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See also History of Clonturk 2 and History of Clonturk 3

The Parish of Clonturk (i.e. The Meadow of the Swine)

The Parish of Clonturk is stated in the 17th century to have contained the townlands of Clonturk, Drishoge, Donnycarney, and Drumcondra.

It contains now the townlands of Ballybough (i.e. the poor town), Clonturk, Donnycarney (i.e. Caemach’s Church), Drishoge (i.e. the bramble), Drumcondra (i.e. Conradh’s ridge), Goosegreen, Marino, and Bichmond.

Drumcondra, with Notice of Marino and its Vicinity.

To-day religions houses are the most striking feature of the parish of Clonturk, which lies to the east of the parish of Glasnevin, and north of the parish of St. George, on the high road from Dublin to Drogheda, and when its history opens religious houses predominated as owners of the lands which it contains. All Hallows’ College, St. Patrick’s College, St. Mary’s College, and St. Joseph’s Asylum for the Blind, which now bring Drumcondra renown, bad their prototypes then in the Priories of All Saints and Holy Trinity and the Abbey of St. Mary, amongst which the lands were divided.

From Mediaeval to Tudor Times.

To the Priory of All Saints the lands in the modern townlands of Clonturk, Donnycarney, and Marino belonged. It owed them to its founder, Dermot MacMurrough, and it drew from them its chief supply of grain. Of life in them little is known. About 123.0, Thurstanus, son of Vincent of the Strand, Peter, Bishop of Ossory, and William de Romsey are mentioned as having an interest in the meadow of Clonturk, which was then conveyed to the priory; in 1240, John Latimer, the owner of Coolock, is found adding to the extent of the Donnycarney lands; about 1391, John Hunt and his wife Joan were enfeoffed in a carucate of land at Clonturk by John Symcocks, then the prior of All Saints; and in 1473 Nicholas Sheriff appears as resident at Clonturk.

To the Abbey of St. Mary the lands of Ballybough arid Drishoge, which adjoined such of the abbey’s possessions as are now comprised in St. George’s Parish, belonged. At the beginning of the 14th century these lands began to he much traversed on the construction at Ballybough of a bridge over the Tolka, one of many public works that mediaeval Dublin owed to the public spirit and munificence of a mayor called John Decer.

Soon after its construction this bridge was carried away by a great flood, but another was built, and “the record of the riding of the franchises of Dublin” relates that at the close of the 15th century the city fathers were went to ride on the city side of the Tolka until they came “by the gate of Ballybough” to this bridge, where they crossed the river and pursued their way along the foreshore to Clontarf.

In 1376 an inhabitant of Ballybough, John Stead, was made the subject of one of the attempts of the city authorities to exercise jurisdiction over the possessions of St. Mary’s Abbey; and in 1510 the city had officers at Ballybough, who were employed by the coroner to watch some criminals who had sought sanctuary in St. Mary’s Abbey.

To the Priory of the Holy Trinity the lands of Drumcondra, on which St. Joseph’s Asylum for the Blind now stands, belonged. These lands were in mediaeval times within the manor of Glasnevin, and service had to be rendered there by the Drumcondra tenants, as appears from a lease of the town of Drumcondra, with “the farms appertaining” and the tithes, made in 1483, to a husbandsman called John Heylot and his wife Katherine.

At the time of the dissolution of the religious houses in 1539 Clonturk was returned as containing 150 acres under crops, 17 acres under grass, and five acres under copse and underwood, with six messuages, six cottages, and a dove-house Donnycarney was returned as containing 120 acres under crops, 22 under grass, and two under copse, with a messuage, and five cottages; Ballybough, which was leased to William Leche and Agnes, the widow of Richard Young, was returned as 150 acres under crops, and five under grass, with two messuages ; and Drishoge, which was leased to William Walsh, was returned as containing 54 acres under crops, eight acres under grass, and 10 acres under copse.

It is evident that the lands were then very thinly inhabited, and probably they felt still the effects of the rebellion of Silken Thomas, during which an engagement had taken place between the insurgents and the forces of the Crown at Ballybough Bridge, resulting in a great slaughter of Englishmen there and at Clontarf.

By the Crown, Clonturk and Donnycarney were granted, together with the other possessions of the Priory of All Saints, to the Corporation of Dublin, and they were leased by the Corporation to middlemen, including, in 1540, Nicholas Stanyhurst, and in 1558 John Chaloner.

Subsequently the lands were divided, Clonturk being leased to the owners of Drumcondra, and Donnycarney to the recorder, James Stanyhurst. The recorder’s tenure was hut short; and in 1570 Donnycarney was leased direct to the occupier, Christopher Hetherington, who was bound, amongst other obligations, to supply the mayor every Christmas with “a good and sufficient brawn,” and to till the land “well and truly” in order that, “for lack of good and diligent tillage, the tithe shall not be diminished.”

The settlement of a branch of the ancient Meath family of Bathe on the lands of Drumcondra, in the middle of the 16th century, gave them pre-eminence in the parish, and for many generations the other lands occupied a secondary position. In connexion with Drumcondra the first member of the family mentioned is the chief baron, to whom there has been reference as an occupant of Drimnagh Castle.

For over 30 years James Bathe, who belonged to the house of Beshellstown, held that office, and during that time he served with equal acceptance Henry the Eighth and his three successors. Under Henry the Eighth he is seen acting as an agent of Thomas Cromwell, and urging on a recalcitrant colleague the obligation of submission to the Government; when Mary ascended the throne he was foremost in accepting her rule, at the time being in London; and before Elizabeth had been long on the throne be displayed much anxiety to increase the Crown revenues, and deplored that his want of knowledge of minerals was likely to be a hindrance.

As mentioned in connexion with Drimnagh Castle, he married the widow of one of its owners, Robert Barnewall, who died in 1535, and occupied it during the long minority of his stepson. While living in it, in the year 1550, the lands of Drumcondra were leased to him by the Dean and Chapter of Christ Church Cathedral, as successors of the Priory of the Holy Trinity; and after the surrender of Drimnagh Castle to his stepson, in 1553, he is described as of Drumcondra until his death, which occurred in 1570.

But an Elizabethan castle which was erected on the Drumcondra lands, where St. Joseph’s Asylum for the Blind now stands, was, according to a tablet preserved in St. Joseph’s Asylum, the work of the chief baron’s son, John Bathe, who held in turn the offices of solicitor- and attorney-general, and chancellor of the exchequer.

He was married twice first, to Elenor, daughter of Jenico, third Viscount Gormanstown, who is commemorated with him on the tablet; and, secondly, to Janet, daughter of Patrick Finglas, of Westphalstown.

In the acquisition of property he displayed remarkable ability. Within the immediate neighbourhood of Drumcondra he appears as tenant for the lands of Clonmel and the lord’s meadow in Glasnevin manor, and for the lands of Clonturk and Ballybough; and further a-field, at Balgriffin and Chapelizod, he obtained old possessions of his mother’s family, the Burnells.

Although holding office under Elizabeth, he has been claimed as a devoted son of the Roman Catholic Church; and his children professed in later life that faith. While living at Drumcondra both he and his father were the victims of dishonest persons; in his father’s case the loss was no more than a candlestick worth four shillings, but in his own case the loss included two coloured coverlets worth forty shillings, a feather-bed, a carpet and a coat worth ten shillings each, a tin bath and a couch worth five shillings each, and a linen coverlet worth three shillings.

After the death of John Bathe, which occurred in 1586, his castle at Drumcondra became the residence of a notable figure hi the history of Tyrone’s rebellion, Sir William Warren, who makes his appearance first as “the arch-traitor’s” confidant in the arrangements for his marriage to Mabel Bagenal, the Helen of the Elizabethan wars, as Mr. Bagwell has called her.

Warren’s occupation of the castle was due to his marriage to the widow of John Bathe. Whatever doubt there may be as to John Bathe’s religious principles, there can be none as to those of his second wife; and in his marriage to her Warren showed that he was not without sympathy with those who adhered to the Roman Catholic Church. He was the son of “an English possessioner,” known as the valiant Captain Humphrey Warren, who appears in Ireland under Edward the Sixth as an official in Munster, and afterwards under Mary and Elizabeth as an official in Ulster.

At the time of his death in 1561, Humphrey Warren was a member of the council, with a seat in parliament for Carrickfergus, and held also a military command, in which he gained much distinction. By his wife Mabel Clifford, who was a Kentish lady, and had in the course of her life three other husbands [An ancestor of the Earl of Meath, an ancestor of the Earl of Drogheda, and a kinsman of the Lord Mountjoy of that time.], Captain Humphrey Warren left two sons, Sir Henry Warrerr, who married a daughter of Archbishop Loftus, and Sir William Warren, who became an occupant of Drumcondra Castle.

Around the time of John Bathe’s death Sir William Warren was captain of a troop of horse, which reflected much credit on his judgment in the choice of men, horses, and equipment, and was employed by his brother’s father-in-law, Archbishop Loftus, to carry on negotiations with the leader of the Scots in Ulster, Sorley Boy MacDonnell, to whom his father had been known.

A few years later he was an applicant for the governorship of Carrickfergus but his application was not well received on the ground of his alleged devotion to Tyrone’s party, as well as on the ground that he was poor and needy, and inclined “to make his own commodity.” The next year, 1591, found him, however, master of Drumcondra Castle, and thither one summer’s day in that year the fair Mabel Bagenal came with him from her brother-in-law’s house at Turvey to marry the Earl of Tyrone. To the castle they were soon followed by the bridegroom, who had been a guest at Turvey, and in the castle at four o’clock in tire afternoon, in the presence of “ten English gentlemen of good sort,” the knot was tied by the Bishop of Meath. For five days the castle was the scene of “very honourable solemnities,” and then the happy pair departed for Tyrone’s home, where rumour said Warren was no stranger, and sometimes accompanied Tyrone to Mass.

From that time Warren followed the moods of the government in the treatment of “the wicked rebel,” one day trying to bring him to terms by persuasion, and the next by force of arms. In carrying out the latter policy he did not escape suspicion of disloyalty, and in the summer of 1596, after long negotiations with Tyrone, he was summoned from a sick bed in Drumcondra Castle before the Council, and received by the members with reproachful speeches and threats of being “laid by the heels.”

During the short reign of the Earl of Essex, from whom he received his knighthood, he was in constant request, and his castle at Drumcondra was the scene of one of Essex’s greatest achievements in conferring the accolade, no less than 11 of the company emerging with that honour fresh upon them. But no sooner had Essex departed from the Irish shores, than Warren is found assuring Sir Robert Cecil that he would rather have the least bit of his love than the entire of that of the ”Earl of Excess.”

With Cecil’s aid he obtained then the object of his ambition, the governorship of Carrickfergus, which Cecil believed that he would fill with much advantage to the Crown at a time when Tyrone was expected to return to paths of loyalty; but, as Warren’s death took place in 1602, he had little opportunity of showing his capacity. To what cause his premature death was to be attributed is not known, but possibly irritation which he displayed in intercourse with Archbishop Loftus, or a wound which he received at the battle of Benburb, may have had connexion with it.

Apart from the suspicion which his friendship with Tyrone brought upon Warren, his position was compromised by his wife’s stepson, William Bathe, the eldest surviving son of the chancellor of the exchequer, entering the Jesuit Order. At tire time of his father’s death William Bathe was just of age. In the previous year, 1584, when he is said to have been a student at Oxford, he had published a work on music, and subsequently he presented to Queen Elizabeth a harp, of which he was himself the designer.

At that time the sword was held in Ireland by Sir John Perrott, and to his favour William Bathe is said to have owed his introduction at Court. In the summer of 1587 and autumn of 1589, when the queen made grants to him of crown lands, he was probably in attendance on her, hut in the winter of 1591 his departure for Spain on, as was supposed then, a political rather than a religious mission, terminated such intercourse as there may have been. Any subsequent visits made by him to the queen’s dominions were, of course, secret; but he was probably in Ireland in the winter of 1599, when he executed a conveyance of his inheritance to his brother, and again in 1601, when he was chosen to accompany the Pope’s nuncio to this country, and joined with him in writing an account of its condition.

From “A History of the County Dublin” by Francis Elrington Ball.

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