As the chapters collected in this volume amply demonstrate, numerous archives across Ireland, England, Scotland, mainland Europe, and the United States house documents pertinent to the study of early modern women’s life writing on and in Ireland. Yet many of these documents are not widely known, if at all. Furthermore, they are, like many female-authored documents of the early modern period, rarely available except in manuscript form. Finally, due to the vagaries of history that have scattered many documents germane to early modern Ireland, as well as inadequate or incorrect cataloging, individual scholars rarely have knowledge of every document by a single women. Greater systematization and communication are needed to truly make these rich materials both known and accessible. As a small step in this direction, we provide here brief descriptions of some of the most pertinent archives and women whose life writings await further scrutiny: in some cases this is because the texts have been underexamined; in other cases it is because the Irish contexts have been underexamined. Our aim is threefold: first, to showcase the important Irish contexts of some relatively well-known women life writers; second, to bring greater attention to lesser-known texts and archives; and, third, to facilitate further research on these and other life-writing texts. In short, we hope that this is a generative text that will support future scholarly research on the burgeoning field of women’s life writing and early modern Ireland.
We have done our best to provide an overview of what is known about women’s life writing in the Irish context at this point. But it bears repeating that this list is selective and incomplete and at times quite random. We have reassembled and built on the research of the pioneering literary scholars and historians who first asked questions about the lives and writings of women in early modern Ireland. We hope and expect that the information we have collected here will continue to be revised and expanded as more scholars engage in research in this area. In fact, we anticipate that this bibliographic appendix will support and inspire such research. We imagine that when some of the libraries and collections cited here are further explored by scholars attentive to both women and Ireland, many more treasures may be found. We also expect that scholars pursuing a particular woman writer through these and other archives will discover other gems. One resource likely to support these objectives is the Virtual Record Treasury, a virtual reconstruction of the archives lost in the 1922 destruction of the Public Record Office of Ireland that is currently underway as part of the Beyond 2022 project (https://beyond2022.ie/). In short, not only do we expect to have overlooked valuable material, but we hope that we have. The field is still young, and much remains to be uncovered.
We have focused on women’s life writing from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, although there is no doubt that a higher proportion of material comes from the mid- and late seventeenth century. This is partly a reflection of our own research interests, but we suspect that it also reflects what survives in the archives. We have included women writers from different ethnic and religious backgrounds, and although we cite texts written in Irish and other European languages, the overwhelming majority of texts we have included are written in English. This reveals the deficiencies in our own knowledge of and engagement with the Gaelic culture of early modern Ireland, but it also reflects the poor survival rates of Irish-language material. Many English-language texts by women writing their lives in seventeenth-century Ireland contain Irish words and phrases, which demonstrates some level of engagement by settlers with their Irish neighbors and their native language. But work by Irish-language scholars is still needed to ensure that our understanding of women’s life writing in early modern Ireland fully embraces the women who chose to write in Irish. When we have cited native Irish women we have tended to use the most familiar versions of their names, which are mostly but not always in English. Finally, for these brief summaries, we have drawn on existing research from other scholars (cited in the bibliography), as well as on invaluable resources like the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, www.oxforddnb.com, and the Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://dib.cambridge.org/; we are not providing individual citations here to keep the focus on the sources and the individuals.
This archive contains petitions of exiled Irish women. See Marie-Louise Coolahan, Women, Writing, and Language in Early Modern Ireland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010).
One of the treasures to be found among the letters and papers of the Parsons family in Birr Castle, County Offaly, is the receipt book of Dorothy Parsons (A/17). Tucked among the culinary and medicinal recipes in the small quarto volume is a pen-and-pencil drawing, dated 1668, that shows alterations to Parsonstown House along with the witty inscription: “An excellent receipt to spend 4,000 pound” (A/17). Other early modern recipes (1645–52) can be found in A/4. The Calendar is available at https://birrcastle.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/SummaryList-of-the-Calendar-of-the-Rosse-Papers.pdf.
The Carte Papers is the most pertinent collection at the Bodleian Library, as it is a large, multivolume archive compiled by the historian Thomas Carte that contains the original papers of several men, including James Butler, First Duke of Ormonde and lord lieutenant of Ireland; Sir William Fitzwilliam, lord deputy of Ireland; and Sir John Davies, attorney general of Ireland. The papers cover the period 1560–1715 and are particularly valuable for study of the Ormonde Butler family, both men and women, and the family’s wide-ranging network. The papers of the Duke of Ormonde preserved among the Carte Papers chiefly relate to his political activities during the wars of the Three Kingdoms, so it follows that many of the female-authored documents represented in the collection have been included because of their political relevance. These include letters from Abbess Mary Knatchbull of Ghent, an important intermediary in the royalist intelligence network; letters from Queen Henrietta Maria from France; and life writings of women caught up in the wars in Ireland. Women such as [Mrs. Francis] Briver, wife of the mayor of Waterford; Lettice Digby, née Fitzgerald, of Geashill Castle, County Offaly; and Lady Alice Moore, née Loftus, of Drogheda all describe their different experiences of siege warfare. Beyond Ireland there are letters from powerful and well-connected women like Katherine, Duchess of Buckingham, a Catholic who took as her second husband Randall MacDonnell, First Earl of Antrim and an important Irish Confederate commander. There are also numerous petitions from various women in the collection (esp. MSS 104, 105). Edward Edwards’s catalog for the period 1660–87 is available online at www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/dept/scwmss/projects/carte/carte.html. But for earlier and later periods, it is essential to consult Edwards’s handwritten calendar at the Bodleian Library or on microfilm.
There is much of interest in the British Library, most of which is already well known, such as the autobiographies of Ann Fanshawe (Add. MS 41,161), Mary Rich (Add. MS 27,357), and Alice Thornton (Add. MS 88,897), as well as Rich’s diaries (Add. MS 27,351–55) and “Occasional Meditations” (Add. MS 27, 356). Letters of Elizabeth Butler, née Preston, the First Duchess of Ormonde, to Sir Edward Nicholas are located in Egerton Manuscripts, 2,534. The Sloane Manuscripts include several items, most notably the siege narrative of Elizabeth Dowdall (Sloane MS 1,008), Dorothy Moore’s “Of Education of Girles” (Sloane Add. MS 649), and the “choise receipts” of Katherine Ranelagh (Sloane MS 1,367). Other collections with items relating to the Boyle and other women include the Althorp Papers (Add. MSS 75,354–55), Egmont Papers (Add. MSS 46,931–32), Hyde Papers (Add. MS 15,892), Petty Papers (Add. MS 72,884), and Stowe Papers (MSS 206–7): for a comprehensive list of the autobiographical texts of the Boyle women in the British Library, see Ann-Maria Walsh, “Writing Women’s Lives: The Epistolary Cultures of the Daughters of the First Earl of Cork” (PhD diss., University College Dublin, 2017).
This is the main repository of the Boyle family papers. Within the Cork Manuscripts is the correspondence of several generations of Boyle women, including Katherine Boyle, née Fenton, to her husband (vol. 1); Sara Moore, née Boyle, to her father (vol. 14); Joan, Countess of Kildare, to her father (vol. 19); Lettice Goring, née Boyle, to her father and brother (vol. 20); and Elizabeth Kinalmeaky to her father-in-law, Richard Boyle, First Earl of Cork (vol. 22), and to her sister, Katherine, Lady Ranelagh (vol. 31). The journal of Elizabeth Boyle, née Clifford, Countess of Cork and Burlington, 1659–88, can also be found here (Misc. Box 5) alongside her letters to her husband (vol. 31). For a comprehensive list of the autobiographical texts of the Boyle women at Chatsworth, see Walsh, “Writing Women’s Lives.”
The library contains the manuscript and printed archives of Quakers in Ireland since their establishment in the seventeenth century. There are congregational records including minutes of the women’s meetings, as well as letters and spiritual autobiographies. Names of significant female friends include Sarah Cheevers (1655, 1659), Katherine Evans (1659), Elizabeth Fletcher (1656, 1657), and Katherine Norton (1677, 1678).
At least 125 letters from women appear in the Irish Papers series, a subset of the massive collection of Hastings Family Papers. Individual correspondents with multiple letters in the collection include Anne Conway, née Finch, Viscountess Conway; Frances Conway, née Popham, Viscountess Conway; Agnes Graham, née Gray, Countess of Menteith and Airth; Lady Isabella Graham, née Bramhall; Mary Forbes, née Rawdon, Countess of Granard; and Rose MacDonnell, née O’Neill, Marchioness of Antrim. All the known letters by Eliza Blennerhassett are also at the Huntington; see Amanda E. Herbert’s chapter, in this volume.
Women’s life-writing texts can be found among the State Papers, Ireland, with petitions particularly well represented (the Commonwealth petitions of the Duchess of Ormonde are among this number). Other materials include a letter by the Poor Clare Sister Magdalen Clare (1645) and some letters of Katherine Ranelagh to various recipients, including Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia (TS 23/1/43). Find the State Papers Online, 1509-1714, at http://www.gale.com/intl/primary-sources/state-papers-online-early-modern.
This resource has, to date, been underexplored in regard to early modern women’s writing. Yet there are several collections of family and estate papers, precisely the kind of collections in which women’s papers can often be found, despite women’s letters typically not being cataloged and the preponderance of deeds and other legal documents. Examples of women’s life writing include two early eighteenth-century letters from a Clare Taylor, a 1662 letter from Mary Bellew to her husband, and a 1684 letter from Elizabeth to Christopher Bellew, all in a collection for the Bellew family of County Louth. Two letters from Jane Pottinger are also in the Sarsfield-Vesey Correspondence.
Female-authored letters and petitions appear in many of the National Library of Ireland’s collections of family and estate papers, including letters to and from Jane Bonnell (MS 41,580); letters from Honora O’Brien to her brother Sir Donough O’Brien; other women’s letters to Donough O’Brien (MS 45,325); Mary Vesey’s 1694 letter to her father, Denny Muschamp; and a circa 1663 letter from Elizabeth Muschamp, née Boyle, to her husband, Denny Muschamp (MS 38, 868). The National Library also houses microfilm copies of the Orrery Papers (MSS 13,177–13,225), which includes letters from women such as Lady E. Ponsonby (1688). Perhaps the most significant collection in the library is the Ormond Papers, which were originally preserved at Kilkenny Castle until Thomas Carte took tranches of material to Oxford, where they now form part of the Carte Papers in the Bodleian Library. The Ormond Papers represent what was left behind and for this reason have been considered less valuable than the Carte Papers. But for scholars interested in women’s writing, there is much of interest, particularly relating to the women of the Ormonde Butler family, whom Carte tended to overlook. The most significant Butler woman is probably Elizabeth, First Duchess of Ormonde. But her mother and mother-in-law, daughters and daughters-in-law, granddaughters, and sisters-in-law are also represented in the collection. Her daughters were important public figures: her eldest daughter, Elizabeth, as a celebrated courtier, and her second daughter, Mary, as a patron of the arts.
The prose narrative of “Mrs. Goodale,” in which she writes about her experience in Ireland circa 1700, is included in this collection. It is also available online at Perdita Manuscripts, 1500–1700, www.amdigital.co.uk/primary-sources/perdita-manuscripts-1500-1700.
The National Records of Scotland—formerly the National Archives of Scotland—is another underexplored resource in regard to women’s life writing in connection to Ireland. Pertinent documents include letters by Katherine Ranelagh (GD 45/14/237/1–5 and GD 406/1/3797).
A contemporary English translation of Mother Mary Bonaventure Browne’s Irish-language chronicle of the Poor Clares in Ireland can be found at Nun’s Island alongside other seventeenth-century materials, such as a copy of a letter from Mother Cecily Francis Dillon (December 1642).
Letters by women can be found among the correspondence of merchant families housed in the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, such as the O’Haras of Sligo (T/2812), which includes letters to Kean O’Hara from Rose O’Hara (1674?) and Elizabeth O’Hara (1691); and of the Black family of Belfast (D/1950), which includes letters of Jane/Jean Eccles to her husband (1673). There are also letters to George, Sixteenth Earl of Kildare, from several women, including his aunt Elizabeth, Dowager Countess of Kildare (1628–33); see Aidan Clarke and Bríd McGrath, eds., Letterbook of George, 16th Earl of Kildare (Dublin: Irish Manuscripts Commission, 2013). The Public Record Office of Northern Ireland also houses receipt books, including one (ca. 1707) that contains Lady Ailesbury’s recipe for “ye limbe watter” (D607/A/1).
Several texts by Katherine Ranelagh are housed here, including her “Discourse concerning the plague of 1665” (RB/1/14/1); a medical commonplace book containing several recipes filed under her name (RB/2/8); and letters to members of the Hartlib Circle (RB/3/5/6–14, RB/3/6/4).
Three collections are particularly significant. First, the 1641 Depositions—now available on a publicly accessible and fully searchable website (http://1641.tcd.ie/)—encompasses approximately 4,000 individual witness testimonies of (mainly) Protestant settlers of English and Scottish descent, recorded in the immediate aftermath of the 1641 rebellion. Since the website is searchable by the gender of the deponent, it is now possible to quickly identify (with reasonable accuracy) that women account for 817 documents in the collection across all the county groupings, from 3 female-authored depositions in County Tyrone to 150 in County Cork. Varying in length from half a page to eight or more pages, the depositions are the records of oral responses to preestablished questions, yet they also allow considerable room for the individual shaping of rebellion experiences. See Coolahan, Women, Writing, and Language. Second, the Lyons Collection of the Correspondence of William King includes the incoming correspondence of William King (1650–1729). Although primarily written by men, there are an extraordinary number of letters by women, too. For a full list of these female correspondents, see Julie A. Eckerle’s chapter, in this volume. Third, TCD Muniments is a collection of papers dealing with Trinity College Dublin. Although dominated by papers by and concerning men, a number of letters by women appear in the collection; most of these concern financial matters (such as Mary Lockhart’s 1692/93 letter to Provost Browne regarding the rent of Ballywire, County Tipperary). The relevant indices can be consulted in the Manuscripts and Archives Research Library reading room.
A few letters by and about Katherine Villiers, née Fitzgerald, written both before and after her marriage to Edward Villiers, can be found in T3137 (see esp. A/15/3 and A/21/9). Both of these letters are written from England but either sent to or concerning Ireland.
Alexander lived in Dublin with her Scottish husband, James Alexander, clerk in the Exchequer Court of Dublin Castle, until they relocated to Paisley, Scotland, during the Williamite-Jacobite War. Her receipt book, A Book of Cookery for dressing of Several Dishes of Meat and making of Several Sauces and Seasoning for Meat or Fowl, was written in Dublin in the 1680s, with additional recipes later added by her daughter, Hannah Dorothea (b. Dublin, 1686). Text edited by Deirdre Nuttall (Westport: Evertype, 2014). The manuscript is privately owned.
Prophet and author of Scripture-Prophecies Opened (1647), Avery moved to Dublin in the early 1650s and became a member of John Rogers’s Independent congregation in Dublin. Her conversion narrative, delivered before the Dublin congregation, was among those published in Rogers’s Ohel or Beth-shemesh: A Tabernacle for the Sun, 2 vols. (London, 1653); significantly, seventeen female-authored testimonies ranging in length from less than half a page to over three pages are included in Rogers’s collection. Many of these women, like Avery, had only recently arrived in Ireland. Avery’s edited testimony is published in Lay by Your Needles Ladies, Take the Pen: Writing Women in England, 1500–1700, ed. Suzanne Trill, Kate Chedgzoy, and Melanie Osborne (London: Arnold, 1997), but there is no extant manuscript. See also the sections on Elizabeth Chambers, Frances Curtis, and Mary Turrant. See Coolahan, Women, Writing, and Language; and Crawford Gribben, God’s Irishmen: Theological Debates in Cromwellian Ireland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).
The daughter of Henry Fitzgerald, Twelfth Earl of Kildare, Ó Domhnaill married first Rudhraighe Ó Domhnaill, Earl of Tyrconnell, in 1603 and was still in Ireland when he left during the 1607 Flight of the Earls. She spent a few years in England; was never reunited with her husband, who died in 1608; married second husband Sir Nicholas Barnewall in 1617; and wrote poetry. Her 1607 letter to Lord Deputy Arthur Chichester is printed in Angela Bourke et al., The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing, vols. 4 and 5, Irish Women’s Writing and Traditions (Cork: Cork University Press, 2002).
The eldest daughter of the First Earl of Cork, Barrymore maintained a correspondence with her friend and member of Parliament Sir Ralph Verney over many years: this correspondence is preserved at the Verney home of Claydon Manor, Claydon, with copies available on microfilm in the British Library. There are also letters to members of her natal family among the Cork Manuscripts at Chatsworth House. See Ann-Maria Walsh’s chapter, in this volume.
Blaugdone was an English Quaker who traveled and preached in England and Ireland during the Restoration and published An Account of the Travels, Sufferings & Persecutions of Barbara Blaugdone: Given forth as a Testimony to the Lord’s Power, and for the Encouragement of Friends (Shoreditch, 1691), reprinted in facsimile in Elizabeth Skerpan-Wheeler, ed., Life Writings: The Early Modern Englishwoman; A Facsimile Library of Essential Works, ser. 2, pt. 1, vols. 1–2 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001), vol. 2. See also Anne Fogarty’s chapter, in this volume.
One of three daughters of Gen. Sir Albert Conyngham and wife of James Bonnell, accountant general of Ireland, Bonnell became a voluminous letter writer in her long widowhood. She was also the driving force behind the 1703 publication of her husband’s life, William Hamilton’s The Exemplary Life and Character of James Bonnell. Her manuscript letters are primarily archived at Trinity College Dublin and the National Library of Ireland and were sent from a range of locations, including Dublin, Finglas, Hillsborough, and London. See Eckerle’s chapter, in this volume.
Daughter of Sir Geoffrey Fenton and wife of Richard Boyle, First Earl of Cork, Boyle spent most of her life in Ireland, with some extended trips to England. She died in Dublin and is buried at Saint Patrick’s Cathedral there. Manuscript letters can be found among the Cork Manuscripts in Chatsworth House. See also Walsh’s chapter, in this volume.
Heiress and daughter of Henry Clifford, Earl of Cumberland, and wife of Richard Boyle, Second Earl of Cork, Boyle managed estates and kept ample records, much like the other Boyle women. Letters written to her husband before and after their marriage can be found among the Althorp Papers in the British Library. Her manuscript memorandum book is in the Chatsworth House. See also Walsh’s chapter, in this volume.
Born and raised in England, Boyle’s marriage to Lewis Boyle, Viscount Kinalmeaky, who was killed in the Battle of Liscarrol early in their marriage, brought her temporarily into both Ireland and the Boyle family. Her manuscript letters are housed in the Carte Papers at the Bodleian Library and the Cork Manuscripts in Chatsworth House.
Born and raised in England, Boyle’s marriage to Roger Boyle, First Earl of Orrery, brought her into Ireland and the Boyle family. She is largely responsible for the collection of materials ultimately known as the Orrery Papers. See her manuscript letters at the National Library of Ireland. See also Walsh’s chapter in this volume.
The wife of Francis Briver, mayor of Waterford in 1641–42, Briver wrote an epistolary account of the rebellion in Waterford, partly in defense of her husband. [Mrs. Francis] Briver, “An Epistolary Account of the Irish Rising of 1641 by the Wife of the Mayor of Waterford (with text),” ed. Naomi McAreavey, English Literary Renaissance 42, no. 1 (2012): 90–118. Her manuscripts are housed in the Carte Papers at the Bodleian Library. See also McAreavey, “‘This is that I may remember what passings that Happind in Waterford’: Inscribing the 1641 Rising in the Letters of the Wife of the Mayor of Waterford,” Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal 5 (2010): 77–109.
Browne was the abbess of the Galway Poor Clares, who led the Irish order to exile in Spain in the 1650s and then wrote a chronicle of the order’s experiences at home and abroad during the seventeenth century. The Irish-language original was destroyed, but a contemporary English translation survives: Celsus O’Brien, ed., Recollections of an Irish Poor Clare in the Seventeenth Century (Galway: Connaught Tribune, 1993). The manuscript is held in the Poor Clare Monastery in Galway. See also Marie-Louise Coolahan, “Identity Politics and Nuns’ Writing.” Women’s Writing 14, no. 2 (2007): 306–20; Coolahan, Women, Writing, and Language; and Naomi McAreavey, “Irish Nuns and the Counter-Reformation Movement: The Struggle between Nation and Vocation,” in Representing Women’s Authority in the Early Modern World, ed. Eavan O’Brien, 221–51 (Rome: Aracne, 2013).
Faulkner’s letters from the besieged Castle Lyon (March 1642) can be found with the Verney Papers, Claydon House, Middle Claydon, Buckinghamshire, with copies available on microfilm in the British Library.
Butler was heiress and wife of James Butler, Twelfth Earl and First Duke of Ormonde, who served three times as lord lieutenant of Ireland. At least three hundred surviving letters covering six decades together provide insight into the public and private life and epistolary self-representation of a preeminent aristocratic Irish woman. Her manuscripts are in the Bodleian Library, British Library, National Library of Ireland, and elsewhere. See Elizabeth Butler, Duchess of Ormonde, The Letters of the First Duchess of Ormonde, ed. Naomi McAreavey (Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, forthcoming). See also Eleanor O’Keeffe, “The Family and Marriage Strategies of James Butler, First Duke of Ormonde, 1658–1688” (PhD diss., University of Cambridge, 2000); and McAreavey’s chapter, in this volume.
Daughter of the Eighth Earl of Kildare and wife of the Eighth Earl of Ormonde, Butler was known for her spiritual devotion and for restoring the Butler fortunes. Her 1540 letter to King Henry VIII is excerpted in Bourke et al., Field Day Anthology, vol. 4. See also Damien Duffy, “The Ormond Women: Family, Power, and Politics, c. 1450s–1660” (PhD diss., Maynooth University, 2018).
Butler was less interested in spending her time in Ireland as her predecessor was, but her letters from Ireland (although less voluminous) nonetheless provide insight into the life of a woman transplanted from England to Ireland through marriage. Her letters are archived at the British Library and the National Library of Ireland.
Cary spent 1622–25 in Ireland, as her husband, Sir Henry Cary, First Viscount Falkland, was lord deputy of Ireland 1622–24, and had her last two children there. Although only in Ireland for a short period, Cary studied Irish, connected with Irish and Old English Catholics, and was clearly impacted by her experiences in the country. Best known for her plays, Cary also wrote letters and was the subject of a biography written by one of her children. These documents are published in Heather Wolfe, ed., Elizabeth Cary Lady Falkland: Life and Letters (Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2001). Cary’s Irish connections have been considered by Deana Rankin, “‘A More Worthy Patronesse’: Elizabeth Cary and Ireland,” in The Literary Career and Legacy of Elizabeth Cary, 1613–1680, ed. Heather Wolfe, 203–21 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007); and Ramona Wray, “Memory, Materiality and Maternity in the Tanfield/Cary Archive,” in A History of Early Modern Women’s Writing, ed. Patricia Phillippy, 221–40 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018).
Chambers was a member of the Independent congregation in Dublin and lived in Ireland before and after the 1641 rebellion; her spiritual testimony is included in John Rogers’s Ohel or Beth-shemesh.
Cheevers and fellow Society of Friends member Katharine Evans co-wrote the spiritual testimony, This is a Short Relation Of Some of the Cruel Sufferings (For the Truth’s Sake) of Katharine Evans and Sarah Chevers (London, 1662), which includes a few references to Ireland, one of the many places to which they had traveled; she also maintained correspondence with other Quakers in Ireland. A Short Relation is excerpted in Elspeth Graham et al., eds., Her Own Life: Autobiographical Writings by Seventeenth-Century Englishwomen (London: Routledge, 1989) and appears in facsimile in Skerpan-Wheeler, Life Writings, vol. 1.
Cooke’s account of a dangerous Irish Sea crossing with her husband, John Cook, chief justice to the Court of Munster, was published in London as Mris. Cookes Meditations ([London, 1650]); it is included in Trill, Chedgzoy, and Osborne, Lay by Your Needles; and appears in facsimile in Skerpan-Wheeler, Life Writings, vol. 1.
A member of the Independent congregation in Dublin, Curtis lived in Ireland before and after the 1641 rebellion; her spiritual testimony is included in John Rogers’s Ohel or Beth-shemesh.
Born in England, Lady Shelburne married, first, Irish peer John Petty, Lord Shelburne; second, Irish brigadier Henry Conyngham, brother of Jane Bonnell; and, third, Col. Robert Dallway. Shelburne wrote many letters, the majority of which dealt with the Irish estates of the deceased Conyngham. Her manuscript letters are held in the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, the National Library of Ireland, and the Castletown Papers at the Irish Architectural Archive.
Davies moved with her family to Ulster as a teenager because of her father’s administrative role in Ireland and remained there through her first decade of marriage, to Sir John Davies, poet and attorney general for Ireland. She also had three children in Ireland, including Lucy, who would become the Countess of Huntingdon and a prolific correspondent. Davies did not begin to publish her controversial prophesies until she returned to England, but they were shaped in part by her formative years in Ireland. She published almost seventy tracts in her lifetime. See Esther Cope, ed., Prophetic Writings of Eleanor Davies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995).
Digby defended Geashill Castle, County Offaly, during the 1641 rebellion. She eventually went to England, where she died. Her so-called siege letters are in manuscript in the 1641 Depositions at Trinity College Dublin and the Carte Papers at the Bodleian Library; the letters are published in Bourke et al., Field Day Anthology, vol. 5. See also Coolahan, Women, Writing, and Language, and McAreavey, “‘Paper bullets’: Gendering the 1641 Rebellion in the Writings of Lady Elizabeth Dowdall and Lettice Fitzgerald, Baroness of Offaly,” in Ireland in the Renaissance, c. 1540–1660, ed. Thomas Herron and Michael Potterton, 311–24 (Dublin: Four Courts, 2007).
The daughter of Samuel Ogle, member of Parliament for Berswick and commissioner of the Irish Revenue, Ogle married, first, Capt. John Broughton and, second, Edward Donovan. Her second husband was a lawyer in Ireland, with whom she had twenty-one children. The recipe book that Ogle began in 1713, now known as the “Donovan Family Recipe Book,” was maintained by multiple generations of the family and can be accessed online at https://arrow.dit.ie/gasbook/4/.
The daughter of Sir Thomas Southwell and Lady Anne Southwell, Dowdall was born in Ireland as a member of the New English nobility. She married John Dowdall, who built Kilfinny Castle in County Limerick. During the 1641 rebellion, she defended this castle; her account of the siege is in the Sloane Manuscripts at the British Library. Her deposition is with the 1641 Depositions at Trinity College Dublin and in Bourke et al., Field Day Anthology, vol. 5. See also Coolahan, Women, Writing, and Language, and McAreavey, “Paper bullets,” in Herron and Potterton, Ireland in the Renaissance, 311–24.
Evans visited Ireland as part of her Quaker missionary travels with Sarah Cheevers, with whom she cowrote the spiritual testimony, This Is a Short Relation Of Some of the Cruel Sufferings (For the Truth’s Sake) of Katharine Evans and Sarah Chevers (London, 1662), which includes a few references to Ireland. She also maintained correspondence with other Quakers in Ireland. A Short Relation is excerpted in Graham et al., eds., Her Own Life; and appears in facsimile in Skerpan-Wheeler, Life Writings, vol. 1.
Although her actual time in Ireland was less than a year, Fanshawe’s Irish episodes in her manuscript memoirs are memorable for their detail and adventure. They are housed in manuscript at the British Library, excerpted in multiple anthologies, and published in Ann Fanshawe, The Memoirs of Ann, Lady Fanshawe, in The Memoirs of Anne, Lady Halkett and Ann, Lady Fanshawe, ed. John Loftis, 89–192 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1979). See also Coolahan, Women, Writing, and Language; Fogarty’s chapter, in this volume; and Lucy Moore’s unique biographical treatment, built around Fanshawe’s receipts and including her Irish experiences, in Lady Ranelagh’s Receipt Book: An Englishwoman’s Life During the Civil War.
The daughter of Edmund Butler, Lord Baron of Dunboyne, Fitzgerald was born at Kiltinan Castle, County Tipperary, as a member of the Old English nobility. She married first Garrett (Gerald) FitzJames Fitzgerald, the last Earl of Desmond, and endured imprisonment and other difficulties with him until his death in 1583. She married second husband, Sir Donough O’Connor Sligo, in 1596. Fitzgerald produced a substantive body of correspondence. Her manuscripts are housed at the National Archives at Kew, and a selection of her letters is in Bourke et al., Field Day Anthology, vol. 5. See also Anne Chambers, Eleanor, Countess of Desmond, c. 1545–1638 (Dublin: Wolfhound, 1986).
The daughter of the Eleventh Earl of Desmond and the wife of three powerful men (James Butler, Ninth Earl of Ormonde; Sir Francis Bryan, lord justice of Ireland; and Gerald Fitzgerald, Fifteenth Earl of Desmond), Fitzgerald played a significant role in the political life of sixteenth-century Ireland. She maintained a correspondence with Queen Elizabeth I. See Karen Ann Holland, “Joan Desmond, Ormond, and Ossory: The World of a Countess in Sixteenth-Century Ireland” (PhD diss., Providence College, 1996).
Fourth daughter of the First Earl of Cork, Fitzgerald married George Fitzgerald, Sixteenth Earl of Kildare. Although she is relatively underrepresented in the Boyle family archives, at least one letter survives to her father. This letter can be found in the Cork Manuscripts, vol. 19, Chatsworth House. See also Walsh, “Writing Women’s Lives.”
Fitzmaurice and her husband, Patrick Fitzmaurice, Lord Kerry and Baron of Lixnaw, County Kerry, fled to England in the 1640s. Although her husband died in England, she returned to Ireland in 1660 and rebuilt Ardfert Cathedral, where she is buried. Her 1641 letter to Pierse Ferriter is included in Bourke et al., Field Day Anthology, vol. 4.
Fowkes was born in Kilkenny, married minister Samuel Fowkes in 1712, and spent most of her life in Ireland, primarily in Waterford. Her autobiographical narrative, A Memoir of Mistress Ann Fowkes née Geale, died aged 82 Years, with some recollections of her family, A.D. 1642–1774. Written by herself, was published in Dublin in 1892, and is available in the National Folklore Collection in University College Dublin.
Freke made several generally unhappy trips to Ireland during her marriage to her second cousin, Percy Freke. Although her autobiographical narratives are familiar to scholars of life writing, few have attended to her striking commentary on Ireland within these texts. In manuscript at the British Library, excerpted in multiple anthologies, and published as Elizabeth Freke, The Remembrances of Elizabeth Freke, 1671–1714, ed. Raymond A. Anselment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001); see also Anselment’s chapter, in this volume.
Martha, Lady Giffard, was the daughter of Sir John Temple, author of The Irish Rebellion (1646). She married Sir Thomas Giffard, Baronet of Castlejordan, County Meath, but was widowed two weeks later and never remarried. Thereafter she lived much of her life with her brother and sister-in-law, Sir William Temple and Dorothy Osborne. Lady Giffard was a prolific letter writer and also wrote a biography of her brother: The Life and Character of Sir William Temple (London, 1728). For her letters see Julia G. Longe, Martha, Lady Giffard, Her Life and Correspondence, 1664–1722: A Sequel to the Letters of Dorothy Osborne (London: G. Allen, 1911). Her correspondence is in the British Library and the library of the University of Southampton.
Mrs. Goodale’s memoirs cover her travels with her husband in both Ireland and Scotland in the late seventeenth century. This manuscript is online at Perdita Manuscripts and archived at the National Library of Scotland.
Born in Dublin, Hastings was the daughter of the prophet Eleanor Davies, née Touchet, and Sir John Davies, poet and attorney general of Ireland. When Eleanor Davies was imprisoned, Hastings attempted to correct derisive accounts of her mother’s reputation, drawing on the continuing family links with Ireland. As a widow, she had charge of land in Ireland, for which she received rents, dealt with tenants, and instructed solicitors and stewards. Her correspondence can be found among the Hastings Family Papers in the Huntington Library, including letters to her husband at the time of her marriage.
Hay inherited her husband’s Irish holdings; helped her brother-in-law Robert Sidney, Second Earl of Leicester, be appointed lord deputy of Ireland; and engaged in a questionable relationship with Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford and lord deputy of Ireland. Correspondence included in Dorothy Percy Sidney, The Correspondence (c. 1626–1659) of Dorothy Percy Sidney, Countess of Leicester, ed. Michael G. Brennan, Noel J. Kinnamon, and Margaret P. Hannay (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010).
Born in Youghal to Richard Boyle, First Earl of Cork, Jones married Arthur Jones, Second Viscount Ranelagh, in 1630/31 and had four children. She ultimately left her husband and spent the majority of her adulthood in England. A prodigious letter writer and an important member of the second generation of the Boyle family, Ranelagh’s correspondents included family members such as brother Robert Boyle and members of the Hartlib Circle like Samuel Hartlib himself. Her letters can be found in the “Collection of State Papers Connected with Meath” in the Dopping Collection, Armagh Robinson Library; the Cork Manuscripts in Chatsworth House; the Petty Papers and Sloane Manuscripts at the British Library; the Royal Society Library, and elsewhere. Her recipes can be found in the Sloane Manuscripts in the British Library and in the Boyle Papers at the Royal Society Library. See also Evan Bourke’s analysis of the women in the Hartlib Circle in “Female Involvement, Membership, and Centrality: A Social Network Analysis of the Hartlib Circle,” Literature Compass 14, no. 4 (2017) and “A Godly Sybilla, an Erudite Wife and a Burdensome Sister: The Formation and Representation of Women’s Reputations within the Hartlib Circle 1641-1661” (PhD diss., National University of Ireland Galway, 2018); and Ruth Connolly’s and Amelia Zurcher’s chapters, in this volume.
The daughter of Edward Hyde, First Earl of Clarendon, and wife of Thomas Keightley, commissioner of the Irish Revenue, Keightley moved to Ireland in the late 1670s with her family. She ultimately separated from her husband and returned to England in the early eighteenth century. Some of her letters survive at the National Library of Ireland, including the lengthy “Advice to a daughter” for Catherine O’Brien.
Mother of the First Duke of Ormonde from her first marriage to Thomas Butler, Viscount Thurles, Mathew later married Capt. George Mathew, who also predeceased her. Thereafter, she lived thirty-seven years as a dowager. She was a devout Catholic and, with the exception of her eldest son, all her children shared her Catholicism, and one daughter was a nun. Her letters, mainly to her eldest son, and other documents, including recipes, can be found in volumes 21, 23, and 28 in the Carte Papers at the Bodleian Library and in volumes 2,338 and 2,347 in the Ormond Papers at the National Library of Ireland.
Mervyn came to Ireland during the Cromwellian settlement of the 1650s, but her family already had long roots in the country. She married in Ireland in 1660, had children, and seems to have remained in the country. Seven letters from the late 1650s survive, all written to the Hastings family, with whom she was related by birth. Her manuscript letters are in the Huntington Library (Hastings Family Papers). See also Herbert’s chapter, in this volume.
The wife of Scottish divine George Montgomery, who become the first Protestant bishop of Derry, Clogher, and Raphoe, Montgomery went to Derry with her husband in 1606 as a New English settler and died in Ireland in 1615. Her extant letters contain accounts of life in Ireland. Her manuscript letters are housed with John Willoughby’s correspondence in the Trevelyan Papers, Somerset Record Office; see also George Hill, ed., The Montgomery Manuscripts (1603–1706) (Belfast, 1869); and Marie-Louise Coolahan, “Ideal Communities and Planter Women’s Writing in Seventeenth-Century Ireland,” Parergon: Journal of the Australian and New Zealand Association for Medieval and Early Modern Studies 29, no. 2 (2012): 69–91.
The wife of Charles, Viscount Moore, who was killed in battle in Meath in 1643, Moore wrote several letters to the Marquess of Ormonde during the civil war period and especially after her husband’s death. See Alice Moore, A Declaration of Alice Vicecountess Moor Dowager of Drogheda, Concerning Her deceased Lord’s faithful Service, and her Sufferings in Ireland (London, 1648). Her manuscript letters can be found in volumes 5, 6, 7, 12, 13, and 18 in the Carte Papers at the Bodleian Library.
The daughter of Sir John King, an Irish administrator, Moore was born in Dublin, where her family lived near the Boyles. Her first husband was Arthur Moore, and her second was the itinerant Scottish minister John Dury. Moore engaged in extensive intellectual epistolary conversation with fellow intellects of her day, including Lady Ranelagh and members of the Hartlib Circle. She also petitioned the House of Lords in 1648 and wrote a treatise on girls’ education, which is no longer extant. Although born in Ireland, she spent much of her adulthood in Utrecht. See also E. Bourke, “Female Involvement;” E. Bourke, “A Godly Sybilla;” and Dorothy Moore, The Letters of Dorothy Moore, 1612–64: The Friendships, Marriage, and Intellectual Life of a Seventeenth-Century Woman, ed. Lynette Hunter (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004).
Norton was born in or near Coleraine, County Derry/Londonderry, but moved to Barbados at the age of sixteen, where she converted to Quakerism under the ministry of George Fox and became a preacher there. By 1676 she returned to Ireland, where she preached throughout the north of the country, including in the Irish language. One letter to the Dublin-based Quaker merchant, Anthony Sharp, dated March 30, 1678, survives. Her manuscripts are in the Sharp Manuscripts at the Friends Historical Library. See Phil Kilroy, Protestant Dissent and Controversy in Ireland, 1660–1714 (Cork: Cork University Press, 1994); and Bernadette Whelan, “McLoughlin, Katherine (fl. 1671–1679),” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, September 23, 2004, https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/67223.
As the daughter of Lady Frances Keightley, née Hyde, and Thomas Keightley, a commissioner of the Irish Revenue, lord treasurer, and lord justice, O’Brien was raised in Ireland from age five and ultimately married Lucius O’Brien in 1701/2. Beset with marital and financial problems, she wrote numerous letters, including a significant number to Jane Bonnell, which remain in the National Library of Ireland.
The subject of numerous legends, O’Malley’s petition on behalf of her two sons is included in Bourke et al., Field Day Anthology, vol. 5.
O’Neill left Ireland as part of the Flight of the Earls alongside her husband, Owen Roe O’Neill, who later returned to Ireland as a military commander for the Confederate Catholics; her scribally recorded Gaelic letter from September 1642 was first translated and published by Gilbert II and then reprinted in Bourke et al., Field Day Anthology, vol. 5. See also Jerrold Casway, “Rosa O Dogherty: A Gaelic Woman,” Seanchas Ard Mhacha 10 (1980–82): 42–62.
Born in Birr Castle, County Offaly, Dorothy Parsons was the daughter of Sir Laurence Parsons, First Baronet of Parsonstown (1637–98). Her receipt book, found among the Parsons family papers in Birr Castle, incorporates some suggestions of Lady Elizabeth Parsons, wife of Sir William Parsons, Second Baronet of Parsonstown (1661–1741).
The daughter of regicide Sir Hardress Waller, Petty was probably born in Ireland. Her first husband was Sir Maurice Fenton, and her second, whom she married in 1667, was Sir William Petty; he had led the Down Survey of Ireland in 1656–58 and was a founding member of the Royal Society. Elizabeth Petty’s business diary records her travels and business activities on the couple’s Irish estates in Limerick, Cork, and Kerry in June and July 1675. Her manuscript is in the Lansdowne Manuscripts at the British Library and online in Perdita Manuscripts.
A poet, playwright, and letter writer, Philips spent a prolific year in Ireland (where her family owned estates) in 1662–63 and became a leading member of a literary coterie based in the viceregal court at Dublin Castle. Although Philips is known primarily for the autobiography-inflected poetry that she composed under the pen name “Orinda” and addressed to the Irish nobility, including Lady Elizabeth Boyle, Lady Mary Butler, and the Countess of Roscommon, her correspondence also records her experiences in Ireland. Her epistolary addressees included Dorothy Temple, Edward Dering, Lady Fletcher, and Sir Charles Cotterrell. Her play Pompey was first performed in Dublin under the patronage of Roger Boyle, Earl of Orrery. Modern edition: Katherine Philips, The Collected Works of Katherine Philips: The Matchless Orinda, ed. Patrick Thomas, Germaine Greer, and Roger Little, 3 vols. (London: Stump Cross, 1990–93).
The daughter of Solomon Faith, mayor of Carrickfergus, and the wife of Capt. Edward Pottinger, a merchant and ship’s master of Belfast, Pottinger seems to have managed some of her husband’s business when he was at sea. Two letters to her husband in France survive from November and December 1677. Her manuscripts are in the Sarsfield-Vesey Correspondence in the National Archives of Ireland. One letter is published in Bourke et al., Field Day Anthology, vol. 5.
Preston was a native of Brussels and wife of Gen. Thomas Preston, who fought with the Confederate Catholics in Ireland. An April 24, 1647, letter in French to her husband is in the National Archives at Kew and printed in Bourke et al., Field Day Anthology, vol. 5.
Rawdon, a frequent letter writer, wrote letters that survive in the Irish Papers series, a subset of the Hastings Family Papers at the Huntington Library.
A voluminous life writer and one of the daughters of Richard Boyle, First Earl of Cork, Rich has received a great deal of scholarly attention during the past few decades for her diaries, memoir (“Some Specialities”), and occasional meditations. Very little of her writing explicitly deals with Ireland, but there is no doubt that her girlhood experiences in Ireland influenced what she wrote. Her work is excerpted in multiple anthologies; print editions include Mary Rich, The Occasional Meditations of Mary Rich, Countess of Warwick, ed. Raymond A. Anselment (Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2009); Rich, Memoir of Lady Warwick, also her diary, from A.D. 1666–1672 (London: Religious Tract Society, 1847); and Rich, The Autobiography of Mary Countess of Warwick, ed. T. Crofton Croker (London: Percy Society, 1848). Her meditations, multivolume diary, and memoir are in manuscript in the Additional Manuscripts at the British Library. See Walsh’s and Zurcher’s chapters, in this volume.
A one-time lady-in-waiting to Queen Elizabeth I, Ridgeway married Sir Thomas Ridgeway, treasurer of Ireland, 1606–16, and later Earl of Londonderry, and with him became involved with the Ulster plantation. She was a patron to the poet Anne Southwell, who was also among her correspondents; at least one letter is extant at the Huntington Library. See Coolahan, “Ideal Communities.”
Sidney’s correspondence with her husband, Robert Sidney, Second Earl of Leicester and lord lieutenant of Ireland, 1641–43, occasionally touches on Irish matters. See Brennan, Kinnamon, and Hannay, Correspondence.
Born and raised in England, Southwell moved to Ireland with her first husband, Sir Thomas Southwell, and spent most of her married life at Pool-na-long Castle, County Cork. In 1628 she left Ireland for England with second husband, Capt. Henry Sibthorp. She wrote letters and epistolary poetry and is best known for a commonplace book, which is in manuscript at the Folger Shakespeare Library; in modern edition Anne Southwell, The Southwell-Sibthorpe Commonplace Book: Folger MS V.b.198, ed. Jean Klene (Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 1997); and online at Perdita Manuscripts. See Coolahan, Women, Writing, and Language, on how Southwell’s New English identity influenced her writing and vision.
Stonier fled Ireland for her native parish of Leek in Staffordshire upon the outbreak of the 1641 rebellion. Her 1642 petition for poor relief is published in Bourke et al., Field Day Anthology, vol. 5.
Temple’s famous letters to her future husband, Sir William Temple (son of Sir John Temple, master of the rolls in Ireland and author of the 1646 Irish Rebellion) predate her move to Ireland as a young married woman. Nonetheless, some were sent to William in Ireland and contain much of Irish interest. Dorothy and William Temple lived in Ireland from 1656 to 1663. Her work is excerpted in multiple anthologies and edited and published as Dorothy Osborne, Letters from Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple (1652–54), ed. Edward Abbott Parry (London: Dent, 1914); her manuscripts are in the Additional Manuscripts at the British Library .
Although she lived most of her life in England, Thornton spent several formative years of her youth in Ireland, where her father held administrative positions, and wrote about some of these experiences in her substantive life writings. For an excellent explanation of Thornton’s very complicated textual corpus—which comprises four different manuscripts—see Raymond A. Anselment, “Seventeenth-Century Manuscript Sources of Alice Thornton’s Life,” Studies in English Literature, 1500–1900 45, no. 1 (2005): 135–55. For the manuscripts most pertinent to Ireland, see Anselment, in this volume. Thornton’s two extant manuscripts are at the British Library; a no-longer-extant third is in microfilm at Sterling Memorial Library at Yale University; and a print edition of these materials is My First Booke of My Life, ed. Raymond A. Anselment (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2014). Thornton’s work has been excerpted in multiple anthologies.
Mary Trye is the author of Medicatrix, or, The woman-physician (London, 1675), which she wrote partly in defense of her physician father, Thomas O’Dowde, who had trained her. The Irish O’Dowde had lost his fortune during the 1640s, whereupon he entered the service of Charles I and then Charles II. Medicatrix is dedicated to Lady Fisher of Packington Hall in Warwickshire.
Villiers’s complicated path to marriage—which involved a betrothal to John, Lord Decies (later Second Earl of Tyrone) when she was twelve; a subsequent repudiation of said betrothal by John; and marriage instead to Edward Villiers when she was fourteen—is documented in part in an archive at University College Cork. At least two of her letters are included.
A Quaker missionary who traveled and proselytized in Ireland, Vokins wrote an autobiography about her experience and sent letters to other Quakers. Both autobiography and letters were published posthumously as Joan Vokins, God’s Mighty Power Magnified: As Manifested and Revealed in His Faithful Handmaid Joan Vokins (Cockermouth, England, 1691); and online at Orlando: Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present, http://orlando.cambridge.org/svHomePage.