gentleman of Clare, was sentenced to banishment for harbouring a priest.” (All priests were to be deported or executed.) “Three of his daughters, beautiful girls, were transported to the West Indies, to an island called the Barbados; and there, if still alive they are miserable slaves.” This slave trade lasted 4 years until a final consignment of 2,000 boys and girls was shipped from Galway to Jamaica in 1655. It may be assumed that many of these unfortunate people were collected in Co. Clare. Again accounts differ widely of the numbers transported; one source mentions 6,400 but another claims that 50,000 Irish were sent to the American colonies. According to Sir Wm. Petty, who organised the Down Survey “about 504,000 of the Irish perished and were wasted by the sword, plague, famine, hardships and banishment between the 23rd October, 1641 and the same day in 1652.” (The slave trade lasted for some time after 1652.) He reckoned that the total population of Ireland in 1641 had been 1,668,000 of which 616,000 had perished by 1652, i.e. 504,000 Irish and 112,000 colonists and troops.

TRANSPLANTATION

The transplantation began with the appointment of Commissioners to Loughrea, their brief being to set out and distribute the land of Connacht and Clare. The Connacht and Clare landowners came within the category of transplanters and the commissioners were “to permit them to enjoy such part and portion (of their own land) without any picking or choosing to be made by the party himself! Some families were transplanted from one parish to another receiving perhaps. “as the small acreages suggest, but a fraction of their former interest (e.g. Donogh O Molony forfeited 166 acres at Kilgory and got instead 41 acres in Kilseily parish. See Table 1 below). For others total confiscation must be inferred.”

Understandably they looked on the transplanters from the other provinces as enemies and therefore encouraged their followers to give them a rough reception. The commissioners were overwhelmed with requests for exemption from transplantation, which were usually denied; even a letter from Oliver Cromwell, the Lord Protector himself, pleading on behalf of William Spenser, Catholic grandson of Edmund Spenser, the Elizabethan poet did not excuse him.

Fathers and heads of families were ordered to appear at Loughrea before 30 January 1654 to have lands set out to them in Connacht on which to build huts or houses for their families. They were allotted land in proportion to the number of stock and bags of seed grain they proposed to bring with them. The Duhallow estates of Donogh O’Callaghan were confiscated and granted to a variety of people most of whose surnames are familiar in Cork today e.g. Kingston, Newman, Kyrle, Walton, Morris, Smith, Harmer, Strange, Lombard, Hodder, Pumray. Fenton, Cross, Hughes, Nagle, Conran, Strongman. Purdon. Clayton, Beasley, Comins and Curtis. It is significant that Sir Wm. Petty was granted some of Donogh’s land.

Before departing from Clonmeen, Donogh would have obtained a Transplanter’s Certificate from the Revenue Officer of his district. It would have contained details of his abode, name, age, stature, colour of his hair and any distinctive features. those of his family, tenants and servants who were to accompany him, with lists of farm stock and bags of crops to be removed west of the Shannon. He would then have presented his certificate to the commissioners at Loughrea and with his entourage have proceeded to his new home. The original Transplanters Certificates together with 2 copies were burned in the fires in the Public Records office in the Four Courts in 1922 and in the Customs House in 1921. Examples of Transplanter’s Certificates are given in Prendergast, pp. 308-376.

Those who delayed transplanting were jailed while “with others it was stated there would be no scruple of sending them to the West Indies’ where they would be sold as slaves”. On 3 April, 1655 one Edward Hetherington was hanged for not having removed to Connacht. Placards were placed on his breast and back labelled “For not transplanting” and “thus suspended he advertised the penalty of his disobedience, “

44,000 were estimated to have moved across the Shannon in the first wave.

Having settled in Co. Clare in 1654 Donogh would have had to appear a year or two later before Commissioners in Athlone who were appointed to discriminate the guilt of the transplanters and to ascertain the size and value of the lands they held on the ‘English’ side of the Shannon. “In the Act for Settling Ireland passed 12 August 1652 there were eight different qualifications (of guilt). By the first six, death or banishment and forfeiture were declared against all the chief nobility. (some of them Protestant Royalists) and all the gentlemen of Ireland who held commissions of Colonel. Noblemen and Gentlemen of Ireland, being Catholics, who had borne no part in the war in 1649 and 1650 but remained quiet fell under the 8th Qualification, as not having manifested a constant good affection in favour of the Parliament and against the King were to transplant for their religion”. Donogh’s Final Settlement, his legal right to the lands assigned to him in Co. Clare, is dated 29 August 1657.

His Duhallow estates amounted to over 12,000 acres in 1641; he was now to receive in lieu of them 2,788 profitable acres in the baronies of Bunratty and Tulla, Co. Clare.

Profitable land is defined as meadow, arable and profitable pasture, and unprofitable as bogs, woods, barren mountains and loughs which were “cast in over and above” the confiscated acreage specified.

The number of acres to be assigned to each person was to be computed “according to plantation measure” the acre of which is defined as consisting of inter alia “21 feet to the pole or perch” as contrasted with the English content of 16 and a half feet.

Juan O’Callaghan of Barcelona, Spain. The O’Callaghan. Photo courtesy of Shannon Archaeological and Historical Society

THE LAND ASSIGNED TO DONOGH O’CALLAGHAN ACCORDING TO THE DOWN SURVEY

(Sir William Petty, Physician to the forces in Ireland was entrusted with a survey 1651 – 1659 of forfeited lands prior to their distribution among Cromwell’s soldiers and adventurers. Surveys of the time generally tabulated the data but Petty and his team of 1,000 men had it plotted down in map form, hence his work became known as the Down Survey.

The land assigned to Donogh O’Callaghan according to the Down Survey. Photo courtesy of Shannon Archaeological and Historical Society

Donogh and Elena were accompanied to Co. Clare by their sons Tadhg, Donogh Óg and Cahir and by other O’Callaghans. The census of 1659 lists 19 of the name in the barony of Tulla. Donogh is named as the Titulado of the barony – a Spanish word meaning a person of title. Four other children, Callaghan, Morogh, Patrick and Joan, not mentioned in the census, were probably born later. The brothers, nephews, uncles and “next pretended heirs of the persons attainted” were later ordered to transplant or be transported to remove any threat to the new proprietors. According to notes made in the 1860s by Maurice Lenihan for a proposed History of Co.Clare the names “Lenihan, Noonan, Connell, Callaghan and Verlin were introduced into Clare by The Great O’Callaghan of Cork in the days of Cromwell they were in the service of O’Callaghan. The Connells are now represented by the O’Connells of Kilgorey, the Callaghans by the O’Callaghans of Maryfort and Ballinahinch and the Verlins by P. Verlin of Charlotte’s Quay, Limerick, grocer. Old Mr. Daniel Lenihan of O’Callaghan Mills told me his ancestor came from Cork to Clare with D. O’Callaghan and worked as manager and agent of the O’Callaghan estates.”

RESTORATION

Cromwell’s death in 1657 and the subsequent restoration of the monarchy in the person of Charles II raised the hopes of the Catholics. A declaration of 30 November 1660 provided for the restoration of 2,000 acres of their former estates to “Irish proprietors, who had been dispossessed merely for being Papists.” They were the Thirty-Eight Innocent Papists who merited the king’s “Grace and Favour.” Some of the Old English among them had 2,000 acres restored to them but very few of the Irish were so fortunate. Donogh is listed among the thirty eight yet the following extract from a petition presented to the Court of Claims sitting in Dublin in 1700 indicates that his Duhallow estates were not restored to him. ” restored to the possession of Clonmeen. Dromaneen and the that when the said Donogh or his heirs shall be rest of his estate in the territory of Pubble O’Callaghan barony of Duhallow, County of Cork, previously possessed by him till he was transplanted by the late usurped powers, then the said lease to be void. He died about twenty years ago intestate being succeeded by his son Donogh O’Callaghan, the younger.

Donogh and his family lived at Mountalion, near Kilkishen among the secluded lakes and rolling hills of East Clare. There, in keeping with the Gaelic custom he maintained a poet who recorded family events in Irish verse. During Donogh’s lifetime there, Mountallon was known as Min Thalun Flathúil. Fairsing – Mountallon, the hospitable and plentiful. Donogh and his descendants were probably buried in the O’Callaghan tomb in St. Mochulla’s grave-yard in Tulla.

Donoghs Heirs

Donogh’s eldest son Tadhg died without an heir. Donogh Og and his heirs retained the title The O’Callaghan or The Great O’Callaghan. Three generations later the senior branch of the family ended abruptly. On 8 September 1791 Donogh’s great great grandson Edmond O’Callaghan of Kilgory, near O’Callaghans Mills, a young attorney, was killed in a duel at Spancil Hill horse fair. “John ‘the Soft’ son of ‘Fireball’ Mac Namara was stung into a duel with O’Callaghan by his pointedly offensive remarks, while professionally engaged against him. The Ennis Chronicle of Monday, 12 September 1791 reported the incident and a week later carried the following obituary. –

“O’Callaghan – who died a few days ago at Spancil Hill in this County, in consequence of a wound he received in a duel, was the lineal descendant of Callaghan Cashell, a heroic Irish Prince, who, with his brother, Kennedy, vanquished the Danes in a bloody sea fight, on the coast of this kingdom, in the tenth century. To the most refined manners and accomplishments, he united the most exalted ideas of honour and probity, which will render his memory ever dear to all those who had the honour of his acquaintance; and what adds to the universal sorrow, excited by his premature and untimely death, is the extinction of the male line of that ancient and illustrious family, as he died without a son.”

Edmond was survived by five very young daughters. The son of his eldest daughter, Bridget. Fr. Edmond J. O’Reilly, S. J. was named to the Chair of Theology when the Catholic University was established in Dublin. An obituary on the occasion of his death in 1878 noted that his grandfather

“Edmond O’Callaghan of Killegorey was mortally wounded in a duel but survived five days to repent and prepare for his judgement. It is curious to find such a man as Father O’Reilly linked so closely with the bygone age of duelling. “

Edmond, the duellist received the Last Rites of the Catholic church yet his name appears in the list of Converts from Popery to the Protestant religion in the year 1772, the year his elder brother died aged 22. Edmond’s father Donogh or Donat appears in the list in the year 1743. The Penal Laws relating to property and its inheritance forced many landed families to conform to the Established Church.

CAHIR OF LAHARDAUN

Colonel Donogh’s third son Cahir lived at Lahardaun in the barony of Tulla. A glance at the ordnance survey map shows the O’Callaghan lands clustered within a triangle with Bodyke on the east, Tulla on the west and Kilkishen on the south, with Lahardaun south-east of Tulla. Cahir’s two sons left Ireland; John the elder became a Captain in O’Brien’s Regiment in the French army and Cornelius became a Captain in the Ultonia regiment of the Spanish army. Cornelius married a Spanish lady and remained in Spain where to-day his direct descendant, Juan O’Callaghan bears the title ‘The O’Callaghan’.

In 1944 the Irish Genealogical office registered the title The O’Callaghan as one of the fifteen recognised Irish Chieftains. Senorita Mercedes Palau-Ribes O’Callaghan of Barcelona, Spain informed the writer that there were 74 descendants of Cornelius aged over 25 in Spain in November 1984 i.e. 52 men and 22 women. The Spanish branch of the family was informed by the Irish Genealogical Office in 1946 that their ancestor, Cornelius lived in Lahardaun in the barony of Bunratty, parish of Inchicronan. There does not appear to be any written. evidence to support this view and the O’Callaghans are not associated with the parish of Inchicronan in folk memory. The Down Survey clearly assigns lands in Lahardaun in the barony of Tulla to Donogh O’Callaghan and tradition associates the O’Callaghan family with that townland.

CONOR OF CLONLOUM

Donogh’s youngest brother Conor who also fought at the siege of Mallow and was outlawed at Youghal in 1642 is recorded as having moved to Clonloum, Co. Clare in 1670. There are in 1985 and have been for many generations, O’Callaghans living in Clonloum which significantly, adjoins the townland of Mountallon, Donogh’s home. The Clonloum branch of the family is represented in 1985 by 6 families, 30 people, in the O’Callaghan’s Mills area and by one family of 6 in the Tulla area.

It is unclear in the pedigree whether one of the younger sons of Col. Donogh or Conor of Clonloum is the progenitor of the Lismehane and Liscullaun branches of the family, which inherited the estate of Edmond, the duellist. Edmond’s eldest daughter Brigid brought an action in 1821 against George O’Callaghan of Maryfort (formerly and later Lismehane) for the “recovery of lands obtained by his grandfather Cornelius O’Callaghan of Liscullaun from the main branch of the family.

George’s claim was upheld by the court, possibly because he and his family adhered to the Protestant religion while Edmond’s descendants were Catholics. Lists survive in the National Library, with microfilm copies in Clare County Library, of Voters and Freeholders of Co. Clare in the elections of 1768, 1776 and 1783. Voting was held in public in Ennis Courthouse. Catholics had been deprived of the franchise in 1728. In the 1768 list the name of Cornelius O’Callaghan of Coolreagh, Clonloum and later of Liscullaun, is crossed out but a note in a column beside the name records that he was “objected to as a Convert and took the Converts oath in Court, Vote allowed.”

It was on the land of Cornelius O’Callaghan of this branch of the family that John Coonan built a mill in 1772 around which grew the village, known to-day as O’Callaghan’s Mills. The family had residences and estates at Coolreagh, Ballinahinch Knockagrady, Fortane, Lismehane and Liscullaun all in the barony of Tulla upper. The families prospered in Co. Clare. By the mid nineteenth century the O’Callaghans were listed among the largest landowners of the county with 13,000 acres. They intermarried with families such as the O’Briens, Fitzgeralds, Burkes, Bradys, Creaghs, Westropps, Lysaghts and Colpoys, and contributed three High Sheriffs to the county, in 1807, 1855 and 1919. In County Clare the name of Colonel John O’Callaghan is synonymous with the Bodyke evictions. (see The Other Clare, No 4 pp. 43-46)

In June 1885 Colonel John’s only son, Colonel George, assumed by royal licence the additional surname of Westropp in compliance with the will of his maternal uncle, Captain Ralph Westropp. High Sheriff in 1919, he became a member of the Senate in 1921-22, and President of the Irish Farmers’ Union in 1926. He was A.D.C. to three British monarchs, Edward VII, George V and Edward VIII. He assumed the title “The O’Callaghan” in 1937 at Mallow at a gathering of the O’Callaghans, his claim to the title being recognised by the Chief Herald, Dublin Castle in 1943. However, on further investigation his pedigree could not be authenticated and although evidence pointed to his not being the senior surviving representative – the Chieftainship being vested in the Spanish branch of the family – he was allowed by the Chief Herald to retain the title for his lifetime. Today the family is represented by three generations named O’Callaghan-Westropp. Colonel George’s son, Conor John, born in 1913, his grand-son Denis, born in 1946 and his great grand-son Brian, born in 1971.

The O’Callaghan-Westropp family papers, presented to the Irish Manuscripts Commission by C. J. O’Callaghan-Westropp are as yet unsorted and not available for public scrutiny.

For the history of the O’Callaghan clan until 1641 see the articles by H. W. Gillman in the Journal of the Cork Historical and Archaeological Society, 1897, PP 201-220, and by C. Tarrant in Seanchas Duthalla, 1984, pp 19-26.

Reenie O Donovan 1985