The Tuite Family 
17th Century
A short history of the
Baronetage
The order of the Baronetage was
founded in May 1611 by King James I of
There are various classes of baronets
- those of
When first created, the order was limited to 200,but this limit has long been ignored.
For the first 216 years of the
existence of this dignity,
the eldest son of a baronet was entitled, on reaching adulthood,
to the privilege of claiming the honour of
knighthood. A clause to this effect was inserted in every patent of creation
until
With one exception only, all baronetage creations have been men. The sole exception was a baronetcy conferred upon Mary Bolles of Osberton, Notts in 1635. However, on a small number of occasions the baronetcy has been inherited by a female and can also descend through a female.
The descent of a baronetcy is governed by the same rules as in the case of peerages i.e. to heirs male of the body (unless there is a special remainder outlined in the patent, or, in the case of most patents granted by Charles I,where the patents were to heirs male whatsoever).
Baronets of
Precedence amongst baronetcies is decided by the date of creation alone.
The Official Roll of the
Baronetage is administered by the Standing Council of the Baronetage, first
formed in 1898 and re-constituted in 1903. Two of the objects of that Council
are to publish an Official Roll and to advise heirs apparent to baronetcies on
how to prove their claim and, as a result, to be entered onto the Official
Roll. As part of a Royal Warrant of Edward VII dated
Copyright © 2003 Leigh Rayment
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BARONETAGE: TUITE of Sonnagh, Westmeath |
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Succeeded to the title |
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Name |
Born |
Died |
Age |
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1st |
Oliver Tuite |
c 1588 |
1642 |
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1642 |
2nd |
Oliver Tuite |
c 1633 |
Aug 1661 |
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Aug 1661 |
3rd |
James Tuite |
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Feb 1664 |
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Feb 1664 |
4th |
Henry Tuite |
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May 1679 |
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May 1679 |
5th |
Joseph Tuite |
1677 |
1727 |
50 |
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1727 |
6th |
Henry Tuite |
c 1708 |
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7th |
George Tuite |
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52 |
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8th |
Henry Tuite |
1743 |
Aug 1805 |
62 |
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Aug 1805 |
9th |
George Tuite |
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63 |
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10th |
Mark Anthony Henry Tuite |
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Mar 1898 |
79 |
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Mar 1898 |
11th |
Morgan Harry Paulet Tuite |
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85 |
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12th |
Brian Hugh Morgan Tuite |
1 May 1897 |
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73 |
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13th |
Dennis George Harmsworth Tuite |
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77 |
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14th |
Christopher Hugh Tuite |
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Sir Oliver Tuite, the 1st
Baronet of Sonagh died in 1642. He was succeeded by
his eldest grandson, (oldest son of Thomas who died in 1624) also named Oliver.
Mary Tuite (daughter of Sir Oliver
Tuite, 1st Baronet of Sonagh) married Colonel Patrick
Plunkett of Louth.
Thomas Candler, esq. (c1663-1716 or
c1641-1715), inherited the title and Callan Castle
estate of his father William (who had come to Ireland during Cromwell's Irish
campaign and won, "by meritorious conduct in the field", a promotion to Lt.
Colonel and was granted the Barony of Callan by a
grateful Cromwell and Parliament in 1653). In 1685/86, Thomas married, first,
Elizabeth Burrell, daughter of Capt. William Burrell and Elizabeth Phipps.
Capt. Burrell had served with
William Candler under Sir Hardress Waller during
the Irish Rebellion
and had received land in Burnechurch in County Kilkenny, not far from Callan. Elizabeth Burrell Candler died before 1694 without leaving
any surviving children. In 1697, Thomas Candler married again, to Jane Tuite
(b.1677/79), daughter of Sir Henry Tuite, Baronet of Sonnagh, County Westmeath
and Diana Mabot (or Mabbot)
who was a niece of the late Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon.
Sir Henry Tuite was a direct
descendant of Sir Richard de Tuite, knight, who had
accompanied Strongbow
to Ireland in 1172. Though the Tuites were
Norman-Irish Catholics and technically classified as Anglo-Irish, after more than
400 years on the Emerald Isle they were
Irish to the
core. Their family lands in
Westmeath and Longford were confiscated by
Cromwell in 1654 and the
Tuite family was
banished to Connaught Province. They regained most of
their lands after the Restoration (1660) only to be threatened with loss
again after the defeat of the Irish Jacobites by
William of Orange in 1789.
The circumstances
surrounding the marriage of Jane
Tuite, a baronet's eldest daughter and a Roman Catholic, to Thomas Candler, who
was a Protestant and whose family's social rank was that of an esquire, two
notches on the gentry ladder below Baronet is interesting.
Given the times, it is possible that Jane Tuites
marriage to Thomas Candler may have been an alliance of considerable value and
political security to the Tuite family. However, there are other possible
angles to the Candler/Tuite marriage.
Diana Mabot
Tuite, Jane's mother, was also a first cousin of the Duchess of York who was
mother of Queen Mary (William & Mary) and future Queen Anne. Diana's
parents were Kympton Mabot and Susan Hyde,
Edward Hyde's sister. (Edward Hyde's daughter, Anne, was one of the wives
of James II. Anne's oldest daughter, Mary, was on the English throne when
Thomas Candler married Jane Tuite).
Thomas and Jane Tuite Candler had four
sons: Henry, William, Thomas and Daniel. (The Burke and other references on the
Peerage, etc. do not include Daniel among the list of children reportedly the
result of his "disownment" by his family for marrying an Irish woman
(who may have been a servant in the Candler household). Daniel's assignment to Thomas rather than brother John is based
on the fact that
John reportedly died several years before Daniel was reportedly born.)
Of their four sons, Henry and Daniel made the biggest mark. Rev. William Candler (c1699-1753),
Thomas and Jane's second
son, earned a doctor of divinity
degree and served the church of Ireland initially in Dublin and later as
rector of St. Mary's Church in Castlecomer, County Kilkenny. The fourth and youngest son, Daniel Candler was
born at Callan Castle in County Kilkenny, probably
about 1706.
Eleanora Tuite, daughter of Sir Edward Tuite, died, April 8th
1638. She was married to Theobald, 1st
Viscount Dillon (who died 15 March 1624).
Father James Tuite was deported to the Caribbean on the slave
ships with other Irish by Cromwell’s English forces in 1650/51 for his part in
the Irish rebellion. Richard and Thomas Tuite both defended Bective
Abbey in Meath in a 1650/51 against Cromwellian
forces.
The Tuites fought with the confederates
in 1641 and on the side of James Stuart in 1690.
There is a famous early seventeenth century political song , titled “As I rode down by Granard
Motte”, mentioning the Tuites
in a book by the well-known Irish poet Benedict Kelly.
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The Edgeworth Family –
Early History |
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The first Edgeworths
to come to Ireland in 1585 were Edward and Francis, natives of Edgeworth or Edgware a town in Middlesex near London. Edward the elder became bishop
of Down and Connor while his brother Francis entered the law in Dublin and
was appointed to the office of Clerk of the Crown and Hanaper. In
1619 he was granted some 600 acres of land near Mostrim
by King James I. His third wife was Jane Tuite daughter of Sir John Tuite of
Sonnagh in Westmeath. Their son John was brought up in England and returned
with his wife to live at the castle of Crannelagh
(Cranley). He was absent when the rebellion broke out in 1641, when his wife
and three year old son also John were saved from death and smuggled to
Dublin, by a ruse by Edmond MacBrian Ferrall a servant of the household. He also saved the
castle from destruction by fire. This son settled later in Lissard. He was somewhat of a gambler and spendthrift but
in 1670 bought the lands of Mostrim now Edgeworthstown, though it was many years later that it
became the home of the head of the family, when his son Francis came to live
there at the end of the century of the death of his father Sir John, who
although knighted in 1671 by the Duke of York later took the Williamite side at the revolution. In the meantime he had
left Lissard to live at Kilshrewley,
but much of his life was spent in the Army and in England. One of his sons
Henry later came back to live in the old house at Lissard. Sir Johns grandson Richard was
left a penniless orphan at the age of' eight and was brought up by his half
sister in Packenham Hall in Westmeath. At the age
of 18 in 1719 on the death of his half sisters husband, Edward Packenham, he had take over the estate and paid off the
debts of his father and grandfather and recovered losses incurred by the
malpractices of his uncles Robert and Ambrose. He it was who built the house
in the 1720's we know today. It was built around an earlier house presumably
that occupied, about 1697 by his father Francis. He was the author of the
Black Book of Edgeworthstown an estate record that
tells us so much about the locality at that time. By
John Mc Gerr Another
description is as follows: MARIA EDGEWORTH BY THE HON. EMILY LAWLESS
Francis Edgeworth
married the daughter of a Sir Edmond Tuite, owner of a place called Sonna, in the |
Jane Tuite
Making
Ireland British: 1580-1650 by Nicholas Canny
The
Irish Insurrection of 1641
Except
pages 517-518
Religion was never treated as a discrete matter and allegations relating to the
humiliation of the queen and the proposed assault upon Catholicism quickly gave
way to reports of challenges to the royal prerogative by the English parliament
which mingled what had happened with what might ensue. It was alleged by some
Catholics that the parliament had used the king so ‘harshly’ that he had
‘departed into Scotland and from thence he would come into Ireland and destroy
all the English there’. It was only a short step from there to suggest that the
king had been dethroned by the parliament ‘and would not return into England
for the English had a king, the Palsgrave, and had
banished the queen to France’. Others had contended that the queen had found
refuge in Ireland and ‘that this kingdom of Ireland would the queen’s
jointure’, and that she would take up residence there ‘and clear England of all
Papists’. Some went further to claim that the king also was on their side and
‘that the English were proclaimed traitors, and that the king was in Scotland
and would be in Ireland within nine days and would banish all the English’.
Most dramatic was the assertion of one Welsh, an innkeeper of Kilcullen, County Kildare, ‘that the king was in the north
of Ireland and ridd disguised and had glasen eyes because he would not be known and that the king
was as much against the Protestants as he himself and the rebels were, for that
the Puritans in the parliament of England threw libels in disparagement of the
king’s majesty making a question of whether a king or no king’.
All of these rumours, allegations, half-truths, and suggestions
show that those in Leinster who became involved in and insurrection, which they
sincerely believed was designed to frustrate and anticipated blow against
Catholicism in Ireland, experienced little difficulty in convincing themselves
that their actions were also intended to support the king and queen. This lent
credibility to the frequently made claim that the insurrection had been
previously approved by the king, and all these rumours and claims were widely
believed by Catholics because they contained sufficient elements of truth to
make them plausible. What the relative roles of priests and laity were in
devising these justifications for revolt, and in guiding the insurrection, is
unclear, but everything suggests that the Catholic clergy in Leinster exerted
more influence over the course of events than in the other provinces. Indeed
some believed the priests were so influential there that they had, as in
Connacht, undermined the authority of the Catholic landowners by stirring up
the populace over religious issues. Those Protestant deponents who made this assertion
alluded to meetings convened by the Catholic clergy previous to the insurrection, especially that supposedly held at Multyfarnham, County Westmeath, on 3 and 4 October 1641.
The clear implication was that plans were there laid for the revolt without any
reference to the Catholic laity, and Randall Adams, a minister at Rathcouragh, in the same county, reported on a conversation
he had overheard on 1 November 1641 between some of the ‘chief gentlemen’ of
the county and a group of friars. The gentlemen, mostly members of the Tuite
family, laid a charge against the friars ‘that they and their fellows were the
cause of this great and mischievous rebellion’. They further asserted that the
friars had had no cause of grievance that would justify such extreme measures
because of ‘the great freedom they had in religion without control, and that
they generally had the best horses, clothes, meats, drinks and all other sort
of provision delightful of useful … and they had these and many other
privileges beyond any of their own function either regular or secular through
the Christian world, and therefore most bitterly them to their teeth said that
they hoped God would bring that vengeance home to them that they by their
cursed plots laboured so wickedly to bring upon others’.
This discourse, if it can be taken at face value, alludes to a
tension that had been developing between the Catholic gentry and continentally
trained priests in Ireland ever since the 1620s, and that was to become even
more acute after 1642 when the clergy began to play an active role in Irish
politics. Previous to then, as far as the Catholic landed interest was
concerned, it was they, through their parliamentary representatives and
delegations to court, who had negotiated toleration
for Catholicism, and they obviously wanted religious freedom to be on the terms
they sought after. This involved Catholicism and the Catholic clergy
functioning under the protection of their patrons but within a state system
that was officially Protestant. The Catholic clergy, for their part, were
becoming impatient with this argument, first because it facilitated Catholic
lay interference in church affairs, and second because it denied them the
right, or indeed the opportunity, to practise Catholicism openly as was the
norm in the continental societies of which they had experience. It would seem
therefore that the clergy, led by some of their seminary-trained bishops,
welcomed the opportunity to make a bid for the full public recognition of
Catholicism which would have involved a recovery of cathedrals and churches
that had been lost to the state religion, as well as the lands, tithes, and
other duties that had traditionally belonged to the Catholic Church. It has
long been accepted, and has recently been detailed by Tadhg
O hAnnrachain who has worked for Catholic
ecclesiastical sources, that these ambitions were in the minds of some senior
Catholic clergy before 1641 and were expressed openly by them from the moment
the Confederacy was established, and most especially from the time that it
received official recognition from the papacy. Therefore it is not at all
unlikely that the Catholic clergy, who were more firmly established in Leinster
than in any other province in Ireland, took advantage of the collapse of government
authority in most parts of Leinster, beyond Dublin and a few fortified
outposts, to articulate deeply held ambitions which their lay patrons had
always refused to countenance and which they now believed would provide a moral
underpinning to the insurrection that was already underway. Thus what Donatus
Connor had to report from County Wexford seems entirely credible: he had, he
said, ‘frequently heard the rebels say they would never give up (even if
pardoned) unless that all the church land of Ireland were restored to the
churchmen of the Romish religion and that they might
enjoy that religion freely and the Protestant religion might be quite rooted
out of this kingdom and that the church of Rome might be restored to its
ancient jurisdiction, power and privilege within he said kingdom of Ireland’.
Those landowners, like the Tuites of
County Westmeath, who were secure in their property would have had no time for
such an agenda, first because they were themselves likely to have been owners
of former church lands which they would have acquired after the dissolution of
the monasteries, but also because they would have recognized that the agenda
could only have been achieved through revolutionary action which would have
placed their lands and positions in jeopardy. This would explain why the
Catholic clergy in Leinster had to speak over the heads of such conservative
landowners, and in doing so unleashed a peasant fury which they were able to
control only somewhat more effectively than their counterparts in Ulster and
Connacht.
The inability of the Catholic clergy to keep the uprising on a
strictly religious course even in the areas dominated by the Old English is
explained by a variety of factors. First, as in the case of County Wicklow,
some landowners were acutely dissatisfied with the government, and those who
fostered a sense of grievance over what they had lost in the various
plantations believed they had an opportunity to recover their losses, at one feel swoop. Besides the Byrnes, O’Tools,
and Kavanaghs of Wicklow, there were some landowners
in Counties Wexford and Longford as well as King’s and Queens’s counties who
were ready to take advantage of the breakdown in authority to meet these purely
material ends. These were willing to echo the religious message of the clergy
or to express concerns over the plight of the queen and royal prerogative but
their ultimate concern was that their lands had been assigned to English and
Scots who now ‘liveth bravely and richly’ while ‘they
and the rest of the Irish were poor gents’. Their objective therefore was to
cancel all the plantations that had been established in Ireland after the
principle, articulated, also in the other provinces, that as ‘the English held
their own lands in England, and so did the Scots in Scotland and so should the
Irish in Ireland’. The fulfilment of this principal require that since ‘both
the English and Scottish which were in Ireland were all beggars when they came
into Ireland so should they be turned thence’. But besides clearing the settlers
from their former possessions these landowners were, as we saw, interested also
in spreading the insurrection outwards from their own counties. They were
concerned to do so because they recognized that their gamble could succeed only
if they could gain political control everywhere in Ireland, and create a
situation whereby ‘they would never have any more chief governors, judges,
justices, or officers of the English or Scots but would name and appoint such
themselves’.
Map of Ireland 1650
