Dingle of the Husseys, Part 1

Jun. 12th, 2017 at 6:37 PM

In June 1580, my ancestor Sir Nicholas White set off as part of an expedition from Dublin to pacify what is now County Limerick and County Kerry in the wake of the Second Desmond Rebellion. He wrote an account of the expedition which was published in 1872. Since it's the exact anniversary of the expedition over the next few weeks, I'm posting the relevant excerpts daily. The first includes the covering letter to Lord Burghley.

Lymericke, July 22, A.D. 1580.

MY singular good Lord, — I do here send your Lordship a diary of our late journey in Munster, from our first setting forth from Lymericke until our return thyther agayn ; and whence, from my last letter of the last of Maie, I promised to send your Lordshippe a booke of all the houses, castells, and landes belonging to the Earldom of Desmond, and such as be in rebellion with him. It may please your Lordship to understand, that I cannot as yet perform the same for want of good information.

The twelfth of June we set oute of Lymericke, with the whole armie, the Lord Justice taking his way to Askettyn (Askeaton) and the Erle of Ormond to Kylmallocke.

Comment: They had presumably arrived in Limerick by sea from Dublin, the land journey being blocked by Desmond's forces. The expedition is a penetration of hostile territory from a friendly port. Both Askeaton and Kilmallock had been abandoned shortly before by the Desmond forces. The Dublin/Ormonde army was clearly sufficiently numerous to divide their forces, Ormond going south and Grey west.

Comments

( 3 comments — Leave a comment )

johnny9fingers

Jun. 12th, 2017 06:57 pm (UTC)

And yet have you become more Gaelic than the Gaels?

I have Irish rellies of the Republican kind; I fear I was a sore disappointment to them, to appear with the combination of a family face and a patrician English accent. (Physically I take my looks from my mother's side.)

I still get upset that my mother didn't beat Gaelic of a Classical kind into me, but I'm dead glad to have evaded the dancing or being called Seamus.

But to have read the Book of the Dun Cow in the original... is like reading Homer without translation, I guess. Still on the bucket list.

How did the revered ancestor behave? Was he decent, given the time and the mores?

Alas, my paternal family were shippers from Liverpool. Despite the fact that our particular branch traded with India, not the West Indies/African triangular trade; and that the main branch pretty-well disowned us after my grandfather's marriage to a women of mixed race from a Portuguese shipping family, we owe our status and education over the generations to a particularly vile trade. The main branch of the family were Whiggish, as were many slave-owners and shippers. My lot were Tory/Public-School Communist of an old-fashioned sort. We didn't actually drink to the king over the water, but were either pretty high-Catholic about stuff, or very Marxist. Sometimes both.

Do you have any Gaelic to go with your other talents?

Edited at 2017-06-12 07:00 pm (UTC)

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