Ireland family tree from 1196 to 1877 by Elizabeth Rennick

https://irelanddecourcydewhurst.blogspot.com

The information below was taken from Elizabeth Rennick's book "A Family Portfolio".  
Many thanks Elizabeth for allowing your research to be used in this Blog.  

Introduction

Our ancestors who first came to Australia were, like most settlers then, from the British Isles, in our case English, Irish and Scottish.  Like all families they could be traced back into antiquity if one only had the details, but we can certainly trace some lines back a very long way.

The English branches are the Rowes, the Lowes and the Ruffys.

The Scots are represented by the Hays.

The Irish comprise the Irelands, the De Courcy and the Aherns.

There are cross-currents between England and Ireland among the Carrs, the Irelands and the De Courcys.

Interestingly, there are French origins in three branches of the family (though in two cases very remote) and they all emanate from within a short distance of one another in Normandy.  The Hays trace their pre-Scottish origins to LeHaye du Puits, not far from Cherbourg.  The Norman-Irish De Courcys are linked with two villages of the name Courcy in Normandy, and the Ruffys emigrated to London from the town of Luneray, near Dieppe.

Two quite separate branches of the family originated in Lancashire: the Rowes, who lived for generations in Wigan, and the Irelands, who were for several centuries lords of the manor in the Merseyside village of Hale, northern England, before one branch crossed to Ireland.

You will see from the accompanying family trees how all these branches feed into our family today.

This history, like so many others, is unavoidably weighted towards men and male achievements, because these, and not often considerable private achievements and heroism of women, are more likely to be on public record.  However, women members of the family. at least until fairly recently, have been the most assiduous in preserving alive family lore, information, anecdotes and traditions, and generally safeguarding what family knowledge was available. 

The Irish have long memories so it seems fitting that the branches we can trace back farthest are three Irish lines - the Irelands, the Carrs and the De Courcys.

The Irelands have been traced back to the 12th century, when just to confuse matters, they lived in England.

The De Courcy - Norman-Irish who married into the Ireland family, can be traced at least to the Norman Conquest and according to some sources as far back as Charlemagne in the 700s, but the evidence for this is somewhat in dispute.

The Carrs, Irish, although they originated in England, can be traced back to the early 1600s.

Other lines of the family are traceable as far as the 1600s (the Rowes), and the late 1700s (the Hays).  In the case of George and Norah Lowe we have no information on their predecessors.

A simplified pedigree of the families recorded in  "A Family Portfolio"  

by Elizabeth Rennick

My interest has been in the Ireland, De Coucey and Dewhurst families.  If you wish to follow up on the Hay, Ruffy, Rowe, Lowe and Ahern families you will need to contact Elizabeth Rennick for you very own copy of "A Family Portfolio".

The Irelands

Ireland Family Tree from 1196

Main ancestors: Adam de Ireland, Captain James Stanley Ireland and Richard Davies Ireland.

Elizabeth states that virtually all of this section is from the Victorian Histories of the Counties of England: Duchy of Lancashire, and from the genealogical studies of John Ireland, who has kindly allowed her to use the results of his extensive research.  (See Sophia Carr & Richard Ireland's family tree chart.  John Ireland born 18 November 1926 was the grandson of  De Courcy Ireland and great grandson of Richard Ireland).

Summary:

The Irelands are the line that has so far been traced back farthest of all the branches of the family.  The earliest ancestor of whom we have details was living in the 1100s.  He was called not Ireland at that stage, but Gilbert de Walton.  This Gilbert's son Richard de Meath, was given a grant of a manor called Hale, at the tiny settlement of Hale, near Liverpool, in the the early 1200s.

The name Ireland arose when a  later heir to the manor, a young man called Adam, born and brought up in Ireland, turned up in England to claim his inheritance.  Known as Adam de Ireland, his descendants from there on were called Ireland.  In fact, a branch of the family did go back to Ireland, but not until some centuries later, in the 1600s.

The manor at Hale passed down through generations of Irelands until about 1675, when through marriage it passed to another family.  Sadly, there is virtually nothing left nwo of the "modern" manor house, a fine building, with mullioned windows and gables, built in the 1600s.  

Our branch of the family settled in Ireland, the earliest marrying Margaret de Courcy, of the Norman-Irish family of the Barons of Kinsale, in the 1600s.  (See De Courcy).

The Irelands were solid member of the Irish ascendency, with many of them down the generations serving as Church of England clergy and prominent in the army and the law.

Our most noted Ireland ancestor was Richard Davies Ireland QC, who came to Victoria last century.  A celebrated and colourful figure, both as a barrister and a member of the Victorian parliament. R.D.Ireland served as Victorian Solicitor-General and Attorney-General in the 1850s and 1860s and achieved fame at the bar partly through his defence of men involved in the Eureka Stockade.  It was aid that by the time he died he had gone through four fortunes.  He was married to Sophia Carr.

Where the Irelands came from:
the north west of England, showing the village of Hale, near Liverpool, on the River Mersey.

Flat riverland country around the village of Hale.
A quiet, unspoiled corner on a small peninsula in the great Mersey River,
some kilometres from Liverpool.

Winding main street through the village of Hale.
First recorded as Hales in the 1100s.
 The village probably derives its name from the Anglo-Sazon word "healh", meaning a small corner of land.

(For a full pedigree go to the end of this Post).

Gilbert De Walton died 1196.  His son was Richard De Walton died 1235.  Also known as Richard De Meath or Richard De Mida, a clerk of the exchequer.  Richard was granted the manor of Hale, County of Lancaster by King John of Magna Carta fame on 9 November 1203.  Hales was north-west of England near Liverpool, on the River Mersey.   Richard was in Holy Orders (probably a Priest), therefore not married, but allied to Cicely De Columbers to whom he willed the estate. 

Their illegitimate children were:

Richard died pre 1260.

Geoffrey died pre 1260.

Adam died pre 1260.

Henry died 1260 and married Cecily DeHolland.

Emma died pre 1260.

Cecily married John De Wolfall.

Edusa married and had a son Adam Austin de Irelande.

The next heir after Cecily and all her children was Adam Austin, son of Cecily’s youngest daughter Edusa.  Known as Adam de Irelande, he made a claim to his inheritance, so his descendants from there on were called Ireland.  It was fortunate that Adam married Avina, daughter of the new overlord of the manor, Robert de Holland, thus giving the young heir a larger slab of land than he already claimed.  Adam’s son John eventually inherited the original Hale manor.  His son David de Ireland inherited it in the 1300s.

Several of the descendants were knighted.  John Ireland, son of David Ireland was knighted by King Henry IV when he seized the throne from Richard 11.

A later John Ireland was knighted in 1497 by Lord Strange.  This Sir John died on 29 July 1525. 

His great grandson, was lieutenant of the Isle of Man in 1611.  He died on 17 October 1614 and was buried at Hale.

That younger John’s brother Gilbert Ireland was also made a knight in 1617 during King James’s stay at Lathom, the nearby Stanley estate.  He served as a sheriff of Lancashire in 1622. 

A later Gilbert Ireland was embroiled in the English Civil War, taking the side of Parliament with the rank of colonel. He served in various official capacities in Lancashire as high Sheriff in 1648, as governor of Liverpool Castle, as governor of Chester and as a member of parliament for Liverpool from 1658 until his death in 1675.  As an avid supporter of Oliver Cromwell, Gilbert Ireland was one of the equerries at the Protector’s funeral and followed the hearse into Westminster Abbey. However, when a new parliament was called by Richard Cromwell in January 1659, Gilbert Ireland joined forces with those seeking the restoration of the monarchy.  When King Charles II returned to the throne, Gilbert welcomed the King on behalf of the Lancashire and Cheshire gentry.  In 1660 he was knighted for his services to the monarch and five years later in 1665, he was appointed deputy lieutenant of Lancashire.  This Sir Gilbert Ireland II has been described as a “man of unbounded hospitality ….his disposition, however, was haughty and his demeanour stately”.  It is said that he was fond of elections and maintained a contest for Liverpool on several occasions, the last of which from too much drinking and too many money squandering proved fatal to his health and injurious to his purse. Sir Gilbert died of apoplexy on 30 April 1675 and was buried at Hale, his wife dying two months later.  Sir Gilbert Ireland was the last Ireland to have the manor of Hale. 

The manor at Hale passed down through generations of Irelands until about 1675, when through marriage it passed to the De Courcy family. *

Our branch of the family settled in Ireland, the earliest marrying Margaret de Courcy, of the Norman-Irish family of the Barons of Kinsale, in the 1600s.

The Irelands were solid members of the Irish ascendency, with many of them down the generations serving as Church of Ireland clergy and prominent in the army and the law.

Our most noted Ireland ancestor in Australia was Richard Davies Ireland QC, who came to Victoria last century.  A celebrated and colourful figure, both as a barrister and a member of the Victorian parliament.  R.D.Ireland served as Victorian Solicitor-General and Attorney-General in the 1850s and 1860s and achieved fame at the bar partly through his defence of men involved in the Eureka Stockade.  It was aid that by the time he died he had gone through four fortunes.  He was married to Sophia Carr.

Now back to the family tree.

Adam De Ireland (died 1324) married Avina Holland in 1285.  They had 2 sons – John and Richard.

John Ireland married Agatha De Merton.

John Ireland and Agatha De Merton had a son David Ireland.

David Ireland married Margaret Stanley & had 2 children:

1. Sir John Ireland married Margaret Hallsall and they had 5 children – William, Thomas, Joan, Katherine and Margaret.

2. Emma Ireland married John De Bolde.

William Ireland (died 1435) married Ellen Honford.

William Ireland and Ellen Honford had a son John Ireland (died 1462).

John Ireland married Margery Atherton and had a son William Ireland.

William Ireland married Elinor Molyneux and had three children:

1. Sir John Ireland of the Hutte and Hale (died 1525) married Margery Stanley.

2. Thomas Ireland married Margery, dau of Whitby of Ince.

3. Alice married William Moore.

Sir John Ireland and Margery Stanley had three children:

1. Thomas Ireland of the Hutte and Hale (died 27 August 1545) married Margaret De Bolde.

2. Elizabeth Ireland married Richard Lathom.

3. Alice Ireland married Robert Risley Divorced 1536.

Thomas Ireland and Margaret De Bolde had six children:

1. John Ireland (died 20 July 1545) married Margaret ?

2. George Ireland (died 12 July 1596) married (1) Elizabeth Birkenhead (died 1579/80) married (2) Elizabeth Colwich.

3. Margaret Ireland married (1) John Aston and married (2) Sir George Beeson.

4. Anne Ireland married William Aston.

5. Mary Ireland married Hugh Dutton.

6. Alice Ireland.

George Ireland and Elizabeth Birkenhead had eight children:

1. John Ireland married Katherine Leycester.

2. Sir Gilbert Ireland (knighted 1617 & died 1626) married (1) Dorothy, married (2) Barbara Leighe.

3. Anne Ireland.

4. Mary Ireland.

5. Elizabeth Ireland.

6. Dorothy Ireland.

7. George Ireland.

8. Thomas Ireland.

Sir Gilbert Ireland (knighted 1617 and died 1626) and Barbara Leighe (his niece) had 2 children:

1. John Ireland of the Hutte and Hale (22 November 1601-5.5.1633) married Elizabeth Hayes. They had Sir Gilbert Ireland (8 April 1624-30 April 1675) and he was knighted 10 June 1660.

 Sir Gilbert Ireland married Margaret Ireland of the Halewood Irelands. (born 31 July 1630 – 15 July 1675).   John Ireland and Elizabeth Hayes also had five daughters, and three sons who died young.

2. George Ireland (1607-1668) married ?. They had a son William Ireland (1630-1689).

William Ireland married Margaret de Courcy (daughter of Henry de Courcy, first cousin of Earl of Kinsale).

William Ireland and Margaret  De Courcy had a son De Courcy Ireland.

Colonial De Courcy Ireland married (1) Anne Trendall divorced 1702.  Married (2) Margaret Blanchfield (died 1706).  Married (3) Judith Hawkins.

De Courcy Ireland and Anne Trendall had a son Richard Ireland.

Richard Ireland married Catherine Lynch.

Richard Ireland and Catherine Lynch had a son (The Very Rev.) William Ireland (1712-13 January 1787 Cong County, Mayo, Ireland).

William Ireland born 1712 and died 13 January 1787 in Cong County, Mayo, Ireland married Magdalen Irwin born 1725 and died 1785 in Lisbally, Ireland.

William Ireland and Magdalen Irwin had 11 children:

1. DeCourcy Ireland married Susanna Stanley on 4 July 1774 (refer to another Blog).

2. Richard DeCourcy Ireland born 1750 in Roscommon, Ireland and died 1814. Richard married  Elizabeth Maria Stanley on 20 January 1778.

3. Male Ireland.

4. William DeCourcy Ireland died 1770.

5. Magdalen Ireland married John Burke.

6. Letitia Ireland born 1751 and died 1813 in Baddersley.  Letitia married James Hughes.

7. Anne Ireland married (Very Rev) Edward French.

8. Female Ireland married James Stanley.

9. Margaret Ireland died 1777.

10. Female Ireland.

11. Female Ireland.

(All these Stanleys are siblings).
(One of those Female Irelands was Elizabeth Ireland born 1766 in Bethlehem, Kilkenny West, Westmeath, Ireland).

Richard Ireland and Elizabeth Stanley had 8 children:

1. William Ireland died 1812/1 in service in Peninsular War.

2. (Capt) James Stanley Ireland (died 1856) married Matilda Davies.

3. Richard Irwin Ireland survived the War and died in the West Indies in 1826.

4. Edmond Kelly Ireland died 1811 in service in Peninsular War.

5. De Courcy Ireland died 1812 in service in Peninsular War. 

6. ? Ireland died 1812 in service in Peninsular War.

7. Catherine Ireland married John Young.

8. Magdalen Ireland married Gerald Burke.

(Capt.) James Stanley Ireland and Matilda Davies had 8 children:

1. Richard Davies Ireland QC (27 October 1815 – 11 January 1877) married Sophia Mary Carr (1821 – 27 November 1875).

2. Elizabeth Maria Beatrice Ireland (born 17 November 1818) married Comte Henri De Brahu.

3. James Stanley Ireland (born 6 November 1819).

4. Catherine Sophia Geraldine Ireland (born 15 November 1821) married John William Carleton QC.

5. Matilda Ireland (died young).

6. Harriet Leonora Frances Ireland (born 6 May 1826) married (Col) Richard Osborne Tilden.

7. Jane Ireland (died 22 March 1828).

8. Nannie Olivia de Courcy Ireland married Edward Manning.

Ireland family traced back to Hale

The Ireland family has its origins in flat, riverland country around the River Mersey in the area of Liverpool.  It is curious that two quite separate branches of the family, to be united centuries later by marriage in Australia, should have originated in the same general area of England's north-west.  For the Rowes originated in Wigan, Lancashire, and the later forebears from Aintree, on the outskirts of Liverpool (see Rowe).

We can trace the Ireland family back to the village of Hale, on the river Mersey.  First recorded as Hales (1) in the 1100s, the settlement is set in flat landscape, with farms, occasional swamps, and little high ground, but with rows of tall Lombardy poplars, at least until recent times, punctuating the landscape.

The village boasts a historic celebrity called the Childe of Hale, a giant of 9 foot 3 inches who lived in the 1600s.  His real name was John Middleton and he is buried in the Hale churchyard (2).  Such was Middleton's extraordinary height that he was taken to London in 1617 to be shown off to James 1, who rewarded him for his huge height with the princely sum of 20 Pounds.  Middleton was later in his life employed by Sir Gilbert Ireland as a bodyguard, his massive size the perfect deterrent to intruders.

The first "Ireland" we have record of is actually a man called Gilbert de Walton, who would have been living in the 1100s - he died in 1196.  We know little about him, but his son, Richard de Walton, later called Richard de Meath, a clerk of the exchequer, was given the manor of Hale by King John of Magna Carta fame on November 9, 1201.

Richard was in holy orders, probably a priest, though he may have been a deacon or in minor orders.  He was attached to a church and receiving a benefice.  In 1185 Henry 11, in a move to make a complete conquest of Ireland, sent his son John (later King John) over to conduct the campaign.  Among his followers was Richard de Walton, who accompanied his apparently in a clerical capacity.  Spending most of the time in County Meath he became known as Richard de Mida or Richard of Meath.  Richard "allied himself" with a lady named Cecily de Columbers, though he was not married to her (3).  His non-marriage suggests he was probably a priest. 

We know little of these early Irelands except who married whom - or did not marry whom - and who inherited various estates, because the only records we have are of wills and legal transactions of various sorts.

We know that after Richard's death, Cecily and her six children (Richard, Geoffrey, Adam, Henry, Cecilia and Edusa) managed to hang on to the Hale estate, despite their illegitimacy, under the overlordship of a Henry de Walton, her brother-in-law, for under the feudal system everyone owed allegiance to someone higher, even the barons owing allegiance to the King. 

The next heir after Cecily and all her children was an Adam Austin, son of Cecily's younger daughter Edusa, who had been born and brought up in Ireland and was known as Adam de Irelande.  Thus by the mere chance that Adam happened to have been in Ireland at the time of his coming into the property, the name Ireland became stamped on the family from then onwards.  He came over to Lancashire to claim his inheritance, touching off a legal wrangle and probably a family squabble as to what he was or was not entitled to.  The whole matter had been complicated initially, of course, by Cecily's not being married and her children being illegitimate.  But it ended rather tidily when Adam married Avina, daughter of the new overlord of the manor, Robert de Holland, some time before 1286, thus giving the young heir a larger slab of land than he already claimed.  Adam's son John eventually inherited all of the original Hale manor and bought further parcels of land.  His son David de Ireland inherited it in the 1300s and in 1367 there is record of the bishop of Lichfield granting his a licence to have an oratory at the manor house.

From then on the manor of Hale passed down various generations of Ireland (see family tree).

Several of the descendants were knighted.  A John Ireland, son of David Ireland who got the licence for the oratory, was knighted by Henry 1V when he seized the throne from Richard 11, no doubt in payment for allegiance by John in this bit of royal mayhem.

A later John was knighted in 1497 by Lord Strange, son of Earl Stanley, in Scotland during the expedition led by the earl of Surrey.  This Sir John died on July 29 1515 "seized of the manors of Hutte and Hale, held of the earl of Derby in socage by a rent of two roses, the value being about 40 Pounds".

Sir John's great grandson John was apparently lieutenant on the Isle of Man in 1611.  He died on October 17 1614 and was buried at Hale.

That younger John's brother Gilbert was also made a knight in 1617 during King James's stay at Lathom, the nearby Stanley estate.  He served as sheriff of Lancashire in 1622 and was buried at the Hutte in April 1626.

A later Gilbert Ireland was embroiled in the English Civil War, taking the side of Parliament with the rank of colonel.  He served in various official capacities in Lancashire - as high sheriff in 1648, as governor of Liverpool Castle, as governor of Chester and as member of parliament for Liverpool from 1658 until his death in 1675.  He was knighted June 10 1660.

An avid supported of Oliver Cromwell, Gilbert Ireland was one of the equerries at the Protector's funeral and followed the hearse into Westminster Abbey.  However, when a new parliament was called by Richard Cromwell in January 1659, Gilbert joined forces with those seeking the restoration of the monarchy.  When King Charles 11 returned to the throne, Gilbert welcomed the King on behalf of the Lancashire and Chester gentry.  In 1660 he was knighted for his services to the monarch and five years later, in 1665, he was appointed deputy lieutenant of Lancashire.  It was about that time that he undertook extensive renovations to Hale Hall, which had been built by his grandfather and namesake early that century.

This Sir Gilbert Ireland 11 has been described as a "man of unbounded hospitality ......his disposition, however, was haughty and his demeanour stately".

It is said that he was fond of elections and maintained a contest for Liverpool on several occasions, the last of which from too much drinking and too much money squandered, proved fatal to his health and injurious to his purse.  He sounds somewhat like our more immediate ancestor Richard Davies Ireland.  Sir Gilbert died of apoplexy on April 30 1675 and was buried at Hale, his wife dying two months later.

Sir Gilbert Ireland was really the last Ireland to have the manor of Hale.  The estate then passed to a nephew, then to other relations of the name of Aspinwall, and then to the Blackburne family, who remained there until the 1930s.

The Hutte and Hale estates need some explaining.  At the time of the first "Ireland", Adam de Ireland, there was a manor of Hutte and Hale, which included a wood, called Hale Wood- eventually Halewood.  Hale Wood was a royal hunting forest that was largely uninhabited except for the Hutte itself, a moated manor house about four kilometres from the village of Hale.  The Hutte eventually became dilapidated, and the Irelands moved their residence to a site adjoining the village, building what was to become Hale Hall.  Under the hierarchical system of administration, the Irelands, while Lords of the Manor, owed allegiance in turn to overlords and superior lords, such as the Hollands and the Earls of Derby.

The village of Hale as it is today, showing the site of the Old Hutte, Hale Hall, Childe of Hale's cottage.

Sadly, there is nothing now left of the Hutte manor house and only fragments of Hale Hall.

It was in the 1600s that the first Ireland actually “went back” to Ireland.  William Ireland (c 1630-1689), settled in Athy, Co. Laois, buying land there and marrying Margaret De Courcy about 1667.  What prompted him to settle in Ireland is not clear, though it was at a time when Englishmen were going to Ireland to acquire land and better themselves - mostly the land was confiscated but it is interesting that in William's case he actually bought it.

William lost the property in 1689 when by an act of the Irish parliament, Protestant landholders were dispossessed of land acquired since about 1640 because of the return of James II.  William understandably objected.  He had bought his property in the normal way and saw no reason why he should hand it "back" to anyone.  His refusal brought him a term of imprisonment in the Athy jail where he died.

It may have been for this reason that their son went into the army, which was unusual for an only son if the father had land.  It was this son, Colonel de Courcy Ireland, who bought Ireland’s Grove in Co.Laois (Queen’s County).

It was his father, William Ireland, who in the 1600s married Margaret de Courcy, of the Norman-Irish family of barons.  (see De Courceys).  There are strong doubts about which de Courcy Margaret was actually the daughter of.  Two wills give her as the daughter of a Henry de Courcy, but other evidence conflicts with this.  The union of the De Courcy and the Irelands meant that virtually from then on generations of Ireland were to include De Courcy as a first or second or hyphened name.

The Irelands have been prominent in various spheres down the intervening centuries between the earliest members of the family in Lancashire to the more recent past.

The Irelands were almost certainly present at the famous Battle of Bosworth, (4) where the Stanleys - with whom they were later to be related by marriage - won the battle for the Tudors by changing sides against King Richard 111.  Since the Irelands were both vassals and in some cases in-laws of the Stanleys, they would most certainly have been expected to back the Stanley forces.  The Irelands continued to hold the manors of Hale and Halewood by tendering the Stanleys two roses on Midsummer day.

According to John Ireland, George Ireland who married Elizabeth Birkenhead in the 1500s, was a recusant Catholic (5) for 40 years under Queen Elizabeth's reign.  In fact, in the 1580s, Elizabeth discovered to her dismay that the former rector of Childwall, the local parish of Hutte and Hale, who had been removed because of his papist sympathies early in her reign, was now acting as chaplain at Hale, where George Ireland lived and controlled the appointment of the chaplain.

But it appears the Catholic link cut out when George Ireland and Elizabeth Birkenhead’s son Gilbert Ireland’s son John Ireland was baptised a Protestant and married the daughter of a Lord Mayor of London.  It was Gilbert who built a new grand house at Hale, called Hale Hall.

(Another branch of the family, the Irelands of Lydiate, continued to be Catholics through the reign of James and Charles and several young members of the family were sent to the Continent to study in Catholic colleges and seminaries.  One of them, Francis Ireland SJ, returned, was named as being involved in the Popish Plot (6) in 1678 and executed.  This line of the family died out, as most of its members became either priests or religious).

Moving onto the 1700s, we find one of the many Ireland who entered the service of the Church of England.  The Very Rev. William Ireland, a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin and canon of Clare-Galway, became chaplain and chancellor to Archbishop Synge, and rector of Cong, in County Mayo.

In the next generation, we find three of this churchman’s children marrying three members of the famous Stanley family: two sons marrying two sisters and a daughter marrying the sisters’ brother, thus firmly cementing the links between two prominent Irish families.

One of these pairs, Richard Ireland and Elizabeth Maria Stanley, are the parents of Richard Davies Ireland's father.

Elizabeth was the daughter of James Stanley, and the sister of Sir Edmond Stanley MP, Prime Sergeant at Law of Ireland.

Richard Davies Ireland's father, James Stanley Ireland, from Newcastle, County Galway, was one of the only two of Elizabeth and Richard's six sons to survive service in the Peninsular War (7).  Four brothers, William, Edmond, DeCourcy, and another whose name we do not know, all "fell in the field".  A fifth, Richard Irwin Ireland, survived the war and died in the West Indies in 1826.  It was said that Captain James never wanted his only son, R.D.Ireland, to enter the army, because of what had happened to his own brothers.  Captain James married Matilda Davies, third daughter of James Davies and they had five children, all girls excepts for Richard Davies.

The Manors of Hutte, Hale and Halewood

There were two distinct but related Ireland manor houses within the general area of the village of Hale, Lancashire.   One, curiously called the Hutte, was some distance from the Hale village and situated in a royal hunting forest called Hale Wood, later Halewood.  The few remains that existed up to early this century were later obliterated by the development of the Ford Motor Company’s Halewood plant, although in recent times the site has been the subject of archaeological investigation.  It was at the Hutte that Adam de Irelande lived when he took over at the start of the Ireland family’s long reign in the area.

In the early 17^th century, a second manor house, Hale Hall was built adjoining Hale village itself.  It is not quite clear whether by this time the Hutte was uninhabited, since it was apparently very dilapidated, or whether Hale Hall became a second residence.  Certainly the hall became the Irelands' main establishment.

Originally a mated manor house, the Hutte had so decayed by early this century that photographs included in the Victoria County Histories record of the area show only a few remains.  These were a three-storey brick gatehouse (standing within a dried-up moat).  The gatehouse had a central round-headed archway and above it two sets of mullioned windows.  On either side of the upper window were stone panels engraved with arms of the Irelands.  The only other fragments were a 14th century moulded arch that formed the entrance doorway to the main building, a 17th century fireplace and part of a mullioned window (see pictures). However, in its heyday, the Hutte was apparently a place of considerable size.  An inventory of 1626 tells us that the house included the hall, a great parlor, a great gallery, little parlor, a kitchen, dairy, wash house, buttery pantry, bread house, salt house and wain house and a variety of other rooms.  It also included a large number of bedrooms: "the best chamber, the drawing chamber, the nursery, the gallery chamber, the porch chamber, the knight's chamber, the middle chamber, the stair-foot chamber ...."

Outside, apart from a barn, a kiln, a brew-house and bakehouse, were a schoolhouse, a clock house and an armour house with equipment for six pikemen and six musketeers.

The gatehouse of the Old Hutte, the original home of the Irelands, photographed about 1870.

Remains of the windows of the banqueting hall of the Old Hutte,
From a sketch dated 1804 by Sir Foster Cunliffe.

The 14th century Gothic doorway of the Old Hutte.
 None of these remnants of the Irelands' ancestral seat are now in existence.

Hale Hall was built by the first of the two Sir Gilbert Irelands in the 1600s, the foundations being laid between 1617 and 1626.  The south front of the hall overlooked the River Mersey and as well as the main building, included a coach-house, stables, conservatories, dovecote and icehouse.  Oddly, pone of the few remains to survive to the present say is the dovehouse.  

Main entrance gateposts to Hale Park and Hale Hall.

The gracious south front of Hale Hall designed by John Nash and built in 1806.

Buried in foliage, the ruined dovecote of Hale Hall. 
Doves were bred for eggs and meat as a source of food for the house.

The hall had a north front with five irregularly spaced projecting bays, with mullioned windows and gables.  The second Sir Gilbert Ireland, grandson of the above, remodelled the house into a Jacobean-style manor, the previous gables being masked by a panelled parapet flush with the front of the projecting bays.  A stone tablet was placed upon the tower of the building and carried the inscription "Built by Sir Gilbert Ireland, Knt, and Dame Margt, his wife, AoDi, 1674"

Stone tablet "Built by Sir Gilbert Ireland 1674".

The building evidently remained much as it was until 1806, when Sir John Blackburne, by then the owner, added a new south front, designed by John Nash, corresponding to the north front.  A stone tabled similar to the one installed by Sir Gilbert testified to the fact that the additions were made by Blackburne.  The oldest and most interesting room in the house was the oak panelled room, where fine carving above the fireplace displayed the arms of the Stanley, Aspinwall, Ireland, Molineux and Hallsall families.  On either side of the fireplace further panels were carved with the initials M.I. 1671 (Margaret Ireland) and G.I. 1671 (Gilbert Ireland).  Around the cornice were numerous coats of arms, including those of Ireland of Hutte, Ireland of Hale, Ireland of Daresbury, Ireland and Hesketh.

A view of the oak-panelled room, in its time on of the oldest and most interesting of Hale Hall's many rooms.

The library at Hale Hall contained a museum with some notable items including a valuable coin collection and several stuffed birds that have a remote Australian connection.  They had been collected by Anne Blackburne, who, like her father, was an able naturalist and ornithologist.  It was after them that John Reinhold Foster, who circumnavigated the world with Captain James Cook, named Blackburnia Pinita. The American warbler, Sylvia Blackburnia, was also named after them.

Hale Hall was also noted for a fine series of several 17th century stained-glass windows, depicting in picture and verse the four seasons, the virtues, the months of the year, and a series of Roman emperors.

The hall garden and conservatories contained many rare and exotic plants including the so-called Great Palm Tree that had been presented to the Blackburnes by Lord Petre in 1737, being transplanted from their former seat to Hale Hall.  The palm, fire feet round and 34 feet high, was aid to be the only one of its growth and size that had flowered and fruited in Europe, its flower similar to a vine and its fruit, though more solid, resembling in shape and colour branches of black grapes.  The palm flowered for 40 years until its death in 1859.  The trunk of the tree was eventually preserved in the museum of the Royal Gardens at Kew, London.

The manor park at Hale, though comparitively small, was laid out in the manner typical of early 19th century English landscape gardens, with acres of grass punctured by clumps of woodland, mostly oaks and limes, and h-ha walls to stop cattle straying.

Robert Ireland Blackburne left Hale Hall in the 1930s and when Fleetwood-Hesketh family moved there in 1947, it was virtually beyond repair.  They moved instead into the Parsonage House in the village, when then became known and is still called the Manor House.

There are various mementos of the Ireland family in Hale village church, which is built on the site of an earlier chapel.  Little is known about the early church except that it was dedicated to St Mary.  In 1308 Adam Irelande built a new aisle there and restored the stained glass windows. In the east window are depicted the figures of St George and St Christopher, a fact that was recorded in some lines from a poem titled Iter Lancastrense by the Rev Richard James in 1616.

"Againe him painted with Saint George do see
In ye East windowe, Hylin, Lett thy penne,
Twice big as life Saint Christopher doth stand,
One giant stone, and in Hale Chappell wee
At Norton Abbye, not yet Brookes land,
Once more from hence prove yet theis shews were men".

The Hale church was replaced in the 14th century, the present tower alone dating from that time, the rest of the church having been replaced yet again.

There are two graves inside the church, both near the chancel, one of John Irelande (described as John Yerlond), buried in 1462.  The other tomb is that of the families who lived at Hale Hall, on which the epitaph reads: “Gilbert Ireland Knt.M.P. Obt. 1675. Aetat 51. Ultimus Domus Fiat Voluntas Dei”.

A complete peal of six bells hangs in the bell chamber, all dating from 1814, but an earlier ring of five bells included one inscribed "John Ireland of the Hutt Esquire the founder hereof".  A small bell displayed in the Church is embossed with thew date 1593 and the initials G.I. (Gilbert Ireland).  It was known as the Dinner Bell and hung in the courtyard of Hale Hall until the hall was demolished in the 1930s.

Hale church contains various mementos of the Ireland family.
 John Irelande (died 1462) and Gilbert Ireland (died 1675) were buried in this church.

Modern gates leading to what were once the coach house and stable yards to Hale Hall.
  The building in the background is the stable.

References:
Peter Hatton. "A history of Hale".
J.Paul Rylands, FSA "The Hutt in Hale Wood: The Seat of the Hollands and the Irelands".  Article in
The old Halls of Lancashire and Cheshire".

Footnotes:

1.  The word "hale" derives from the Anglo-Saxon "healh", which means either a small corner of land, as in the angle of a river, a nook or secluded piece of land, or, like haugh, the Scottish and north of England term for a low lying river meadow (from the old English "halh").

2. It seems the King virtually paid Middleton to leave, as a wrestling match had been arranged with the King's champion wrestler.  When Midddleton dislocated his opponent's thumb, much to the dismay of courtiers who had all put their money on the King's champion, it was evidently decided he should be sent on his way before further damage could be done.  Middleton was then "sent back, the King giving him, as it is said, 20 pounds".  According to Matthew Gregson's Portfolio of Fragments 1817, Middleton returned home via Oxford, where at Brasenose College, Sir Gilbert Ireland's old college, he had his portrait painted.  A second, life-sized, portrait used to hang in Hale Hall and was probably painted for Sir Gilbert.  Samuel Pepys recorded in his diary on June 9, 1668 that on a visit to Brasenose, he saw the "hand of the Childe of Hale", which was an outline on a gilt background of one of Middleton's hands, hanging near a cellar, said to have been 16 inches long.  In 1768 Middleton's remains were disinterred and measured.  It was found that his thigh bones were each as long as the length from hip to feet of the average sized man".

3.  A Cecilia de Columbers is referred to in history of the village church of Stogursey, in Somerset (The Priory Church of St Andrew, Storursey, by Richard Ballard - Stogursey PCC 1982).  This Cecilia was descended from a Philip de Comumbers, who obtained the manor of Nether Stowey in Somerset.  Philip was dead before 1188 and was succeeded by his son, also Philip, who married Cecilia de Vernai and died in 1216, leaving children.  His widow, by then Cecilia de Columbers, was still alive in 1257, as was the de facto wife of Richard de Meath, so it is possible, though by no means certain, she was one and the same person.  William Fergusson Irvine, in his monograph, The Origin of the Irelands of Hale, (Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Chester, 1900) notes that the arms of the Somersetshire family of Columbers bear a close resemblance to the traditional arms of Cecilia de Columbers.  There is an intriguing link with this Somerset Cecily and the De Courcys.. The Vernai (later Verney) familuy were the squires of the manor of Fairfield, a short distance from the village of Stogursey, near Bridgewater in northern Somerset.  Stogursey was originally Stoke Courcy and named after th De Courcy family, wo, it is said, built the castle on the outskirts of the village (of which little remains).  (See the De Courceys).  The Church of St Andrew, Stogursey, was part of a Benedictine monastic priory founded from Lonlay in France and further connected with the De Courcys by the fact that when John De Courcy of Ulster founded Black Abbey at Ards in County Down, monks from Stogursey helped to build it and some went there as foundation members.

4. The Battle of Bosworth field was fought in 1485 near the Leicestershire market town from which it takes its name.  In this last battle of the War of the Roses, the forces of the Yorkist Henry, Earl of Richmond, destined to be Henry V11 triumphed over the forces led by Richard 111.  Treachery had much to do with the result, for many of Richard's troops led by Lord Stanley, who later put the crown on Henry's head, deserted their post before the battle and were followed by a second contingent under the Duke of Northumberland, overthrowing Richard 111.
(Modern Encyclopaedia Illustrated, Odhams Press Ltd, London, 1961).

5. Recusant (Fr, from Latin recusans, re-against, causa, a cause) one refusing to comply, especially a Catholic refusing to comply with Anglican worship or acknowledge the supremacy of the Church of England at the time of the Reformation.

6.  In 1678, Titus Oates invented a story that Roman Catholics were plotting to assassinate the king of England and destroy Protestantism.  He called the supposed plan the Popish Plot.  Oates claimed knowledge of Jesuits working for the downfall of Charles 11.  Preying on the intense suspicion of Catholics at the time, he was treated as a hero but in 1685 he was charged with perjury, fined and imprisoned over the escapade.
(World Book of Encyclopaedia, World Book Inc, Chicago, 1985).

7.  Peninsular War (1808-1814).  The war on the Spanish-Portuguese Peninsula between French troops of Napoleon and the voluntary forces of Spain and Portugal aided by English troops and supplies.  In 1807 the Spanish Government had allowed French troops to cross Spain soil to attack Portugal.  After the conquest of Portugal, the French imprisoned the Spanish king and his heir and in July 1808, Napoleon proclaimed Joseph Bonaparte, his brother, king of Spain.  This complete disregard for Spanish national feeling led to outbreaks in the Spanish provinces of insurrections under the leadership of revolutionary juntas.  The British Government promptly pledged support to the revolutionary movement and in August 1808, the British Army under Sir Arthur Wellesley (later Duke of Wellington) landed in Portugal and advanced into Spain.  At this point Napoleon himself took command of the French forces, drove the British back and reinstated his brother, who had been forced to flee Madrid.  Napoleon, however, was soon compelled to leave Spain for the Austrian campaign.  Thereafter, the British and insurgent forces steadily pushed back the French armies, which were not trained for guerilla war.
Decisive defeats at Salamanca in 1812 and Vitoria in 1813 compelled the French to abandon Madrid in 1815.  Spain was freed of all invading French troops.
(Collier's Encyclppaedia, Macmillan International Publishing Group, 1991).

Interesting Irelands

Apart from those mentions above there are various present and past Irelands of interest.

* Dr John de Courcy Ireland, the maritime historian and former schoolteacher.  He wrote a PhD on Education and the sea and was awarded an honorary doctorate about 1980 by the University of Dublin for his work in maritime history. Considered one of the grand old men of Irish letters, he at one stage considered standing as a socialist candidate for the Irish presidential elections.

* Brian Ireland, onetime editor of the Guardian Weekly, which he remodelled in the 1950s.  He left them eventually and  went to work for a publication put out by the Geigy electronics, chemical and pharmaceutical firm.  Like John, the maritime historian, he was an expert linguist and spoke some unusual languages such as Hungarian.

* Robert Ireland who practised as a doctor in Dublin, serving the Dublin constabulary.  He published and lectured on gynaecology and De Courcy Ireland, brother of Matilda Rowe, was born at his house at 121 St Stephen's Green.

* The Rev Edmund Stanley Ireland joined the British Association for the Advancement of Science, which was prominent in its opposition of the theories of Huxley and Darwin.

*John and Arthur Ireland, merchants of Galway from about 1810 to 1860, were prominent town councillors and both involved in public welfare issues, especially during the potato famine.  Both were supported of th Young Ireland movement.  There was a scandalous rigging of an election in Galway, in which some English notable was trying to get a relative into power.  When the English candidate won by four votes, they were able to prove bribery.  John and Arthur supported the "good" candidate and Arthur ("the good Mr Ireland", they called him) was eventually chosen as chairman of his election committee.

* Arthur Joseph Ireland was a literary critic and writed of journal articles - he died in the 1920s and gets a mention in "Who Was Who".  He married Agnes Maud, an Englishwomen but lived in Ireland.   

Irelands in Australia

Apart from our own ancestor, Richard Davies Ireland, at least two other lrelands migrated independently to Australia. (see Pedigree family trees for De Courcy Ireland and Susannah Stanley.) 

*John De Courcy Ireland, born in 1844-5 in Galway, he migrated to Australia in 1862 and became Collector of Customs at Wodonga.

* William Timbrell de Courcy Ireland, born 1862, educated St John's College, Cambridge, migrated to South Australia in 1844.  Joined the Adelaide mounted constabulary in 1884.  Bought a property called Wallaroo in 1890.  Married Agnes Cameron, eldest daughter of R. Cameron JO of Kapunda, Barossa Valley.  Died 1929.  Their son, Captain William Stanley de Courcy Ireland served at Anzac with AIF.  He married Ida Adeline Wallis, daughter of John Wallis of Millicent, South Australia in 1908.

Extract from Genealogical and Heraldic Dictionary of the Landed Gentry

 of Great Britain and Ireland 

by John Burke Esq. (and contributed by Joy Olney).

Ireland of Robertstown House (page 635):

Ireland, William, Esq. of Robertwtown House Co.Kildare and of Low Park, Co.Roscommon, married 7 February 1802, Dorothea, only child of Samuel Arnoldi Gardiner, Esq. of Robertstown and Blackwood, and has issue,

1. Arnoldi DeCourcy Ireland born 2 January 1812.

2. Samuel Gardiner Ireland born 18 June 1814.

3. William Milton Ireland born 13 September 1815.

Lineage:
This is a branch of the ancient family of Ireland, of the Hutt and Hale, in Lancashire now represented by John Ireland Blackburne, Esq. of Orford and Hale.

William Ireland, son of George Ireland who was brother of Sir John de Ireland, the father of the great Sir Gilbert Ireland of the Hutt and Hale, married about the year 1640 the Hon Margaret DeCourcy, sister and heir of Almericus, Lord Kinsale, and shortly after settled in Ireland on a property he purchased near Athy.  His only son DeCourcy Ireland Esq. was an officer in the army of William 111 and after disposing of his commission, held the appointment of sole agent of the forfeited estates in Ireland, an office then of great trust and emolument.  He purchased a small property in the Queen's County, now know as Ireland's Grove.  He married Miss Moore and had by her two sons.
1. DeCourcy, of Ireland's Grove, barrister-at-law, who received a pension from the Crown, in regard to his claim having, to the exclusion of his brother Richard, devised his estate to his two sisters of the half-blood, by whom it was sold to the Earl of Portarlington.
2. Richard, of whom presently.

Mr DeCourcy Ireland married secondly Miss Blanchfield, an heiress of the co.Kilkenny and had by her two daughters, and two sons, Hawkins and George.

The second son of the first marriage Richard Ireland Esq. an officer in the army died early in life at Killene, near Headford co. Galway about the year 1740, leaving Catherine his wife, daughter of Mark Lynch, a rich resident of Galway, an only son.

The Very Rev William Ireland, a distinguished divine Warden of the town of Galway and a Justice of the Peace for several counties.  He married Magdalene, daughter of John Irwin Esq of Lyaballaly Co.Sligo, by Magdalene, his wife, daughter of John Kelly Esq of Castle Kelly, and dying at one of his rectories near the abbey of Cong co.Mayo in 1787, left (with the other sons, of whom Richard, the second, was father of Captain James Stanley Ireland of Roscommon who served with distinction as an officer in the 87th regiment, during the Peninsular War, and several daughters, of whom one married the Very Rev Edmond French, Warden of Galway: another James Stanley Esq and a child, James Hughes Esq.) an eldest son and heir.

DeCourcy Ireland Esq of Low Park co.Roscommon who married Susanna, sister of Sir Edmond Stanley M.P. Prime Serjeant and late Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Madras, and had, with other issue, two sons.
1. William Ireland, his heir.
2. Richard Stanley Ireland M.D. of Stephen's Grove, Dublin married Miss Phayre daughter of Col and Lady Richarda Phayre.  Mr Ireland died 10 January 1812 and was succeeded by his son, the present William Ireland Esq of Robertstown.

Arms - Gu., six fleurs-de-lis, three, two and one, or.
Crest - A dove and olive branch, ppr.
Motto - Amor et pax.
Seal - Robertstown House, co.Kildare.

Ireland Family Tree from Gilbert De Walton who died 1196 

to 

the family of Captain James Stanley Ireland and Matilda Davies

I also suggest you take a look at my Post "10 Generations from William Ireland and Margaret de Courcy".

If you have any comments, additions or corrections, please contact the author of this blog, Joy Olney via email - joyolney@gmail.com

Richard Davies Ireland (and Sophia Mary Carr) by Elizabeth Rennick

https://irelanddecourcydewhurst.blogspot.com



The contents of this blog have been taken from Elizabeth Rennick's book "A Family Portfolio" with her permission. Thank you Elizabeth.  Chapter title - Richard Davies Ireland.

Sophia Mary Carr and Richard Davies Ireland family tree

 

Additions/corrections to the above family tree:

Nellie Jean Carter married Leslie Hick. 

Richard Thomas Ireland married Elsie Anderson.  

Sheren Irene Ireland married Gordon James Hawking. 

Their children are Lauren Cherie Hawking and James David Hawking.

Children of Eleanor Constance Mary de Courcy Ireland and Max Kirby are:

Michael Wilmott Kirby, Juineta Mary Kirby and Jenet Louise Kirby.

Juineta married Howard James Boyd and their children are: Monica Sarah, Martin James, Ruth Alison and Gordon Wilmott Boyd.

Jenet Louise's daughter is Julie Nicole Reid.

The children of Hilda May (nee Harris) and Henry Dewhurst are:

Kenneth Henry, Ian Gilbert, Joan and Helen Dewhurst.

Kenneth married Joyce Rogers and their children were: Leanne Joy (dec) and Robert Kenneth (dec).

Ian married 1. Katrina Ann Kirk and their children are: Shane Anthony, Craig Ian and Simon.

Ian married 2. Jennifer Catherine Goulding.

Joan married Andrew Garlick and their children are: Jennifer Lee, Louise Kristine and Jason Andrew.

Helen married Alan Rodda and their children are: Paul Milton, Anthony Clinton, Nicholas Alan and Larissa Anne Rodda.

Richard Davies Ireland QC

Richard Davies Ireland - a portrait from his later years.

(A major part of this section is taken with the author's kind permission from "Three Cheers for Mr Ireland: Towards a reassessment of Richard Davies Ireland", a study by John Ireland for an MA thesis in the University of Melbourne, 1988).

Summary: Richard Davies Ireland QC, barrister and politician, emigrated from Ireland to Australia in the mid-19th century.  A member of an Irish ascendancy family whose lineage can be traced back to the 13th century, (see the Irelands), he had been embroiled in the movement for freedom from the British rule at that time imposed on Ireland.  A successful barrister in Dublin, he left for Australia in 1852, because of overcrowding at the Irish Bar.  He was among a number of Irish lawyers, some exiles from the political turmoil of the time, to emigrate at about the same period.  They were to make an outstanding contribution to legal practice in Australia.  One of the first QCs appointed in Victoria, R.D.Ireland made his name as a barrister by successfully defending the accused in the Eureka Stockade trials.  He was to become not only one of the most eminent legal figures of his time, but renowned also as a colourful "Rumpole of the Bailey" character, known for his daring courtroom tactics, his wit, his exuberant love of several state electorates, and was appointed to terms as Victorian Attorney-General and Solicitor-General.  He married Sophia Carr, whose family history we know extensively, but of whom, sadly, we know very little personally. (See the Carrs.)

Richard Davies Ireland as a younger man.

Four Courts, Dublin, where Richard D.Ireland practised as a barrister before coming to Australia in 1853.

Richard Davies Ireland was born in Ireland on 27 October 1815, the son of Lieutenant (later Captain) James Stanley Ireland and Matilda, daughter of James Davies, officer and later Magistrate, of Newcastle, Co Galway.

His father had served under Lord Hill in the Peninsula War (see the Irelands) against the French in 1811-1814) and then held a number of government posts including that of magistrate and surveyor of Irish ports.  We do not know for sure where Richard was born or grew up - the first record of any place of residence appears on 20 October 1831 when just before his 16th birthday, he entered Trinity College, Dublin (1).

Richard's forebears migrated to Ireland from Lancashire during the reign of Charles 11.  (See the Irelands.)  The Irelands were typical ascendancy figures, privileged by education, position and property, and following the traditional avocations of their class; the army, the church, the law and the civil service (2).  We do not have information about Richard's early education, but we do know that he spent six years at Trinity College before graduating BA in 1837. 

He evidently had no doubts about the career he was to pursue because in 1838, the year after his graduation, he was called to the Irish Bar along with two others, Redmond Barry and William Stawell, (3 and 4) whose names were to be implanted in Australia's legal annals.  All three were to meet again in distant Australia, one as a Judge, one as Attorney-General and Crown Prosecutor, and the third, R.D.Ireland, who was to become one of Victoria's most noted criminal barristers.  They were to be leading figures in the trial that followed one of the key events in our national history, the Eureka Stockade.

On July 25, 1840. two years after being called to the Irish Bar, Richard Davies Ireland married Sophia, the daughter of the Reverend Thomas Carpenter Carr, Church of Ireland rector of Aghaboe, a tiny hamlet in County Laois (5) in the centre of Ireland (See the Carrs.)

If Richard took the rather predictable step of marrying the daughter of a Protestant clergyman, the same, as John Ireland says, cannot be said for the other members of his family; two of his father's cousins who lived in Galway town had married Catholics and converted to Catholicism.  It is possible, as John Ireland points out in his study, that this circumstance could well have contributed to the natural sympathy Richard was to show towards Catholics and his later natural alliance with Irish Catholic interests in the Victorian parliament.

During the 1840s the practice of the young Irish lawyer apparently thrived, for it was not long before he had established himself in chambers in Dublin's Upper Fitzwilliam Street, perhaps the best address in the city.  The fact that the Irish Bar was overcrowded - it had already caused both Barry and Stawell's departure for Australia - adds to the impression that Richard Ireland must have made his mark in the law.

It was about this time that he became immersed in the political activities that were to be another distinguishing feature of his life and career.  The movement he took up was the great political campaign for the ending of the union of Ireland with England and Scotland.  When and how he became involved in this (predominately Catholic) movement is not clear, but one influence was probably "The Nation" newspaper, which drew a number of young Protestant professional men to the nationalist cause.  They, along with Catholics such as Charles Gavan Duffy (7) - eventually to become a household name in Australian history - persuasively argued the case for Irish independence.

"The Nation" group eventually formed itself into an organisation called the Irish Confederation, but it has become known to history as the Young Ireland movement (6).  At its founding meeting in January 1847, Richard Ireland is mentioned as being among the hundred or so seated on the platform.  He was soon in the thick of the nationalist movement and it was one of the main factors that was to lead to his departure from Ireland. 

Events gathered momentum when two of the more militant leaders of the movement, John Mitchel a d Thomas Francis Meagher were charger and tried for the new crime of treason - felony, with Michael eventually transported to Van Diemen's Land.  The movement's leader, William Smith O'Brien, and a number of others were also arrested, tried and transported.  Charles Gavan Duffy was arrested but, despite five attempts by the Crown, was never convicted.  "The Nation", the focus of the repeal movement but deprived of so many of its leaders, collapsed.

Richard Ireland was soon to follow many of his companions to the Antipodes, though in his case not by transportation, but by his own decision to emigrate.

He arrived in Melbourne on board the Ben Nevis on January 3, 1853 with his wife Sophia, their eight children and Sophia's sister Selina.  He and his wife travelled cabin class while the rest of the party were in steerage (8).

According to family lore, the immigrants spent some time in the tent city of Emerald Hill, South Melbourne, before moving into a house in St Kilda.  On February 24, 1854, just eight weeks after his arrival in Melbourne, Richard Ireland was called to the Victorian Bar.

Little is known of how he established himself in practice in Melbourne, but he is next heard of in July of the following year, 1854, in circumstances that show he had lost none of his former Irish national allegiances.

The occasion was a testimonial dinner to Smith O'Brien, Martin and O'Doherty, all three recently released on conditional pardons from their sentences of transportation to Van Diemen's Land.  Just three months after the dinner an event took place that was to lead to the Eureka Stockade and was to be decisive in Richard Davies Ireland's legal career.

The Eureka Stockade was the final boiling over of long-pent-up frustration and resentment among the thousands of miners from all parts of the world who had congregated on the Ballarat goldfields at the height of the gold rush (A).  The uprising was triggered when one of the miners was murdered by, as they believed, a corrupt, greedy hotel-keeper and ex Norfolk Island convict James Bentley.  Bentley's hotel was notorious as a den of prostitution and crime but his villainy received the tacit support of the authorities, since his licence was regularly renewed by police magistrate John D'Ewes.  D'Ewes was said to have got a regular cut of the hotel's profits in return for his protection.  That one of the miners should apparently be sent to death by a man of this kind was the final straw in a saga of discontent and dissatisfaction with the administration of the Ballarat goldfields, most of it arising from the compulsory mining licence (B).

It was on December 3, 1853, that the miner, a Scotsman James Scobie, who had tried to break into the Eureka Hotel during a drunken binge, was murdered not far from the hotel.  As far as the miners were concerned, there was no doubt who done it: James Bentley, the "protected" hotel owner.  And their feelings only intensified with an unsatisfactory inquest by magistrate D'Ewes, widely believed to be corrupt.

Events gathered steam: the hotel was burnt down.  From thousands present at the burning three miners were arrested as ringleaders and duly brought to trial in Melbourne on November 21, 1854.  Their defence counsel was Richard Davies Ireland whose appearance without fee was apparently arranged by Ballarat lawyer (and later judge) Thomas Spence Cope, whose thriving legal practice in Ballarat put him in touch with the miners and in sympathy with their point of view.  It appears that Cope arranged Melbourne counsel for a number of Ballarat clients, because, while Richard appeared for the three miners on the 21st, he appeared the day before for a fee, for James and Catherine Bentley when they were charged with murder.

The case against the Bentleys was clear, though Richard struggled manfully to cast doubt on it.  As a result, Bentley was found guilty of manslaughter, not murder, and sentenced to three years hard labour.

One of the interesting features of the miner's case was Richard's combative style, drawing him into frequent clashes with the prosecutor (Attorney-General) William Stawell.

"The diggers had been baffled for 14 days," he told the court.  "Serious matters of life and death were not to be thus trifled with ..... the law was made for the people, not the people for the law; and when the people are oppressed and tyrannised over, it becomes them to right themselves....."

Unfortunately, Ireland's stout defence of the miners earned him a rebuke from the "Argus" newspaper which said he made a very able speech "but it was not a wise one".

"It was a hustings harangue, not a piece of forensic pleading.  He risked the whole case .... in order that ....he might have an opportunity of abusing the government".

There were all the ingredients for natural antipathy between Stawell and Ireland.  Stawell (4) would have resented Ireland's attack on the government, and as an ascendancy Irishman without Ireland's populist sympathies, would have regarded Richard Ireland as a traitor to his class and a dangerous radical.. Richard, in turn, may well have seen Stawell as a dreadful example of the ascendancy Irish who helped imposed English government on Ireland and were doing the same thing in Australia.  It would have come as no surprise to Stawell to find Richard at the head of the team of barristers who met him on the first day of the state trials, when the indictments for high treason were brought against the 13 charged over the Eureka Stockade.

The defence scored a victory at the outset by ensuring that the trial of John Josephs, a black American, came first.  This gave the defence the ability to lay the groundwork for the later defendants by pointing out the incongruity of a negro "making war on our Lady the queen", as the treason charge said.

The trial unfolded, with all, except Manning, the newspaper correspondent, exonerated.  The case showed that Ireland's mastery of the law matched if not equalled that of the Attorney-General, his cross-examination skills were of a high order and showed his detailed knowledge of what happened at Eureka.  In this he may have been helped by his brother-in-law Charles Warburton Carr, (See the Carrs) who was appointed secretary to the goldfields commission set up by Governor Hotham in November 1854 after the burning of the Eureka Hotel.

At all events, the Eureka trials were to establish Richard Davies Ireland as the foremost criminal lawyer in the colony.  One of the first two QCs in Victoria - he took silk with Sir Archibald Michie in 1863 - Ireland has gone down in the history of the Victorian bar as one of its greatest advocates, eloquent, humorous, a powerful jury man and a daring courtroom strategist.

The 13 men indicted over the Eureka rebellion: 1. Timothy Hayes, 2. James MacFie Campbell, 3. Ruffaello Carboni, 4. Jacob Sorenson, 5. John Manning, 6. John PHelan, 7. Thomas Dignam, 8. John Joseph, 9. James Beatie, 10. William Molloy, 11. Jan Vennick, 12. Michael Tucehey, 13. Henry Reid. (From the Age, March 10, 1885).

Aquittal of Ballarat rioters in 1885. (From the Illustrated Australian Press, June 1887).

Side by side with his successful legal career, Ireland was also to pursue a career in Victorian politics, in which by contract he can be said to have performed with less than shining ability, partly through personal attributes probably more suited to the bar, and partly through the turbulent nature of politics at the time.

The year 1855 marked the start of a political career that was to span more than 10 years.  During that time he would represent four electorates: Castlemaine, Maryborough, Villiers and Heytesbury (Warrnambool) and finally Kilmore.  It was also to lead him into ministerial office three times, as neither attorney-general or solicitor-general.  His first attempt at entering parliament, when he stood for the state seat of South Bourke (St Kilda) was unsuccessful.  But the following year, 1856, he stood again, this time in Belfast (Port Fairy).  Here again he failed, largely because the previous candidate who initially said he would not stand changed his mind and was returned by a fairly substantial majority.

Something of Ireland's wit was noted in the election campaign.  Charged with being an Irishman and a Catholic, Richard told his audience a man might not have a religion but "could not help having a country" and not having been consulted by his mother on the subject of his nativity, he did not consider himself responsible "for having been born in Ireland".  He was willing to apologise to the electors for the offensive accident of his birthplace and pledged his honour as a gentleman that "it should never happen to him again if elected their representative".

Ireland next tried Castlemaine in February 1857.  It was expected he would romp in, but a rumour that on election he would accept the office of attorney-general in the O'Shanassy Government lost him the seat by a small margin.  Unexpectedly, he got another chance: within four months one of the two sitting members for Castlemaine had resigned - and by now the O'Shanassy government had fallen, so no possible association could be imputed.

This time Richard did romp in.  He won the "Argus's" praise: "Mr Ireland has found his way at last into parliament .... Mr Ireland has no reputation to establish as an able debater - he carries that with him into the House.  If he distinguishes himself as a steady, practical, hardworking member of parliament, he will gain substantial and enviable laurels.

Though scarcely believable by the political standards of our own time, Richard Ireland won the seat without once visiting the electorate during the campaign.  And the electors three months later when he finally did make a visit, they even rewarded him with "three cheers for Mr Ireland" for having opposed the O'Shanassy Government's land bill.

Ireland's entry to parliament came at a time of great volatility in political fortunes, with governments rising and falling with great rapidity over the next four years, mostly over one or other of the central issues of the time, manhood suffrage, responsible government and the opening up of land to small settlers.  Richard held office twice briefly during this time, once in the O'Shanassy Government (1858-1859) as solicitor-general and then in the Heales government (1860-1861) when he resigned.

When the Heales government fell shortly afterwards, to be replaced by a coalition of opposition groups, led by O'Shanassy, Ireland held the post of attorney-general for two years.  (Something of a cloud hung over this period, because some suggested Ireland has resigned from the Heales government only to claim the pension that was due to him as a minister.  Others said he could see the government's downfall coming and going helped it occur, and that he had already been made an offer by O'Shanassy that he could not refuse).

Again the new government was faced with the issues of freeing land to small farmers, and like previous governments it was to meet with failure in its attempts at a solution.

Richard Ireland, as the government's legal spokesman, was to incur more than his share of blame over the failure of the legislation.  It all started out on a hopeful note when Minister for Lands Charles Gavan Duffy presented a compromise bill clearly aimed at gaining the support of both squatters and small farmers, as well as gaining the acceptance of the Opposition and the Upper House.  Ireland said the bill was a compromise - because that was the only way to settle the matter.  And he promised that if passed, the bill would be accepted "by all classes who were interested in the final settlement of the question".

The legislation appeared to have the best of intentions: to put more small farmers on the land and at the same time to limit the tenure of the squatters and to extract as much government revenue from them as possible (9).  But the squatters soon found ways round the law, including the use of "dummies" to take up selections on their behalf while they continued to hold large tracts of land.  Sadly, it was Richard Ireland who took the blame, largely because it was believed that as the government's legal officer, he had deliberately failed to pick up and correct essential points of drafting that allowed the law to be evaded.  Duffy, not averse, as John Ireland remarks, to finding others to bear the blame for his own failures, was the most outspoken of his critics, but before long all Richard's colleagues were to forsake him and flee.  He had become the scapegoat for the failure of the act (10).

Duffy, in his autobiography, was to put the final nail in Richard's political coffin.  "Mr Ireland," he said, "had not much character to lose, but that little was lost forever .... a signal instance of public justice".

It marked Ireland's political demise and he was told not to bother standing again for his seat of Kilmore.  It was an unfortunate and undeserved end to his political career, because as John Ireland shows in his study, the whole debacle over the land legislation was actually the result of misunderstanding (11). Far from being the schemer he was portrayed by Duffy, says John, "you wonder whether he was not an innocent looser in the political jungle".

It was at the Bar, rather than in politics, that Richard Davies Ireland's robust, colourful character and genius as an advocate was to shine to the full.

In his history of the Victorian bar, A Multitude of Counsellors, Arthur Dean says Ireland was the "greatest advocate of the day" and despite his years in politics, it was as an advocate that he achieved and still holds his fame (C).  As the colony's outstanding criminal barrister, Ireland owed his success to his quick grasp of essential issues, his charm and his expertise in dealing with people.  A typical Irish advocate, he was essentially a jury man, says Dean, "quick to see a point and skilful in evading or ignoring one, eloquent and humorous, a master of cross-examination, powerful in invective.  He handled a jury as a modeller handles clay: few were able to resist the force of his genius and personality".  He had a subtle method of cross-examination that seemed simple and did not give the witness much time to prepare plausible replies.  "He threw the witness off his guard by asking one or two questions, seemingly insignificant, that laid the foundation for others, to which convenient answers were assured."  If he wanted to find out a woman's age from her own lips, he would ask her if she were married, and how long and how many children she had; and having excited the wifely and maternal pride, and got her committed to time,he next came with the direct question: "And, pardon my impertinence, madam, how old are you?"

He was also a daring courtroom strategist.  A typical instance was the occasion when he defended a woman tried in Melbourne for arson.  When the case for the Crown had been concluded, Ireland rose and directed his gaze at the Crown Prosecutor.  "Is that your case?" he demanded.  The prosecutor nodded.  "Then, gentlemen of the jury", said Ireland turning to them, "I'll not occupy your time, or trifle with your intelligence by addressing you on behalf of the accused", and hastily gathering up his gown, rolled back in his seat.

The accused was acquitted, without the jury even leaving the box.

He was, as John Ireland says in his study, a Hocace Rumpole, winning on his wits rather than by obscure legal points.  Like Mortimer's Old Bailey character, he was a frequenter of winebars (in Ireland's case the Mitre Tavern in Bank Place, Melbourne).  Ireland found that a glass or two of stimulant did nothing to dim his powers.  In fact he was said to be at his best "when he had taken a stimulant" and during a long argument or speech to the jury he was often given a refresher "of a liquid kind"(D).

While it sounds scarcely credible in the context of the more sober atmosphere of the modern courtroom, this was a time of fast living, in which Melburnians had evidently made up their minds to "drink the wine of life to the lees".

One of the most striking descriptions of R.D.Ireland come from Raffaello Carboni, the Italian born Eureka leader, whom Ireland defended, his counsel, as "heavy with thunder".

"Thick, sound, robust, round-headed as he is, the glance in his eyes is irresistible.  A pair of bushy whiskers frame in such a shrewd forehead, astute nose, thundering mouth; that one had better keep at a respectful distance from drakes.  His whole head and strong built frame tell that he is ready to settle with anybody, either with the tongue or with fist." (E)

"His eloquence savours pretty strongly of (Irish nationalist leader) Daniel O'Connell and is flavoured with colonial pepper: hence Mr Ireland will always exercise a potent spell over a jury;  If he were the Attorney-General, the colony would breathe freer from knaves, rogues, and vagabonds.  The "sweeps", especially, could not possible prosper with Ireland's pepper."

"On the reassembling of the court, at three o'clock, Mr Ireland rose to address the jury for the defence".

"The learned counsel spent a heap of dry yabber-yabber on the law of high treason, to show its absurdity and how its interpretation had ever proved a vexation even to lawyers, then he tackled with some more tangible solids".

"The British law", the account goes on, (and here we are not sure if Carboni was accurately reporting Ireland or giving his own views), "the boast of urbis and orbis terrarum, hanged a traitor, until he was "dead, dead, dead", chopped the carcase in quarters, "never mind the stench", then stuck each piece of the treacherous flesh up on top of each gate of the town, where it was left to dry amid the "occasional pecking from crows and vultures ....."

"The whole performance", says Carboni, "to impress the young generation with the fear of God and teach them to honour the king".

"Reflecting then that there were no town gates in Ballarat, Carboni wonders: "How the deuce can they hang up my hindquarters on the gates of Ballarat township?"

The jury, he said, "appeared frightened at this powerful thundering from Mr Ireland", who now turned to argue that if the prisoner at the bar had burnt down all the brothels, "not kept on the sly in Her Majesty's dominions, he would be a traitor", yet if he had left one brothel standing - even in as remote a place as the Sandwich Islands - for "the accommodation of Her Majesty's well affected subjects, then the high treason was not so high".

By this time, according to Carboni, Ireland was getting his point across successfully.  The Judge "appeared to me to assent to the fine argument of the learned Counsel, who concluded a very lengthy but most able address by calling to the jury to put an end by their verdict to the continued incarceration of the man and to teach the government that they could not escape from the responsibilities they had incurred by their folly, by trying to obtain a verdict, which would brand the subjects of Her Majesty in this Colony with disloyalty".

Comments Carboni: "The jury now appeared to me to be ready to let the high traitor go his way in bodily integrity" (E).

Charming, convivial, a clever mimic and dramatic raconteur, R.D.Ireland had a taste for eccentric and exuberant recreation.  According to Forde, the "Melbourne public were once amused or scandalised by one of Her Majesty's counsel appearing on the stage at St George's Hall to present a testimonial to Lottie, a clever female gymnist who happened to be visiting the city (D).

Ireland "earned enormous fees, but was a free spender and a hard liver.  Money to him was something to spend and not to save" (C).

Sir Arthur Dean sums him up: "For his remarkable advocacy he had earned the respect of later generation of lawyers, despite his personal defects".

His abilities were to earn him some 140,000 Pounds in fees, "the idolisation of juries and the grudging respect of judges."(F).  For one case in New Zealand alone it was said he earned 1000 guineas and he himself claimed to have gone through four fortunes.

Victorian Chief Justice Sir John Madden sums up R.D.Ireland's legal career thus: "He was a brilliant audacious and well equipped advocate and a powerful and humorous and impressive orator.  He knew enough law to steer his way through its difficulties without allowing his stronger parts to be embarrassed by its limitations". (H).

"These qualifications were especially attractive and potent in those rollicking, highly prosperous and not too definitely settled days and Ireland soon had a practice as large as, indeed a good deal larger than, he could manage".

It was generally and probably truthfully said of him that he never read a brief, but he had a surprising receptive faculty, which enabled him to pick up swiftly from a recital of the facts of a case by his junior what sufficed him to contract his speeches on.

"As all cases were tried before juries in those days, he dragged in whatever else he thought necessary, so intermixed with skilful humour, and deterrent repartee, that objection was impossible".

"Ireland's court successes were endless and surprising.  These powers were also invaluable on the platform, and in parliament".

"His politics were nebulous, and changeable, and not too serious, and so he served the fighting side of his various parties gloriously while he left the philosophy of the business to others". (H)

While essentially a city man, Richard showed no qualms about tackling the rigors of the Australian bush in the course of his career.  He has left us a wonderful account of his journey to Wood's Point, said to be the first journey there by buggy, for a court case. (G)

Reading the account, one wonders whether by the time they reached Wood's Point they had finally concluded that a buggy was not the most appropriate vehicle for the wilder parts of the Australian mountain country.

After reaching what Ireland describes as the "detestable hole" of Healesville, now an inoffensive town on Melbourne's fringe, without severe mishap, the journey to the gold mining town of Wood's Point, buried in the ranges east of Melbourne, turned into a nightmare of impassable roads, knee-deep mud, and bush tracks so wild and precipitous that he says at one stage it was like "Approaching the bottom of the world".

Even the climbing of that relatively mild eminence, Black Spur, was then "something indescribable", says R.D.Ireland.  So bad was the road that Ireland had to help keep the balance of the buggy by lying "crossways in the vehicle, with my feet towards the valley below".  At one point, the ascent was so steep that Ireland had to get our of the buggy and "march along the canal up to my knees in mud". Eventually the party disembarked from the vehicle altogether and trudged on foot, nearly losing one another and the buggy in the wild darkness.

Towards the end of the journey, Ireland resorted to walking in his bare feet. having ruined his only pair of boots on the Spur.  A man with a lantern accompanying him was surprised that he could walk so far over the rough terrain and R.D.Ireland, his wit undimmed by the ordeal, said the only explanation he could offer was that "whereas he was an Englishman, I was from Ireland, where the people were born without shoes and stockings.

"The seemed satisfactory to his Saxon mind", Ireland noted wryly. (G)

One unhappy chapter in Ireland's life was the case in 1864 involving the wife of Supreme Court judge Mr Justice (later Sir Robert) Molesworth.  Mrs Molesworth sought a petition against her husband for judicial separation.  He counter-petitioned, alleging her adultery with Ireland.  Arthur Dea, who describes the case in "A Multitude of Counsellors", says it was true cause celebre if ever there was one: "A Supreme Court judge (Molesworth) the respondent to proceeding in his own court, before the Chief Justice (Sir William Stawell), in which his conduct and his credibility were involved, and a leading member of the Bar, (R.D.Ireland) a Queen's Counsel, a former Attorney-General, was alleged to have committed adultery with the wife of a judge."

The jury found him not guilty of the adultery charged, but censured his conduct in relation to Mrs Molesworth as "unduly familiar".

"Mrs Molesworth denied she had committed adultery with Ireland or with any other person.  She admitted having confessed to her husband in 1855 that she had committed adultery with Ireland but said she had withdrawn it as false, and said she had confessed out of bravado and to retaliate for his treatment of her".  Ireland, too, denied the adultery charge and said Mrs Molesworth was an "eccentric, hasty, peculiar, good-natures sort of woman" who drank too much at times. He agreed, as did Molesworth, that he and Molesworth had come to blows or to other violent acts.

At the end of the case, the "Argus" newspaper, which published two long leaders on the affair, hailed R.D.Ireland as a man "whose moral character come out triumphant from the ordeal and with quite a halo of glory around it".

"The victim of Mrs Molesworth's awkward attentions and Mr Molesworth's brutal suspicions, emerges superior to the nine years scandal".

In another context, Ireland was to be the subject not only of editorial praise but praise in poetic form from a man who held his legal powers in high esteem: John Weachurch, alias John Taylor.  Weachurch, who had previously been before the courts for assault with intent to murder in August 1872, went on trial again October 1875, and was found guilty and sentenced to be hanged.  Weachurch was duly executed on December 6, 1875 at Melbourne Gaol.  But before his death he handed to the Governor of the goal J.B.Castieau, his attempts at literature, including a 'long and vigorous" Ode to R.D.Ireland (D).

It begins:
"Thou noble, brace, warm-hearted man,
To see a client was ne're thy plam
But do for them the best thou can,
Thou brave, large-hearted Ireland".
The poem continues through 11 verses, each verse ending with a coda praising in turn "old Ireland's stout-heartedness, large-heartedness, warm-heartedness, clear-heartedness and bravery.

Exactly why R.D.Ireland should be singled out for this paean in unclear.  According to an article in the "Bulletin" ("Ghosts of the Gallows") the "benevolent and eloquent Ireland" had undertaken Weachurch's defence on a charge of attempted murder.  In fact, Victorian prison records on Weachurch contain no reference whatever to any acquittal by Ireland or any clear evidence that Ireland defended him, successfully or otherwise.  One can only conclude that perhaps Ireland offered him free advice in the capacity of a backroom boy.

Ireland had a reputation for being a charming and convivial host, a clever mimic and a dramatic raconteur.  His house in St Kilda, as Victorian Chief Justice Sir John Madden recalls, was for several years an assembling place of "all the more jovial wits and conversationalists, and raconteurs of the professions, and of the press." (H)

"Ireland was essentially a man "who had held the world but as the world".  He was one of the essence of that genial and lavish hospitality that was still persisting in Ireland, from where he had recently come".

One anecdote that has survived shows Ireland's robust sense of humour as well as his fondness for alcohol.  One one occasion, Ireland, Sir John Madden, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Victoria, and Butler Cole Aspinall (one of the foremost advocates of his time and Victorian Attorney-General in 1861 and 1870), and a Dr MacKay were invited to a house in St Kilda called "Tennyson Villa", which had recently been bought by the then Premier of Victoria, Richard Heales, who wanted all MPs in the Victorian Parliament to share in his housewarming.  Unlike Ireland, Heales was an extreme teetotaller who "neither touched nor tolerated".

Sir John, telling the story, which he said was a favourite of R.D.Ireland and "very amusing" as related by him, said they drove out in a cab to the house.  Heavy rains had fallen and turned the flat swampy land around the house into a lake, so that the house itself stood out like a lighthouse.

"Heales very thoughtfully had boats provided, and we got at last with very wet feet, and gloomy forebodings, the the house. Unperturbed that his guests had arrived sodden and cold, Heales turned on nothing but soda water and raspberry vinegar and all three realised the "villainy of teetotalism".

"Chilled to our marrow, in wet boots, (we) couldn't get away and so we bore it as we could ....."

"Their spirits suddenly brightened, however, when pudding was served and the maids brought in a number of bottles and put them on the table".

"By heavens," Aspinall said, "We've been wronging this fellow.  He is a good chap after all.  The whisky comes late, but no matter, we can make up for lost time".

Losing no time, the three filled up a "good stiff nobbler, and tossed it off."  But instead of the expected a shot of whisky, the three received a jolt of a different kind: the drink was not whisky but lemon syrup.

Sir John Madden confessed he choked on his, and "got rid of it on the floor", MacKay swallowed his before he had time to think about it.  History does not relate the reaction of Ireland or Aspinall.

The party soon asked for the boat to fetch them and went on their way home, drafting a motion of no confidence in Heales "more sincere than such motions generally are" (C).

Three significant legal figures who featured in the life and career of R.D.Ireland.
 From left to right: Justice Sir William Stawell, Mr Justice Robert Molesworth and Sir Charles Gavan Duffy.

Apart from three years spent in Lower Templestowe, Ireland lived in St Kilda in the same house until about 1869, when he went to live in Alphington.  He stayed there until his death.  From being immensely wealthy, Ireland became insolvent (C) in the late 1860s and died a poor man, on 11 January 1877 in South Yarra, predeceased by his wife.

They had seven sons and four daughters (F).

Selina Caroline Ireland (1841-1879)  married William Kearsey Hughes.

James Davies Ireland (1842-1883). James died in a snow storm while crossing from Omeo to Harrietville.

Matilda Louisa Ireland (1843-1927)  married Casimir Francis Xavier Rowe (see Rowe).

DeCourcy Ireland (1845-1935), solicitor, cotton planter in Fiji and member of Fiji"s first parliament, solicitor in Horsham and Harkaway, retired in Heidelberg. He married No.1 -Victoria Caroline Louisa Dopping (1845-1887).  No.2 - Margaret Elizabeth (Dolly) Carter (1859-1932).

Richard Stanley Ireland (born 1847), cotton planter, Fiji 1869, farmer Drouin 1873, then with Education Department of Victoria. He married Elizabeth Whittaker (1878-1898).

Thomas Carr Ireland (1848-1887) married Madeline Kirkland.

Sophia May Ireland (1850-1937) married Gerald Dyson Branson (1850-1937).

Charles Warburton Ambrose Ireland (1852-1928), barrister, New Zealand, associate to Judge Chapman, Dunedin 1868, stipendiary magistrate, Vancouver Island, Canada until 1899. He married Charlotte Cargill.

Garnet Augustus Ireland died in infancy (1855-1857).

Harriet Frances Ireland ( 1856-1954) married John Fraser KC (born 1856).

Edmond Arthur Ireland (1859-1922 married Emily Lucy Lawton.

Some family photos

Percival (Percy) Ireland (1893-1976), son of DeCourcy Ireland (1845-1935)
 and father of John Ireland (born 1926) and Richard Ireland (born 1931).

Nannie Olivia DeCourcy Ireland, sister of Richard Ireland.
She married Edward Manning.

Sophia Mary (Carr) Ireland (1821-1875) wife of Richard Davies Ireland (1815-1877)

Children of Richard & Sophia Ireland.

DeCourcy Ireland, centre, son of Richard & Sophia Ireland
with fellow cotton planter during his time in Fiji.

I found Victoria Caroline Louisa (Dopping) Ireland's tombstone (1845-1887) in St Kilda Cemetery.  

Richard Stanley Ireland  (1847-1914) married Elizabeth Whitaker (1878-1898)

James Warburton Ambrose Ireland (1852 - 1928) married Charlotte Cargill

James Davies Ireland (1842-1883).
James died aged 41 while crossing from Omeo to Harrietville in Victoria in a snow storm.

I found Richard Davies Ireland (1815-1877), wife Sophia Mary (Carr) Ireland (1821-1875)
 and son Garnet Augustus Ireland (1855-1857) at St Kilda Cemetery.

Footnotes:
1. Trinity College Dublin.  Also called Dublin University and is the oldest university in Ireland.  Founded in 1591 by Queen Elizabeth 1 and endowed by the city of Dublin, represented in the Irish parliament. When founded it was intended that Trinity College would be the first of many constituent colleges of the University of Dublin.  But no other colleges were established and the two names became interchangeable.  The university was limited to Protestants for many years but in 1873 all religious requirements were eliminated.  Its library contains many beautiful manuscripts, including the famous Book of Kells.   (Encyclopaedia Britannica).

2. The Protestant Ascendancy was the name given to the supremacy over Ireland and Irish public life held by the one-tenth of the Irish population who belonged to the established Protestant Episcopalian Church.  Not only Catholic majority but also the Presbyterians and other nonconformists, whose combined number exceeded those of the church establishment, were excluded from full political rights.

3. Barry, Sir Redmond (1813-1880) born Ballyclough, Co.Cork.  Brought up an Anglican, he graduated from Trinity College, Dublin in 1837, admitted to the Irish Bar 1838, but was forced to emigrate because of the overcrowding of the Bar.  Arrived in Melbourne 1839.  Admitted to practice 1841, he was appointed Cmmissioner of the Court of Requests in 1843.  Appointed first Solicitor-General for Victoria in 1851, then appointed puisne judge of the newly created Supreme Court of Victoria in 1852.  Presided over the trials of the Eureka rebels in 1855.  On various occasions, he was acting chief justice and briefly administrator of the government of Victoria.  Knighted in 1860 and worked tirelessly for the University of Melbourne and the public library and art gallery.  He died in 1880 only 12 days after the execution of Ned Kelly.     (Australian Dictionary of Biography).

4. Stawell, Sir William 1(1815-1889). Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Victoria, born County Cork, Ireland June 1815 of Jonas Stawell and Anna (nee Foster), both Anglo-Irish families tracing their descent from Henry 111.  Educated at Trinity College, Dublin.  Graduated with honours in classics 1837, read law at King's Inns, Dublin and Lincoln's Inn, London.  Called to the Bar in England and Ireland 1839.  Overcrowding of the Irish Bar forced him to emigrate and he left for Australian in 1842.  Admitted to the Victorian Bar in 1843.  Appointed Victorian Attorney-General in 1851, he was government leader in the legislative council.  Stawell was instrumental in setting up the Supreme Court, County Court and Court of General Sessions. Chief Justice 1857-1886. KCMG and Lieutenant-Governor 1886.  Died in Naples while abroad in 1889.
(Australian Dictionary of Biography).

5. Count Laois (pron.Leesh), also spelt Leix, the modern name for what used to be called King's County.

6. The supremacy of England over Ireland that had begun in the 1100s culminated in the enforcement of a code of penal legislation of Catholics in the 1700s.  With the Irish Catholic majority largely powerless, influence was concentrated in the hands of the small Protestant ascendancy.  But the French Revolution in the late 1700s, with its ideas of equality and liberty, had a major impact on Ireland and a society called the United Irishmen was founded in 1791 to press for radical reform of the political system.

The United Irishmen rebelled in 1798, aiming to unite Catholics and Protestants and to break Ireland's link with England. The rebellion was badly organised and easily suppressed and led to the uniting of the British and Irish parliaments to stabilise security.

From 1801 onwards, Ireland had no parliament of its own; Irish MPs sat in the House of Commons at Westminster, London.  Westminster was unwilling to grant major concessions to Irish Catholics, despite agitation.  In 1823 Catholic barrister Daniel O'Connell established a movement that forced the Westminster parliament to grant Catholic Emancipation in 1829, removing virtually all disabilities against Catholics.

O'Connell's next move was to try to end the union between the two parliaments and to restore the Irish parliament.  But despite mass rallies of thousands of people, Westminster still resisted and O'Connell's campaign ended.

It was in 1840, just as O'Connell's moves were failing, that another group, the Young Irelanders started a new campaign waged partly through their paper "The Nation" for a free and united Ireland.  The Young Irelanders staged a small insurrection in 1848 which failed, but their ideas strongly influenced later generations.  The deportation or escape from Ireland of most of the Young Irelander leaders at least temporarily ended the repeal movement.  Later movements for Irish autonomy were the Fenian movement and the Home Rule movement.  (Facts About Ireland, published by the Department of Foreign Affairs, Dublin;  Encyclopaedia  Britannica).

7. Duffy, Sir Charles Gavan (1816-1903), Irish patriot and Premier of Victoria, born in Monaghan, Ireland, April 12 1816.  He was admitted to the King's Inn in 1839 and for a time edited a Catholic weekly paper in Belfast.  In 1842 he founded "The Nation", a newspaper strongly supporting the nationalist movement.  A member of the Irish Confederation, he was in 1848 arrested and tried for treason.  He was freed and elected to the House of Commons in 1852.  He emigrated to Melbourne in 1855 and set up as a barrister but persuaded to stand for parliament, was elected to the Victorian Legislative Assembly in 1856.  He was Minister for lands in 1858-59 and 1861-62.  After a period abroad, he returned to Victoria, and was elected member for Dalhousie in the Victorian Parliament.  In 1868 he helped found the Catholic newspaper "The Advocate".  In 1871 he became Victorian Premier and Chief Secretary, remaining in office for 12 months.  In 1877 he was elected Speaker.  In 1880 he left Australia and settled in Nice.  He died there in 1903.
(Australian Dictionary of Biography).

8.  Selina Frances Carr, born in Dublin in 1820.  She eventually married (his second marriage) Judge Henry Samuel Chapman.  His first wife and several children were killed when a boat sank in the Bay of Biscay.  Born in London, Chapman began life as a bank clerk, and was eventually to have a crowded career as a merchant, newspaper proprietor, politician, barrister, minister of the crown and judge.  He is credited with starting in Montreal the first daily newspaper in Canada.  In England he was a friend of J.S.Mill and Richard Cobden, acted as a commissioner to inquire into the condition of hand-loom weavers, contributed articles on wool and weaving to the 1842 edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannicica.  Went to the Bar aged 37, called to Middle Temple 1840.  That same year he went to New Zealand, starting the "New Zealand Journal" the year of his arrival there.  Became colonial secretary in Tasmania, 1852.  Arrived in Victoria 1854, remaining there 10 years.  Elected member of the early legislative council.  Appointed Attorney-General in the first O'Shanassy administration and in the second of 1858-59.  One of the law lecturers at Melbourne University.  In 1864 accepted a judgement in New Zealand.  Died in Dunedin aged 78 in 1881.
(Australian Dictionary of Biography).

9. A squatter in Australian history was initially an illegal occupier of crown grazing land beyond the prescribed limits of settlement in the early days, but by the late 1840s the authorities recognised the economic good derived from the squatters' activity in developing particularly Australia's wool industry and issued them with leases for their land and tenure extending many years.  With the influx of immigrants and thousands of miners drawn to Australia in the gold rush, there was a cry for land, often the squatters' land, to be made available for smaller holdings.  Legislative assemblies in the various colonies passed "selection" acts providing for the sale of land at auction, forcing squatters to bid against prospective farmers for land they already controlled by leasehold.  Needless to say the squatters opposed these developments and in Victoria at least the use of "dummies" was a move to hold on to land against selectors.  (Encyclopaedia Britannica).

10.  Henry Gyles Turner, in his "A History of the Colony of Victoria, Melbourne 1973", Vol 11, page 90, says Duffy blamed Professor Hearn for faulty drafting of the act, Ireland for insufficient supervision, the Board of Land and Works for their appraisements, "but most of all he blamed the people for whose benefit he had pitted legislation against poor human nature, who were unable to resist the temptation he had placed in their way, by emphatically declaring that the very class for whom he legislated sold their inheritance for some paltry bribe".

11. R.D.Ireland was blamed particularly for the omission of the term "assigns" from the act, since this, it was said, allowed "dummies" on being challenged over lack of improvements on the land, to pass the tide of the land to their principal without his then having any obligation to improve it.  But Ireland had deliberately avoided following earlier legislation and including the words "assign" because it would have lessened the value of the property by bringing in defects in titles.
(Victorian Hansard 1863 vol IX p33).

12. Molesworth, Sir Robert (1803-1890), Judge, born Dublin, graduated from Trinity College, Dublin 1826.  Called to the Bar 1828, he practised until 1852.  On January 6, 1840 he married Henrietta daughter of the Rev Joseph England-Johnson.  In 1852 he and his wife migrated to Adelaide and then to Melbourne, where he was admitted to the Victoria Bar.  In 1854 he was appointed a nominee in the Legislative Council and appointed solicitor-general from 1855-56, when he was appointed to the Supreme Court bench.  Most of his work was in equity and he was admired for his industry, courtesy, learning and expedition.  In the matrimonial suit in the Supreme Court 1861-64, his wife petitioned for judicial separation on the grounds of cruelty and he counter-petitioned for similar relief on the ground of her alleged adultery in 1855 with R.D.Ireland and in 1861 and 1862 with some person unknown resulting in the birth of an illegitimate child in England.  The jury absolved Molesworth of cruelty and Mrs Molesworth of adultery with Ireland but found against her on the charge of adultery with a person unknown.  Very few of his decisions were successfully challenged.  He was knighted in 1886.  Mrs Molesworth predeceased her husband in 1879 aged 56.  He lived quietly in Melbourne until his death in 1890.  (Australian Dictionary of Biography).


References:

Main source: John Ireland,  "Three Cheers for Mr Ireland. Towards a Re-Assessment of Richard Davies Ireland". Unpublished essay (preliminary to MA thesis) for the University of Melbourne, 1988.

A.  Manning Clark, "A Short History of Australia", Mentor Books, New York, 1963.
B.  Richard Butler, "The Eureka Stockade", Angus & Robertson, 1984.
C. Arthur Dean, "A Multitude of Counsellors", F.W.Cheshire, 1968.
D. John Leonard Forde, "The Story of the Bar of Victoria", Whitcombe & Tombs Ltd, Melbourne.
E. Raffaello Carboni, "The Eureka Stockade", Public Library of South Australia, 1962. J.P.Atkinson and Co.
F. "Australian Dictionary of Biography", Melbourne University Press.
G. "The Evening Star", October 7, 1893.
H. John Butler Cooper, "The History of St Kilda, from its First Settlement to a City 1840-1930", Printers Pty. Ltd. 1931.



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