The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent Part 1

The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent.

by S.M. Hussey.

PREFACE

Probably the first criticism on this book will be that it is colloquial.

The reason for this lies in the fact that though Mr. Hussey has for two generations been one of the most noted raconteurs in Ireland, he has never been addicted to writing, and for that reason has always declined to arrange his memoirs, though several times approached by publishers and strongly urged to do so by his friends, notably Mr. Froude and Mr.

John Bright. If his reminiscences are to be at all characteristic they must be conversational, and it is as a talker that he himself at length consents to appear in print.

In this volume he endeavours to supply some view of his own country as it has impressed itself on 'the most abused man in Ireland,' as Lord James of Hereford characterised Mr. Hussey. How little practical effect several attacks on his life and scores of threatening letters have had on him is shown by the fact that he survives at the age of eighty to express the wish that his recollections may open the eyes of many as well as prove diverting.

Possessing a retentive memory, he has been further able to a.s.sist me with seven large volumes of newspaper cuttings which he had collected since 1853, while the publishers kindly permit the use of two articles he contributed to _Murray's Magazine_ in May and July 1887. To me the preparation of this book has been a delightful task, materially helped by Mr. Hussey's family as well as by a few others on either side of the Channel.

HOME GORDON.

13 OVINGTON SQUARE, S.W.

REMINISCENCES OF AN IRISH LAND AGENT

CHAPTER I

ANCESTRY

'My father and mother were both Kerry men,' as the saying goes in my native land, and better never stepped.

It was my misfortune, but not my fault, that I was born at Bath and not in Kerry.

However, my earliest recollection is of Dingle, for I was only three months old when I was taken back to Ireland, and up to that time I did not study the English question very deeply, especially as I had an Irish nurse.

There is a lot of Hussey history before I was born, and some is worth preserving here.

It is a thousand pities that so many details of family history have been lost, and to my mind it is inc.u.mbent on one member of every reasonably old family in this generation to collect and set down what should be remembered about their ancestors for the unborn to come.

My contribution does not profess to be very exhaustive, but it will serve for want of a better.

When a man claims to be descended from Irish kings, it generally means that his forbears were bigger scoundrels than he is, for they were cattle-lifters and marauders, whilst his depredations are probably disguised under some of the many insidious forms of finance. Just as every Scotsman is not canny and every American is not cute, so every Irishman is not what the Saxon believes him to be. But there can be little doubt what type of men these ancient Irish sovereigns were, and I regretfully confess I cannot trace my descent from them.

The family of Hussey was of English extraction, according to that rather valuable book _The Antient and Present State of the County of Kerry_, by Charles Smith, 1756--the companion volumes dealing with Cork and Waterford are much less precious. Personally I always understood that the Husseys hailed from Normandy, as will be seen a few pages on, but tradition on such a point is not of much value.

Anyway the family of Hussey settled in very early times at Dingle, and also had several lands and castles in the barony of Corkaquiny.

Dingle was the only town in this barony, and it was incorporated by Queen Elizabeth in 1585, when she granted it the same privileges which were enjoyed by Drogheda, with a superiority over the harbours of Ventry and Smerwick. The Virgin Sovereign also presented the town with 300 for the purpose of making a wall round it.

The Irish formerly called Dingle Daingean in Cushy, or the fastness of the Husseys. One of the FitzGeralds, Earl of Desmond, had granted to an ancestor of my own a considerable tract of land in these parts, namely, from Castle-Drum to Dingle, or as others say, he gave him as much as he could walk over in his jackboots in one day. That Hussey built a castle, said to be the first erected at Dingle, the vaults of which were afterwards used as the county gaol.

There is mention of this in the grant of a charter to Dingle by King James I. in the fourth year of his reign: 'The house of John Hussey granted for a gaol and common hall to the corporation.'

A grim interest lurks in the fact that the dedication of Smith's _History_ to Lord Newport, Lord Chancellor of Ireland, recites that 'this Kingdom, my lord, is a kind of Terra Incognita to the greater part of Europe.'

Is it not so to this day?

Do I not meet scores of people who tell me they would love to go to Kerry, but they have never been nearer than Killarney.

That is the sort of speech which makes me wonder how geography is taught.

It is on a par with the remark of a prominent Arctic explorer, that he had never been to Killarney because it was so far off.

People, however, who go there apparently like it.

The chief Elizabethan settlers in Kerry were William and Charles Herbert, Valentine Brown, ancestor of the Kenmares, Edmund Denny, and Captain Conway, whose daughter Avis married Robert Blennerha.s.set, while a little later, in 1600, John Crosbie was made Bishop of Ardfert and Aghadoe.

To-day the descendants of those settlers are still among the princ.i.p.al folk in Kerry, though that is more due to their own selves than to the support they had from any British Government.

This Valentine Brown, who was a worshipful and valiant knight, wrote a discourse for settling Munster in 1584. His plan was to exterminate the FitzGeralds and to protestantise Ireland; but by the irony of fate his own son married a daughter of the Earl of Desmond and became a Roman Catholic.

In the Carew Ma.n.u.script it is recorded that he estimated that one constable and six men would suffice for Cork, but for Ventry, 'a large harbour near Dingle,' one constable and fifty men were necessary; so he evidently had a clear apprehension of the villainous capabilities of the men of Kerry.

It is also recorded that in the parish of Killiney is a stronghold called Castle Gregory, which before the wars of 1641 was possessed by Walter Hussey, who was proprietor of the Magheries and Ballybeggan.

Having a considerable party under his command, he made a garrison of his castle, whence having been long pressed by Cromwell's forces, he escaped in the night with all his men, and got into Minard Castle, in which he was closely beset by Colonels Lehunt and Sadler. After some time had been spent, the English observing that the besieged were making use of pewter bullets, powder was laid under the vaults of the castle, and both Walter Hussey and his men were blown up.

Prior to this, 'on January 31, 1641, Walter Hussey, with Florence MacCarthy and others, attacked Ballybeggan Castle, plundered and burnt the house of Mr. Henry Huddleston, and did the same to the house and haggards of Mr. h.o.r.e, where they built an engine called a saw, having its three sides made musket-proof with boards. It was drawn on four wheels, each a foot high, with folding doors to open inwards and several loopholes to shoot through, without a floor, so that ten or twelve men who went therein might drive it forwards. These machines were set against castle walls whilst the men within them attempted to make a breach with crows and pickaxes.'

Infernal machines are, after all, not confined to our own times, and this same rascally ancestor of my own appears to have had predatory habits more likely to be appreciated by his followers than by his foes.

Dingle is now a somewhat dilapidated town, but that was not always the case, for it is mentioned in my dear old friend Froude's _History of England_ that the then Earl of Desmond called on the amba.s.sador of Charles V. at his lodgings in Dingle. The old records of the place would be worth diligent antiquarian research, a matter even more difficult in Ireland than elsewhere. Should all be brought to light, I fancy the part played by my family would not grow smaller.

The Husseys spread away over the county, after having their lands forfeited under both Elizabeth and Cromwell, which was the most respectable thing to suffer in those times. In the reign of Queen Anne, Colonel Maurice Hussey sold Cahirnane to the Herberts, and there is a garden still called Hussey's Garden in the property. He built a mortuary chapel for himself on the top of a small hill just outside the gates of Muckross, where his own grave near that beautiful abbey can be seen to this day.

This Colonel Maurice Hussey resided for some time in England, and appears to have married an English lady; and it is odd that though a Roman Catholic he was trusted by the Governments of both William and Anne. There seems to have been something versatile about his rather mysterious career, the key to which may be found in the surmise that until the accession of King George he was a Jacobite at heart; which throws some doubt on his a.s.sertion in a letter that there are very few Tories--or outlaws--in Kerry, where the Whig rule was never enforced with great severity. He was, however, committed to 'Trally jail' (_i.e._ Tralee) on the fear of a landing by the Pretender, whence he wrote pleading letters, in one of which he mentions that his son-in-law, MacCartie, has taken the oaths of abjuration; and later, when released, he seems to have been disturbed at the large number of German Protestants, driven out of the Palatinate by Louis the Fourteenth, who settled at Bally M'Elligott.

Any one who rambles about Dingle and investigates the older buildings, so carefully examined by Mr. Hitchc.o.c.k, will notice how frequent is the emblem of a tree; and that is a conspicuous feature of the Hussey armorial bearings.

With reference to the allusions made in Smith's book to my ancestors, it may be pointed out that he repeated the popular tradition at the very time when the Husseys, like the rest of their fellow Catholics all over the country, were disinherited and depressed, and when he could gain nothing by doing them honour.

As for my name, it seems to have really been Norman, and to have been De La Huse, De La Hoese, and later Husee, Huse, and, finally, Hussey.

Burke in his extinct _Peerage_ states that Sir Hugh Husse came to Ireland, 17 Hen. II., and married the sister of Theobald FitzWalter, first Butler of Ireland, and that he died seized of large possessions in Meath. His son married the daughter of Hugh de Lacy, senior Earl of Ulster, and their great-grandson, Sir John Hussey, Knight, first Earl of Galtrim, was summoned to Parliament in 1374.

Moreover, the State Papers in the Public Record Office, quoted in the _Journal of the Royal Society of Irish Antiquaries_ for September 1893, p. 266, prove beyond question that Nicholas de Huse or Hussy and his father, Herbert de Huse, were land-owners of some importance in Kerry in 1307. Stirring times they must have been, of which we have no fiction under the guise of history, though then men had to fight hard to preserve their lives and maintain their dignity. We can imagine the tussle, even in these degenerate days when no challenge follows the exchange of insults, even in the House of Commons, and when the perpetration of the most cowardly outrage in Ireland has to be induced by preliminary potations of whisky. Of course, those old times were bad times, but the badness was at least above board and the warfare pretty stoutly waged. There is some sense in fighting your foe hand to hand, but to-day when a battle is contested by armies which never see one another, and are decimated by silent bullets, the courage needed is of a different character, and the wicked murder of such combats is obvious.