Contributions to Irish Biography. No. 31: Daniel MacCarthy (Glas)

Irish Jesuit Province

Contributions to Irish Biography. No. 31: Daniel MacCarthy (Glas)Author(s): James ColemanSource: The Irish Monthly, Vol. 24, No. 278 (Aug., 1896), pp. 410-418Published by: Irish Jesuit ProvinceStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20499008 .

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( 410 )

CONTRIBUTIONS TO IRISH BIOGRAPHY

No. 31-DANIEL MACCARTHY (Glas).

By JAMES COLEMAN, M.R.S.A.I.

ALTHOUJGH known in- the literary world as the author of two, important contributions to Irish History,* and although

acquainted, by correspondence at least, with a large circle of Irish archaeologists, Mr. MacCarthy passed away almost unnoticed twelve years ago and is now forgotten. Yet a more interesting personality or a better type of Irishman could hardly be f6und than this English-born scion of the ancient sept of MacCarthys whose name is seldom absent from the annals of our country.

Like his father before him, Daniel MacCarthy (Glas,) was a native of London, in which city he was born June 28th, 1807. The direct descen:dants of that Jeremy Cartie to whom the ancestral property at Glean-na-Croim was restored in the year 1684, only to pass shortly afterwards by a lover's stratagem, if not by actual

crime, into the alien hands in which it is still retained-this particular branch of the MacCarthys, like many others senior to, it, might have sunk into poverty and obscurity, were it not for

the stability secured for it by a paternal grand-uncle of the subject of our sketch. This Denis MacCarthy took to the sea, rose to be shipmaster, and finally settled down as a prosperous shipowner and coal merchant in London. Prompted by that family affection

which has always been a bright feature of the Irish race, he not

only visited the country of his birth and befriended his relatives there, but le invited over to London in the year 1763 his younger brother, Daniel, whom he eventually made his heir.

This Daniel MacCarthy was the grandfather of his namesaker

of whom we are writing. He had several sons. The eldest, Denis,. was father of Sir Charles MacCarthy, who figures very prominently

in the Life and Letters of his close friend, Richard Monckton

"The Life and Letters of Florence MacCarthy Reagh, Tanist of Carbery,

Mac 'arthy Mor, with some portion of the history of the ancient families of the

South of Ireland " (Loncdon: Longmans 1867); and "I A Historical Pedigree of the

MacCartliys of Glean-na-Croin " (Exeter, 1875).



Contributions to Iris!i Biography. 411

Milnes, the first Lord Houghton.* Another son, Thomas, was the

author of " Montalto and other Poems " published in London in

1819; while the second son, Daniel, was the father of cur Daniel, who was born, as we have already mentioned, on the 28th of June,

1807, in London, far away from that Glean-na-Chroin of which he was so fond, and from that county of Cork, of whose history, he

has told us so much during the troublous times of his great kins

man, Florence MacCarthy Reagh. It is pleasant to find that these London Ma?Carthys preserved

not only the wealth of their sailor grand-uncle but also the then despised faith of their forefathers. Daniel MacCarthy Glas was educated at St. Edmund's, Old Hall, one of the oldest of the Catholic colleges. He appears to have adopted no professiou and to have gone abroad early; for it was at Naples, in May, 1832,

that he was married to a daughter of Admiral Sir Home Popham. One of the witnesses to the marriage was Mr. Augustus Craven, husband of the author of "Le Releit d'une Soeur."

His marrying into a wealthy English family, with whom he continued on the friendliest terms till the last, was hardly calcu lated to give to his literary studies the Irish turn they assumed later. His first appearance in print was in a different field.

"Antonio the Student of Padua " appeared in The Nev Jllonthly Magazine in 1835 and called forth a complimentary letter from the once famous Novelist, Mr. Gl. P. R. James, then (like our young author) resident in Italy. Soon after he wrote "The Siege of Florence," "Massaniello," and " The Free Lance" attributed to him in Cronnelly's " Clan Eoghan."

The first indication of his Irish tastes was his takingy pains to procure, at a cost of ?40, an elaborate but incorrect pedigree from

* Sir Charles MacCarthy, who was a cousin of Cardinal Wiseman, is

described as " a man of the most apprehensive intelligence and the most varied

learning. He entered the public service as superintendent of one of the smallest of

our West Indian dependencies, and in that insignificant sphere gave evidence of

the rare capacity that can handle the least and the greatest matters with equal

accuracy and adroitness, and which, though capable of the largest deductions, is

not indifferent to the smallest details." His merit alone raised him to the high and responsible post of Governor of Ceylon, in which he died in 1864, aged 53 years.

His brother Felix was Police Magistrate in the Bahamas, and another, William, was appointed Registrar of Government Lands in Ceylon. Their mother's sister

was Helena MacCarthy, second Mother Superior General of the Irish Sisters of

Charity, of whom many interesting things are told in the late Mrs. Atkinson's

admirable ?' Life of Mary Aikenhead."



412 [Ihe Irish Jlonthly.

Sir William Betham, then Ulster King-at-Arms. Mr. Richard Cronnelly afterwards furnished him with another. It was not till several years later that he discovered the " missing link " in his

lineage, eagerly sought by himself and others. This can best be told by himself, writing to his friend and correspondent, the eminent antiquarian, the late Dr. Caulfield of Cork:

" I do not h now whether I informed you how the original clue came into my

hands. The number of strange circumstances which brought it to me are so

wonderfal that I consider it nearly miraculous. You will recollect when the

Whitechurch MacCarthys introduced themselves to you and were hospitably invited

by you to meet me at your table. They were then in seaich of missing links in

their descent, anid I was busy at the time with the pedigree now in print. For

twenty years and more Dr. O'IDonovan and Cronnelly had been trying to recover

traces of Dermod who was restored by Act of Grace of Charles I. to the lands of

Glean-na.-Croim. Their search had been fruitless. Our meeting with the

Whitechurches was, as you know, but of an hour or two. We then separated and

for about a year had no commun cation with one another. At the end of that

period Mr. Charles Desmond MacCarthy* sent me a number of manuscripts to

look over. Judge of my surprise at finding amongst them a parchment pedigree of

Desmond the son of Phelim and his son Cormac Glas. The manner in which he

came by these manuscripts was curious. A Mr. O'Callaghan happened to be in

Paris soon after the Revolution of 1848 when a quantity of State Documents were

sold as waste paper. The name of MacCarthy caught his ear; he bought a bundle

and gave it to the father of the above mentioned Charles Desmond MacCarthy."

It was this casual meeting of these English-born representatives of the MacCarthys at Cork in 1870, that enabled Mr. Daniel

MacCarthy (ilas to trace his descent in an unbroken line from the

days of iarthach to our own.

When we call to mind the deplorably small number of Catholic Irishmen, possessing ease, leisure, and independence, who have devoted themselves to the fascinating study of their country's past history, the more remarkable will it appear that one born in

England, living mostly abroad, and having never at the time seen

Ireland, should in preference to all other subjects take up Irish history and biography, unpopular as they were forty years ago. Family tradition and hereditary instinct must indeed have been strong in Mr. MacCarthy to lead him to undertake the toilsome task of tracing out from the State Papers the history of his great

kinsman Florence MacCarthy Reagh. The first fruits of his researches were given to the world in the Journal of the Kilkenny

* This gentleman, who represented the Bank of England in Plymouth, and

who died during the peesent year (1896) printed for private circulation, in 1885,

an historical sketch of his branch of the MacCarthys.



Contributions to Irish Biography. 413

Archaeological Society. The work when completed was brought out by Longman of London in 1867, in a fine octavo of 520 pages,

costing sixteen shillings: "The Life and Letters of Florence MacCarthy Reagh, &c., compiled solely from unpublished docu ments in Her Majesty's State Paper Office."

This book has now become so scarce that the publisher's notice of its scope and character (drawn up probably by the author) will be useful in giving some idea of its merits:

For more than a century the scholars of Ireland have been lamenting the want

of an authentic biography of Florence MacCarth r, and of some account of the great

septs of the South of Ireland. The Venerable Charles O'Conor was the first to point

out the deficiency. The same complaint has of late years been repeated by the most

eminent literary men of Ireland, and by none more urgently than by the late Dr.

O' Donovan. The remarkable man who is the subject of this memoir has, from

his own day to ours, occupied a position nearly mythical in the minds of his

countrymen. Whilst English writers have pronounced him a man of matchless

cunning, a traitor, and the main though disguised support in the South of Ireland

of O'Neill's rebellion inl 169$, native writers have judged him willing, at the last, to

purchase his freedom by the betrayal of the national cause. A few paragraphs, more

or less erroneous, in Smith's History of Cork, and certain sentences strewed through

the pages of the Pacata Hibernia,,-many of thein false, all malevolent,-furnish all

that has been hitherto known concerning him. Froom such scanty notices it could

scarcely be imagined that the conduct of Florence MacCarthy was almost the sole

subject of correspondence between the authorities of Munster during the govern

ments of Sir Thomas Norreys, Sir W arham St. Leger, Hlerbert, Power, and Carewe.

The documents laid before the reader in this work, extending over a period of

seventy years, trace the career of this chieftain from his boyhood ; his serving at the

early age of fifteen, at the head of his father's followers, and with the Queen's

commission, against the great rebel Earl of DesTmond ;his favour at court; his

marriage with his cousin the great heiress, daughter of the Earl of Clancar; the

terror of the Munster authorities at his growing influence ; his arrest and committal

to the Tower of London the flight of his wife ; his gradual recovery of the Queen's

favour; ttue rebellion of O'Neill, and instant overthrow of the royal authority in

Munster; Florence's restoration to freedom; the Queen's gift to him of the inheritance

of MacCarthy Mor; his return to Ireland; his expulsion of the Geraldines from

Desmond; the renewal of alarm in Ireland at his greatness; the unblushing frank

ness with which Sir George Carewe, Sir R. Cecyll, the Lord Deputy Mounltjoy,

Fenton, and others, wrote concerning their various attempts to procure the assassin

ation of O'Neill, of the Sugaun Earl of Desmond, and the odious imputation of their

finding a man to poison Florence; the undisguised narrative of the Lord President to

Sir R. Cecylt of his apprehension of Florence, notwithstanding the Queen's parole

solemnly anld advisedly given for his pardon, protecuion, and freedom; his second

committal to the Tower; his second captivity of forty year s' duration; his unflinch

ing legal contests for sixty years with the invaders of his patrinony: anid, to quote

thewords of the Lord Deputy Falkland, written twenty-five years after hisbaniishment

from Ireland, " the infinite adoration of him in Munster, and his fitness to be still

restrained." All these particulars are presented to the reader in the despatches sent



414 Tfie Irisl Monqthly,

from Ireland. and in the series of letters and petitions written by him to the Ministers,

the Privy Council, and the Queen. The biography of Florence MacCarthy is in fact,

a history of the last great struggle of the Irish to maintain the integrity of their

septs, the government of their chiefs, and the law of Tanistry.

Mr. MacCarthy's second important work, though of less general interest, is almost unique of its kind and has become even more rare. It was published at Exeter in 1875, and bears this title: " A

Historical Pedigree of the Slioch Feidhlimidh, the MacCarthys of Glean-na-Croim from Carthach, twenty-fourth in descent from Oiloll Olum, to this day." These works of course did not repay even the mere cost of publication, not to speak of the toilsome and expensive researches which they involved. Nor did the author indeed look for such a return for his writings, bestowing them generously even on strangers who chanced to share his name.

These researches into the history of Cork County and his own family's connection with it, awakened in Mr. MacCarthy a desire of buying out the ancestral property in the neighbourhood of Dunmanway, including Togher Castle,* and coming to reside there; but Mr. MacCarthy's only surviving son, who did not share his

father's antiquarian tastes and was fond of travel, saw no attractions in Irish country life; and this pet project was therefore abandoned. It is alluded to at the close of the following extract from a letter

of Mr. O'Neill Daunt to Mr. MacCarthy, March 3rd, 1876 :

"1 I wondei that you should characterise Mr. Bennett's History of Bandon as

impartial or moderate or candid. He reproduces the execrable calumnies of

Temple and subsequent English writers of his era whose object was to blacken the

Irish by inventing crimes they did not commit or exaggerating beyond all

credibility the outrages they actually did commit when resisting the organised

effort to exterminate them and confiscate their properties.

" We have been under the agreeable impression that you intended to become

our neighbou-r by purchasing the hanldsome and picturesque demesne of Carrigmore,

formerly called Connorville when occupied by the O'Connor family. The residence

of a Catholic gentleman of ancient lineage ainong us would be hailed with extreme

satisfaction by the people."

Another project, set on foot by Captain &. T. Macartney,t

* A paper on this Castle and the surrounding district may be found in the

Journal of the Cork Archaeological Society for November, 1895. Ko mention is

made in this article of the MacCarthy arms set up in the Castle at Mr. MacCarthy's

expense. The castle has been partially restored by the Bev. J. Lyons.

f Some notice of this gentleman will be found ia Canon Stavely's "

Traces of

Past and Present "

(Dublin: McGee).



ContributioU;N to Irish Biogrophy. 4t5

one of the founders of the Home Rule party, was the election of

the MacCarthy More. The project came to nought after the death

of its originator; but it led the subject of our sketch to enter into correspondence with almost every member of the family that he could trace out. One of them, the President of the Catholic Total

Abstinence Society at St. Paul's, Minnesota, sent documents prov ing his claim to the long extinct title of Earl of (lancarty; while another presented him with a valuable manuscript pedigree drawn up by the famous County Cork poet-schoolmaster, Collins of Myross, and attested by Bishop Butler of Cork, afterwards Lord Dunboyne. We cannot be surprised to learn that Le discovered many representatives of the family who had fallen into extreme poverty. Many of these he helped generously in sickness and distress; and some younger persons he educated and assisted to emigrate. One of those whom he almost entirely supported -was an interesting specimen of that now extinct type, the Irish

private tutor, known as the " Old Root," who after various

wanderings was at length laid to rest in his native county of Cork. The proposed election of The MacCarthy More was never

intended to impugn the admitted claims of the MacCarthys of -Carrignavar to be the oldest representatives of the MacCarthys of

County Cork. A member of this family, Mrs. Leslie of Courtmac sherry, was one the most valued correspondents of Mr. Daniel

MacCarthy Glas, and comm-unicated to him many interesting

family traditions. She told him that she had herself seen frequently the rinag which was discovered in Kilerea Abbey under the following circumstances. An old woman of the MacCarthys was once praying in the Abbey and lamenting the ruin of the family when

Charles MacCarthy, whose tomb is there, appeared to her and

said that the ftamily would last as long as the ring, which she

would find on his grave remained unbroken. The apparition also

announced that she herself would die when three generations of the Carrignavar MacCarthys were in existence together. This had not happened for a long time; but it came to pass, it seems, by

the birth of Mrs. Leslie's eldest brother. The old woman wrote to Mrs. Le?lie's father on the occasion, saying that her time was

come. He sent to enquire for her; but she was dead. Mrs.

Leslie also told Mr. MiacCarthv that a certain Mrs. Sealey, of the

Alcook Stawell family of Kilbrittan, remembered seeing in her childhood The MacCarthy who came once every year from Spain.



416 The Irish Monthly.

He used to walk to the head of the table, eat his dinner, an4 depart without taking notice of anyone.

About the beginning of March 1873, there appeared in The Nation on the subject of the proposed election of a MacCarthy More some spirited verses, to the authorship of which Denisl Florence MacCarthy-who nearly thirty years before had made himself in a splendid lyric the poet laureate of the Clan of

MacCaura-pleads guilty in an ingeniously roundabout fashion in the following letter to his friend and frequent correspondent

MiacCarthy Gilas.'

6 North Road, Clapham Park,

London S.W., March 5th, 1873

MvY DEAR MR. MACCARTIXY,

It was very kind of you to send me Thbe Nation of last Saturday containing the

verses on the MacCarthy More. The editor had kindly sent me a copy, and as to

the verses I believe 1 betray no confidence in saying that I had the opportunity of

seeing them in manuscript before they appeared. This confirms your surmise that

I have some knowledge of the writer. A Greek proverb forbids me saying that I

know him; for after an acquaintance of fifty years he is still a problem to me which

becomes more difficult of solution every day. There is a line in one of his favourite

poets (for the poor creature has some taste) which nearly describes a character like

his: he might be called "1 a power girt round with weakness," if the latter quality

were not out of all proportion to the former. He has been so inconsistent with

himself, has held so many contradictory views, and has altogether mad- such a

poor hand of himself in this busy world that I have always avoided the work of

Professor de Morgan called "I A Bundle of Pat adoxes " lest I should find in it a

biography of my ineffective friend. Though not of the Spasmodic School of Poetry

satirised by the late Professor Aytoun, he writes verse only by fits and starts. In,

this mood he threw off in a heat the stanzas you write about. Poor fellow, when

he first came to me in the full blush of his impromptu improvisation and rolled out

to me in his rich brogue the lines about Carbery's grey defiles and the princely

Florence and the white tower of London bending or rather standing bolt upright

over the river, the night that Florence MacCarthy died-notwithstanding the

grotesqueness of this image, I felt for the moment moved. But when he asked me

how he would be able to publish it, 1 at once said, as under analagous circumstances

Jeffrey remarked of Thte Excursion, " this will never do." John George MacCarthy

will move for an injunction to restrain the sept aforesaid from electing, selecting,

raising or otherwise elevating any person, potentate, or prince over the aforesaid.

J. G. MacCarthy himself and his heirs lawfully begotten to the high dignity,

headship or chieftainship of the MacCarthy More, as insidiously and wickedly

* The sacred poem to which he alludes as printed in the same number of

The Kation was written on the occasion of the national dedication of Ireland to the

Sacred Heart of Our Divine -Redeemer, made by priests and people in all our

Churches on Passion Sunday, 1873. See Irish Monthly (vol. ix., p. 555) for this

devout poem and the claim to its inspiration put forward by this Magazine,

though its First Number did not appear till three months later.?Ed. i". K.



Contributions to Irish Biography. 417

suggested by this audacious rhymer. J. J. MacCarthy will affix it in terrorem to

the sharpest pinnacle of his next steeple; while the MacCarthy of Carrignavar

but this is a subject too painful to be pursued further.

The poor author looked quite absorbed. You forget, said he, that there is a

wotthy member of the Clan living now at Barnstaple who will probably be pleased

with at least the motive of these verses. You see I have attended to him especially

in the introductory observations, and perhaps for that reason alone I think I may

venture to send the lines to Sullivan. Well, said I, a wilfu' bard maun ha'e his

way; and so the poem appeared along with another on a religious subject by the

same hand and with the writer's name in full, which had you cut one page more of

The Nation you sent me, you would have seen.

Excuse all this flippancy. I hope you have good news from Africa. We are

niot quite out of the wood here yet.

Ever most sincerely, D. F. MACCARTHIY.

Among the morenotable oorrespondents of Mr. Daniel MacCarthy may be mentioned John O'Donovan, Dr, Caulfield, Sir John McLean, Sir Bernard Burke, Aubrey de Vere, Canon O'Hanlon, J. P. Prendergast, J. C. O'Callaghan, Rev. James Graves, John

O'Daly, etc., and his two most reverend namesakes who were bishop of Cloyne and of Kerry. A letter to him from the " historian " Froude contains this memorable statement: " The dealings of the English with Ireland in the latter half of the sixteenth century can only be paralleled by the strychnine laid out for the natives by the Australian settlers.'"

Besides the two learned works that were mentioned at the beginn ing, Mr. MacCarthy contributed many erudite papers to various literary journals. In The Dublin Reviewt his " Secret History of James, seventeenth Earl of Desmond " is last of volume 50 and first of volume 51 (in the year 1861). In The Nation he wrote atbout " The Last King of Munster " and ' the Food of the Irish in the

16th century." Some of his contributions to the Journal of the Kilkenny Archeeological Society are " The Disaster of Wicklow," " The Taking Away of Bagenal's Sister by the Earl of Tirowen," State-Craft in Ireland," and "Notes on Irish t)ress and Arms in the Sixteenth Century."

In recently published lists of contributors to The Dublin Review Mr. MacCarthy is set down as residing at Christchurch. But, wherever he lived, "his heart untravelled fondly turned" to Dunmanway, the Irish home of his forefathers. The priests of this district found in him a generous benefactor to their schools and public and private charities. In the parish church of Dun



418 lThe Irish lXlonthly.

manway is to be seen a handsome memorial to which he alludes in

one of his memoranda:-" I have erected in the Roman Catholic Church of Dunmanway a monument sacred to the memory of my parents and my wife and children. Their bodies lie far apart, as it has been God's Holy will, but the memory of all will be pre served and held sacred here. September, 1872."

The failure of the Overend and Gurney Bank sadly reduced Mr. MacCarthy's income and put an end to his benevolent plans. His last years were spent in absolute retirement at Southampton, a few doors from St. Joseph's Catholic Church. His death occurred -on the 9th of April, 1884, in his 76th year. A simple cross in the Catholic part of the Southampton cemetery marks the spot where lie the remains of this pious Catholic, this kindly, generous and patriotic Irishman. His eldest son was an officer in the army and died young in India. His second son, Florence, also died before him, but left three sons, two of whom are in Oregon and the third in Tasmania, while their sister lives with her mother at Pokesdown, near Bournemouth. To Mrs. MacCarthy's great kindness is due the present attempt at a brief memoir of Daniel MacCarthy Glas.

THE TREES.

THESE be God's cool, high palaces,

Walled with fine, leafen trellises,

Interstarred with the warm and luminous azure;

Sunlights come laughing through,

And rains and honey-dew

Shower in pale pearls at every green embrasure.

The tangled twist and twine

Of Hlis soaring staircases hath mosses fine

For emerald pavement; and on either side,

Where the boughs above have drifted wide,

The light doth make itself a burnished chamber

Atmosphered with amber:

Athwart that luminescent air

The slender threads of the gossamer

Shimmer and shine

In many a jewelly line.



Contributions to Irish Biography. No. 31: Daniel MacCarthy (Glas)

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