Pursuit of the Heiress by Anthony Malcomson

Author:Anthony Malcomson
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781908448781
Publisher: Ulster Historical Foundation
Published: 2012-01-14T16:00:00+00:00

Richard Hely-Hutchinson, 1st Earl of Donoughmore, from an engraving in The Hibernian Magazine of 1810. This highlights his position as Grand Master of the Freemasons of Ireland, but the sensual – not to say lecherous – expression on his face is also apparent.

AUTHOR’S COLLECTION

The one and only Lord Callan (1751–1815) and the 1st Earl of Donoughmore (1756–1825) are two further examples of Irish peers who were unmarried but left children. In 1809, the former made a will in which he acknowledged sixteen surviving illegitimate children by two different mistresses; to the children he left £1,000 apiece and a share, along with their mothers, in the interest from a trust fund of £70,000.475 The dispositions, and the identity of the illegitimate children, of Lord Donoughmore were less easy to unravel. He had one favourite son, John, to whom he left £1,900 a year, which at the time was more than the nett rental of his Co. Tipperary estate, so that ‘there would have been nothing left for anybody’.476 Fortunately for Donoughmore’s brother and heir, this son died young, c.1814. However, Donoughmore’s will still contained un-lapsed legacies ‘of £60 a year to a common strumpet in this neighbourhood [Clonmel, Co. Tipperary], which she may call on the executors to redeem on the payment of £600, … £300 to a supposed natural daughter of his by Parker’s daughter (no more his child than she was mine), … [and] £700 to a second, supposed natural daughter of his, whom he calls Mary Long’.

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