The next known owner of
Castlemartin was the famous
Sir Edward FitzEustace, who
was the son, or possibly the
grandson, of Roland. If a
grandson, his father was
probably John FitzEustace, one
of the twelve delegates chosen
under Letters Patent of 1404 to
control the financing and
organization of the defense of
the County. Thomas of
Ballycotelan and John of
Blackhall were also among the
delegatesSir Edward
FitzEustace of Castlemartin
was High Sheriff of County
Kildare in 1421, 1423, 1425,
1426 and 1430, and was appointed
a Privy Councilor in 1431 when
he went to report to the young
King Henry VI. When the Duke of
York was appointed Viceroy of
Ireland in 1449, Sir Edward was
well known as a knight of vigor
and activity, and was made Lord
Deputy during the absence of the
Duke in 1452, and again in 1454
when he died in office. In 1446
Castlemartin was unsuccessfully
attacked by Irish tribesmen
under O’Connor Faly. From 1445
Sir Edward held from the Crown,
on death of Elizabeth Calfe,
Baroness of Narragh, parts of
the Barony of Clane and Ladytown,
Old Connell, but the grant was
rescinded in favour of John
Bellow." There would seem to be
external evidence that the
effigy in chain mail now lying
in Ballymore Eustace church is
that of Sir Edward, but some
authorities rather surprisingly)
date it somewhat later.
(Further details of this effigy
are given under "Kilcullen").
It was originally at Old
Kilcullen, the church of
Castlemartin before the chapel
was built, probably by Sir
Edward’s son. By his wife,
Alicia, Sir Edward had at least
four sons. There are now no
means of telling which was the
eldest, but in the opinions of
the present writer the most
probable order was Sir Thomas of
Castlemartin; Sir Roland, later
Lord Portlester; Richard,
father of the 1st Viscount
Baltinglass and Oliver, High
Sheriff of Kildare 1445.
Sir Thomas of Castlemartin
had been knighted by 1438, but
we know very little about him,
and in fact for the next century
the Eustaces of Castlemartin
were overshadowed by those of
Harristown, descended from Sir
Thomas’s brother Roland Lord
Portlester. Thomas was buried at
Castlemartin in the centre of
the little chapel on the high
wooded banks of the Liffey. His
effigy in armour lay on the top
of an altar tomb which was
surrounded by panels
representing various biblical
and ecclesiastical figures, and
with one panel bearing his coat
of arms—Or a saltire gules.
The effigy now lies broken and
headless on the overgrown floor,
and the remains of the carved
panels are piled at one end of
the chapel. The vault below the
tomb when opened was found to
contain eleven skeletons, one of
the skulls having a clean cleft
made by a sword cut. They were
reverently re-interred in the
vault. We know that many
Eustaces of Castlemartin,
Harristown and Clongowes Wood
were buried here, but no other
Eustace tombstones now remain.
Sir Thomas had a son Edward,
the father of John of
Castlemartin, who in 1505 was
granted the Castle of
Inchcoventry; with certain lands
there and at Ballyculane, to
hold for the use of the son of
the 8th Earl of Kildare, who had
married the daughter of John’s
great-uncle Lord Portlester. He
had a son Maurice of
Castlemartin, who at the time of
the Reformation became a
Protestant, as were all his
descendants except a very few
who will be noted as devout and
active Catholics when they occur
later in this history. We shall
return to the House of
Castlemartin, but must first
consider the far more famous (at
this time) House of Harristown,
which remained ardently
Catholic, though Harristown,
itself passed to the Protestant
Castlemartin branch after the
Baltinglass rebellion of 1580.
In 1547 Maurice had been granted
Brannockstow'n, Rochestown and
Boleybeg (just south of
Harristown), forfeited by
Christopher Eustace of
Ballycotelan after the "Silken
Thomas" rebellion, to be
mentioned shortly (see also
under Coghlanstown and
Brannockstown).
Sir Roland FitzEustace of
Harristown, later Roland
Eustace, Baron Portlester
Roland, son of Sir Edward, the
Lord Deputy, was born about
1430, and was destined soon to
become one of the principal men
in Ireland during the Wars of
the Roses. He was trained as a
barrister, and by 1454 had been
appointed Chief Clerk to the
King's Bench and Keeper of the
Rolls. Later that year lie was
chosen by the Viceroy, the Duke
of York, to be Lord Treasurer, a
post he held for thirty-eight
years. He was knighted in 1459,
and in 1462 was created by
Edward IV, Baron Portlester.
(Portlester was one of the first
Irish peers to be so created by
Letters Patent, the only
peerages so granted before 1500
being those of the Earls of
Ulster, Carrick, Kildare, Louth,
Ormonde, Desmond and Waterford;
Viscount Gormanston 1478; and
Barons Trimleston 1462,
Portlester 1462 and Ratowth
1468.) In 1463, he was
appointed Lord Deputy to the
absent Viceroy, the Duke of
Clarence. He was Lord Chancellor
from 1472 to 1480 and again from
1486 to 1492. He was Captain of
the Brotherhood or Guild of St.
George, a body constituted by
Act of Parliament in 1472 for
the better defense of the Pale.
It was headed by the 7th Earl of
Kildare, under whom were the
elected Captain and eleven other
peers and knights, with 120
mounted archers, 40 horsemen and
40 pages. They had power to make
laws and to arrest rebels, and
were not dissolved until 1494.
In 1473, Portlester became a
Member of the Fraternity of
Arms.
In 1467,
Portlester had narrowly escaped
execution. The Queen, who had
been offended by the Earls of
Desmond and Kildare, contrived
that the Earl of Worcester
should be sent to Ireland as
Lord Deputy. Desmond was at once
quite unjustly accused and
beheaded; Kildare was attainted;
and Portlester charged with
treason. He offered wager by
battle, but his accuser, Sir
John Gilbert, fled, with the
result that Portlester was
completely exonerated by
Parliament and Sir John
attainted. Worcester himself was
beheaded on Tower Hill in 1470.
The great
8th Earl of Kildare succeeded
his father in 1477 and was
appointed Lord Deputy.
Portlester, although many years
his senior, became his firm
friend and later his
father-in-law. The Earl so on
held the famous Parliament of
Naas which refused to recognize
the King's representative, Lord
Henry Grey. He and Portlester
found themselves in serious
trouble, but were eventually
forgiven, although Portlester
was replaced as Lord Chancellor
by the Bishop of Meath. He
refused however to hand over the
Great Seal to his successor, and
another had to be made before
the affairs of State could be
carried on.
Kildare and
Portlester were ardent Yorkists,
and after the Lancastrian
victory at Bosworth in 1485 they
regarded the new King Henry VII
as merely an illegitimate Welsh
adventurer. When, therefore,
there arrived in Ireland the
Yorkist claimant, Lambert Simnel,
who after a thorough examination
appeared to be the undoubted son
of the Duke of Clarence, he was
crowned at Dublin in 1487.
Kildare and Portlester went to
England to support the Yorkist
claim, but it ended disastrously
at Stoke on-Trent. Once again
they received a royal pardon,
Portlester being confirmed as
Lord Treasurer and once more as
Lord Chancellor- by the Tudor
King. He seems to have
previously assigned, in 1482,
the office of Chief Baron of the
Exchequer to his son, Oliver. In
1492, the quarrels among the
Anglo-Irish at last enabled
Henry to displace Kildare and
his -Council, and Portlester
soon found himself threatened
with a hostile enquiry into the
Treasury accounts. He had
however run his course, and died
in 1496.
Portlester
was a generous benefactor of the
Church. In 1455, he, added the
Portlester Chapel at the east
end of St. Audoen's Church, then
the wealthiest parish in Dublin,
and in 1486, he founded the
Franciscan New Abbey of Grey
Friars at Kilcullen. He was a
benefactor of St. Malcolyn's,
Hollywood (three miles south of
Ballymore Eustace), and a
co-founder of the Guild and
Chantries of St. Columb, Skreen,
and the Chantries at Piercetown,
Laundey and Greenoge. He
refounded the Guild of English
Merchants Trading in Ireland.
He married
three times. First, Elizabeth,
daughter of John Brune; second,
in about 1463, Joanna (or
Joan),' widow of Christopher
Plunkett, 1st Lord Killeen, and
daughter of Bellew of
Bellewstown ( Her young
grandson, Broughton Plunkett,
accompanied Kildare to England
in 1487, and was killed at the
Battle of Stoke); and third,
in about 1467, Margaret, widow
of John, the son of Sir John
Dowdall of Newtown, and also the
widow of Thomas Barnewall,
daughter and co-heiress of
Jenico D'Artois. She predeceased
him, and was buried at St.
Audoen's, Dublin.
His two
sons, Oliver and Sir Richard,
perhaps illegitimate,
predeceased him Richard by only
a year or so. He had four
daughters, probably all by his
third wife: Alison, (She was
the mother of the 9th Earl, and
the second of her six daughters
was the famous Great Countess of
Ormonde and Ossory) who
married 8th Earl of Kildare;
Joan, (The Complete Peerage
(presumably with good reason)
gives two Joans, and assigns the
first and also Alison to the
second wife. Neither of these
assumptions seems to me to be at
all likely) who married (1)
her cousin Richard Plunkett, 2nd
Baron of Dunsany, and (2) her
second-cousin Sir Maurice
Eustace of Ballycotelan ; Maud,
who married (1) Thomas Marward,
Baron of Skreen, Co. Meath, (d.
1504) and (2) Sir John Plunkett
of Bewley, Co. Louth; and Janet
(d. 1536), who married Sir
Walter Delahyde of Moyglarie,
Co. Meath. She, with her two
sons, James and John, and Thomas
Eustace her nephew, ( A
younger son of her sister Joan,
whose eldest son, Christopher,
was executed in 1535) was
accused of having incited the
10th Earl of Kildare to rebel in
1534, and was detained in Dublin
Castle as " Dame Jenet Eustace,
the traitor's aunt and foster
mother."
Portlester
presumably came into possession
of Harristown as his share of
his father's Castlemartin
property. He built (or added to)
the castle, no doubt as part of
the activities of the Guild of
St. George. There was at one
time a second, perhaps the
original, castle on the estate,
but its site is unknown. Little
now remains of Harristown
castle, but the earthworks (just
west of the railway station)
show that it must have been an
imposing structure. The estate
probably extended slightly to
the east of the present townland
boundary, so as to include the
little chapel of St. James in
Coghlanstown, then the property
of the Eustaces of Ballycotelan
where stands the remains of
Portlester's memorial cross. An
old map of about 1645 shows that
the townland boundary was in its
present position by that date.
Among the other castles built by
Portlester was that of
Balablaght, at the request of
the Abbot of Baltinglass.
Portlester
was buried at New Abbey, where
his daughter, Alison, Countess
of Kildare, had been buried the
year before. She is said to have
died of grief when the 8th Earl
was arrested in 1495 and
imprisoned in the Tower. She was
not to know that he would be
freed the following year and
appointed by the King " to rule
over all Ireland," as the result
of the famous trial.
Portlester's tomb in the chapel
of New Abbey must have been
strikingly similar to that of
his brother at Castlemartin, but
it bore two effigies-himself in
armour, and Margaret in a long
belted and pleated costume,
wearing a " horned "' head
dress. One panel bore his
arms-the Eustace saltire
(differenced by an annulet,
denoting a fifth son, which may
have been intended for a
crescent, denoting a second son.
The carving of this panel is
inaccurate in that the arms of
D'Artois should be " Barry wavy
of six." Note that on the death
of Margaret (an heraldic
heiress) he inherited and
quartered her arms, but this
quartering died with him),
quartering D'Artois (carved as "
Barry of six "). In St. Audoen's
church in Dublin, and now placed
for protection under the ruined
tower, there is a tomb or
cenotaph bearing almost
identical effigies and
inscription, but now without the
side panels. This was probably
originally placed over
Margaret's grave. These three
tombs and their effigies will be
further considered under
Kilcullen." as will the Eustace
effigy at Ballymore Eustace. In
the graveyard (now moved to
inside the church ruins) of St.
James's chapel, Coghlanstown,
there are the base and shaft of
a memorial cross bearing his
saltire with baron's coronet and
what are probably the arms of
his first two wives. The
inscription " Eustace Lord
Portlester 1462" appears
from the style of the lettering
to have been added in the
seventeenth century.
On his
death in 1496, Thomas, his
nephew, son of his brother
Richard, succeeded to his
estates but the title of Lord
Portlester became extinct. |