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John Thadeus Delane

1817-1879

HIS LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE

CHAPTER I

ANCESTRY, PARENTAGE, AND EDUCATION

IN that historic region of the kingdom of Ireland known as Ossory, and especially in that portion of it which is comprised in the western half of the Queen's County, the patronymic of Delane, and its more ancient forms of O'Delany, Delaney, Delany, and Dulany, are of immemorial antiquity.

The little River Nore, in its course from the slopes of the Slieve Bloom range, waters the green plains of Leix and Ossory on its way to join the Barrow; and a place called Anatrim-in Irish, the marsh of the elder tree-near its banks has been the buryingplace of the clan for centuries. In its ruined church and sadly neglected churchyard are still to be seen the gravestones and armorial bearings of many of the race; and the whole tract of country round about Castletown-once the headquarters of the great rival tribe of FitzPatrick-is still peopled with their descendants and popularly known as Delaney's country. Mountrath, Abbeyleix, and Ballyfin were also former strongholds of the clan.

The Delanys of Ballyfin, and no doubt other

VOL. I

I

branches of the parent stock, became Protestants in the penal times, but they continued to bury their dead at Anatrim.

The pre-Reformation Catholic church there has been long destroyed, but its site is occupied by the ruined Protestant building above referred to, and the Delanys of both creeds sleep out their long night side by side.

Close to the church of Anatrim stands one of those ancient stone-roofed chambers often met with in Ireland, which probably served in early times as a sacristry for the priest; and near it, again, is the sacred well of St. Cavin, or Kavan, a local saint who flourished, if such a word is applicable to uncivilised Ireland, in the sixth century. His memory has been kept green through the adoption of his name by countless members of the clan. It is still, or was quite recently, to be seen on the headstones in the churchyard of Anatrim; and, what is of more immediate interest to us, it was the one and only Christian name given to the grandfather of the subject of this biography.

The O'Delanys, in common with other ancient Irish tribes, are mentioned in that somewhat apocryphal work, The Annals of the Four Masters; but as in the Middle Ages the wild tribes of Ossory were chiefly occupied with internecine war and plunder, and Delane's remoter ancestors were doubtless as much addicted to racial strife and the delights of cattle-lifting as their neighbours the O'Moores, the Fitz Patricks, and the Kavanaghs, little or nothing that is definite concerning their lives and achievements in that unlettered age has come down to us.

1 History and Antiquities of the Diocese of Ossory, by the Rev. W. Carrigan, C.C., 1905, vol. ii. p. 148. In vol. iv. will be found a detailed pedigree of the Delane family.

EARLY HISTORY OF THE FAMILY

3

Might was right, as in the older days of Brian Boru. His principal qualification to be king of all Ireland was, we recollect, the possession of a greater number of cattle than his conquered rivals could ever again hope to acquire by force, and the consolidation of his power was brought about by the cruel but effectual process of putting out the eyes of the chiefs he defeated in battle and starving their humbler followers so that they should not give him any further trouble.

But when the history of provincial Ireland emerges from the semi-barbarism in which it so long lay obscured, we find the race of Delane establishing itself beyond the confines of Ossory, in the neighbouring counties of Kilkenny and Roscommon, and sending forth its branches as far as Waterford in the south and Galway in the west.

A Delane, probably a native of Lismore or Dungarvan, is found holding an office of trust under the great Earl of Cork in the reign of James I.1 By the reign of Charles II. one at least of the family had come over to seek his fortunes in England. In a list of the principal Merchants of the City of London, published in 1677, is to be found the name of a Mr. Delane, who lived at Hoxton, now a prosaic and unlovely suburb of London, but at that time, as we learn from Pepys, a pleasant rural district, much frequented by the better class of citizens.

The final letter "y" seems to have been discarded when the family passed from Ireland to this country, though it has been ingeniously suggested that even without it the name may have been pronounced as if it consisted of three syllables.

Peter Delane appears as one of the Queen's gentle

The Lismore Papers, privately printed for the Duke of Devonshire

in 1886.

men-in-waiting in a list of the Royal household as constituted in 1687, published in Chamberlayne's Anglia Notitia for that year; and in 1697 Charles Delane was appointed one of the commissioners for levying the poll-tax in the city and county of Dublin.

When we reach the eighteenth century, we tread the firmer ground of genealogical continuity. A branch of the family, which seems to have early adopted the spelling and pronunciation of the name as we now know it, was then established at Kilenagh, near Elphin, in the county of Roscommon, where it intermarried with the family of Oliver Goldsmith.

From this stock came Dennis Delane, a singularly handsome man, who, after being educated at Trinity College, Dublin, took to the stage, and was held by his admirers to be but little inferior to Garrick. Alike a favourite with Dublin and London audiences,' he died in 1750.

But the Church as well as the stage was to have its family representative, and to leave his mark upon the history of his time.

Patrick Delany, a distant cousin and contemporary of the actor, the husband of Mrs. Pendarves and the friend of Swift, became Dean of Down in 1744. Endowed with great talent and vivacity, warmhearted, impetuous, generous and hospitable beyond his means, he was one of those rare instances of a man not being spoilt by an accretion of fortune. Swift's eulogy of him, whilst applicable to many another Irish gentleman of the old school, might equally have been written of the much greater man who, as we shall show hereafter, was destined to confer distinction upon his name and race a generation or two later.

'In 1741 he was at Drury Lane in Richard III.