Happy Birthday, Midleton! 350 years old in June 2020.

Seal of the Corporation of Midleton as illustrated by Samuel Lewis in the Topographical Dictionary of Ireland. (1837)

 

It would be silly to let this month of June 2020 pass without noting that it marks the 350^th anniversary of the town of Midleton in County Cork becoming…MIDLETON. The Charter of Midleton, issued by the government of King Charles II on 10^th June 1670 gave an existing medieval town in the barony of Imokilly, County Cork, its new English-sounding name.

As a visitor approaches Midleton on the N25 from either Cork or Youghal, he or she is greeted by a large sign at the entrance to the town. It says ‘Mainistir na Corann 1180’ and, below, ‘Midleton 1670’. The first name refers to the foundation of the Cistercian Abbey of Chore, Mainistir na Corann in Irish, which was founded by Gaelic Irish monks from Monasternenagh, near Croom in County Limerick. Despite the image of a knight on the sign, the abbey was an entirely Gaelic Irish foundation, with the Anglo-Normans having no direct involvement in the foundation. It was founded by the local Gaelic chieftain, MacTire of Imokilly, with assistance from the Bishop of Cloyne, Matthew O’Mongain.

A town soon developed beside the abbey. Again, this seems to have been a Gaelic Irish creation almost certainly inspired by the creation of the nearby town of Cloyne in 1237-1238 by David O’Ceallaigh, Bishop of Cloyne. By 1299, the sheriff of Cork recorded a market in Mainistir na Corann, or Corabbey as it was called in English. The market wasn’t licensed by the Crown and it seems that the sheriff wanted to prompt King Edward I to issue a licence for Corabbey, as well as Ballinacurra and Cloyne, which also operated markets without a royal licence.

The dissolution of the Abbey of Chore took place in 1544 but was only finally confirmed in 1551. How this affected the town is unknown, but in 1608 the landlord at the time, Sir John Fitzedmund Fitzgerald of Cloyne, obtained a market licence for his town of Corabbey, suggesting that the town had survived and still held a weekly market. The licence stipulated that the market was to be held on Saturday – probably confirming the long established medieval market day.

In 1653, lands around Corabbey were granted to a Cromwellian soldier from Surrey, St John Brodrick. He was a good friend of Roger Boyle, Lord Orrery, who was the last Lord President of Munster under both Cromwell and King Charles II.  Brodrick’s lands were concentrated in east Cork but also included estates in County Waterford and even reached into County Limerick. But there was a problem – a glaring hole in the middle of his east Cork estates. This was Corabbey, held by the Rice family. Brodrick made them an offer they probably didn’t dare to refuse, and was able to consolidate his east Cork estates by purchasing the town of Corabbey.

With the restoration of King Charles II in 1660, St John Brodrick was knighted and in 1663 was confirmed in his possession of his Irish estates. It was probably then that the town was replanned around its broad straight Main Street – which only reached as far as the northern side of the modern Brodrick Street because the land at the southern end of the town was liable to frequent flooding by the Dungourney (Rocksborough) River. This evidence comes from a detail in a 1711 map of Cork Harbour in which the Main Street is shown as shorter than the present street. Brodrick also moved the parish church from Ballinacurra to a new church on the site of the abbey for greater convenience. That church was replaced by thee present St John the Baptist Church of Ireland on the site in 1825.

To give his town some status, Sir St John Brodrick needed to have it raised to a corporate borough. The first draft of the Charter was completed in 1668, but there was a problem – it listed all the townlands he had been granted but omitted one – the townland of Corabbey which he had purchased from the Rice family. After some negotiation this was amended in 1669 and the final Charter was issued on 10^th June 1670. This is the reason for the ‘Midleton 1670’ reference on the signs at the Cork and Youghal entrance to the town. Intriguingly, William Penn of Shanagarry and Pennsylvania fame recorded in the summer of 1670 that he had conducted business in ‘Corabbey’ – perhaps the last mention of the old name of the town before it became Midleton.

Sadly, the original Charter document is missing but a manuscript copy made in 1784 was obtained by Professor John A Murphy of UCC and later presented to the Cork Archives in Blackpool. It gives the full text of the original charter.

The Charter of Midleton did three things  – it created a manor, established a parliamentary borough and renamed the town.

First, the charter established Sir St John Brodrick’s entire estate as a manor, giving it a personal jurisdiction with its own manorial courts. Among its many privileges the manor was responsible for effectively running the estate and the town, and the lands could only be sold off by passing an Act of Parliament. The manor controlled the market and fair, could impound stray animals, and was permitted to hold a deer park (at Cahermone and Park North and Park South in Midleton).

 

The Charter of Midleton authorised the Corporation to erect a ‘common hall or tholsel’ for its meetings.  A Market House had been erected in Midleton by 1685, but it was built by the landlord, Sir St John Brodrick, rather than by the Corporation. The Corporation met in the upper storey. There was a public clock on the Market Houre by 1750. The building was either rebuilt or refurbished in 1789. The building remained in Brodrick hands until the mid-1960s.

 

Secondly, the Charter established Midleton as a corporate parliamentary borough. That is, Midleton had a corporation of fifteen men led by a Sovereign (mayor), two bailiffs, and twelve burgesses – all Protestants. The sole function of the corporation was to elect two MPs to the Irish House of Commons, and elect a new Sovereign and Bailiffs each year. The Corporation had no executive functions in running the town, although it was allowed to build a ‘common hall or tholsel’.  In fact Sir St John Brodrick built the Market House, which was refurbished in 1789, and now houses the library. The Municipal Corporations Commission (1835-1838) declared that it could not discover any function performed by the Corporation of Midleton apart from electing a Sovereign and Bailiffs. This isn’t surprising because the Act of Union in 1800 stripped the Corporation of its sole real function – electing MPs to represent the town. When the Corporation was abolished it seems that the office of Sovereign may have been overlooked and Rev Francis Jones, Rector of Midleton, used his office to summon a meeting of the east Cork great and good to a meeting in Midleton Courthouse on 6^th January 1845 to press for the building of a railway from Cork to Waterford by way of Midleton and Youghal.

The third act of the Charter was to give the town of Corabbey a new name – Midleton…or was it Middleton? The charter started off mentioning the town of ‘MIDLETON’ but ends by mentioning the town of…’MIDDLETON’. Since both names were given in the Charter, both were legally correct! In 1685, Sir Richard Cox MP of Dunmanway declared that the town was called Midleton/Middleton because of its location mid-way between Cork and Youghal. Curiously, William Penn of Shanagarry and Pennsylvania was one the very last people to call the town Corabbey when he recorded doing business in the town in the summer of 1670.

Although Alan Brodrick became Baron Brodrick of MIDLETON in 1715 and Viscount MIDLETON in 1717, during the eighteenth century the name of the town came to be written as MIDDLETON. This lasted until early 1845 when the 5^th Viscount Midleton wrote to the Postmaster General in London complaining that the post was going missing in Middleton, County Cork. Lord Midleton suggested that the town’s post office stamp be recut to say MIDLETON rather than MIDDLETON, since his own title followed the first spelling. After some time, the Postmaster General wrote back to say that following an investigation, the suggestion would be taken up and the stamp was recut to say MIDLETON. The Post Office was the first government body to adopt the modern spelling of the town’s name. And it’s unique – there simply isn’t another Midleton to be found! Even Google will confirm that. Interestingly, the name conferred on the town is the only part of the Charter of Midleton that still has legal standing. The manor was abolished in 1850 when a private act of parliament permitted the trustees to sell the estates to settle accumulated debts. The 5^th Lord Midleton had to buy back the town at the auction in the Imperial Hotel in Cork. He paid over £30,000 for the privilege!

 

Sadly, the Covid-19 pandemic put paid to any plans to celebrate the 350^th anniversary of Midleton becoming Midleton in the Charter of Midleton in June 1670.

A word about the date of the Charter of Midleton – it was issued on 10^th June 1670. That is the OLD STYLE date, before the calendar was modernised in Britain and Ireland in 1752. The old calendar of Julius Caesar had begun to run out of sync with the seasons and in 1582 Pope Gregory XIII decreed the use of a new (Gregorian) calendar to correct the problem. Britain and Ireland only adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1752 – with the result that the Orange Order in Ulster now celebrates the Battle of the Boyne, which took place on 1^st July 1690 (Old Style) on 12^th July (New Style). If we follow this logic, the 10^th June 1670 is really 22^nd June 1670! Perhaps it is best to simply take the whole month to celebrate the Charter of Midleton! There’s bound to be a fine sunny day there somewhere.

Cromwell’s spy? St John Brodrick and the origins of the Brodrick estates in South East Cork.

The ruins of Ballyannan Castle from the south. Usually attributed to the Hodnetts, but actually held by a Mr E Gould in 1642, Ballyannan is an early 17th century fortified house with some later modifications. This house became the seat of St John Brodrick from 1653. In appearance, it must originally have resembled a small French chateau, with plastered, presumably whitewashed,walls and pepperpot roofs on the three turrets.

‘He was in reality sent over by Cromwell as a spy to corrupt the Munster Army and send him intelligence; Lieutenant Colonel W. Pigot, and the Captains St John Brodrick and Robert Gookin being likewise employed for the same purpose.‘

Thomas Carte: A History of the Life of James Duke of Ormonde. 1735.

From at least 1653 to 1964 the ground landlords in Midleton were the Brodrick family. But one question needs to be addressed.  How exactly did the Brodricks get their land in the area? The quotation above refers to, among others, St John Brodrick – the first of the Brodricks of Wandsworth to acquire an estate in Ireland.  The story of St John Brodrick and his settlement in Ireland during the regime of Oliver Cromwell is not yet properly written, and, unfortunately, it contains some odd assertions.  I can’t claim that this post will clear everything up, but I hope to kill off some of the nonsense that is still floating around even in some very respectable history books. Thomas Carte’s reference to Brodrick being a Cromwellian spy was written by a staunch supporter of the Stuarts in 1735 and, while it may have a grain of truth, it perhaps does not tell the whole story behind Brodrick’s coming to Ireland.

A woodcut describing the enmity between the Royalists (Cavaliers) and Parliamentarians (Roundheads) during the English Civil War – but it could equally well express the sentiments of the Catholics vs. Protestants and Scots Presbyterians vs. English Episcopalians.

The outbreak in 1642 of the Wars of the Three Kingdoms (the Irish Catholic Uprising, the English Civil War and the Covenanters’ War in Scotland), was to set the scene for the arrival of the Brodricks in south-east Cork. St John Brodrick was born in 1627 as the younger son of Sir Thomas Brodrick of Wandsworth. St John’s older brother, Alan, fought for King Charles I during the English Civil War and later served as secretary to the Sealed Knot society. This latter was a secret Royalist organisation in England aiming to restore King Charles II when Cromwell was Lord Protector. There are some assertions that St John Brodrick came to Ireland in 1642 to acquire estates here.  But as a fifteen year old boy it seems highly unlikely that he’d be allowed jump from the English frying-pan into the Irish fire.  There’s certainly no evidence that Brodrick inherited land in Ireland in 1642 – so he must have come by his estates another way.

What seems to have happened is that after his father’s death in 1643, St John Brodrick was groomed to fight with Parliament as a way of hedging the family’s bets on the outcome of the Civil War. He certainly seems to have been in the service of the Parliamentary cause by 1649. In that year he was sent to Ireland as an assistant to Lord Broghill who had just joined the Parliamentary side. And this connection to Roger Boyle, Lord Broghill, proved instrumental in Brodrick’s land acquisitions in Ireland.

The man the Irish love to hate: Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector of Great Britain and Ireland. He still has a bad press in Ireland and his regime settled a lot of officers on confiscated Irish lands, including St John Brodrick.

To understand what happened it is necessary to examine the complex four-sided civil war in Ireland from 1642 to 1652.  The Confederate Catholics made up the largest group, rebelling against the Crown in defence of their landholdings and their right to worship as they wished. Their best leader was the Ulsterman Owen Roe O’Neill, the victor of Benburb. Unfortunately the Confederates were divided into Gaelic Irish (often very hardline) and the Old English (more Royalist in sympathy). Benburb introduces the second group in Ireland – the Presbyterian Scots.  Some were settlers, mostly in Ulster where they obtained land under the Ulster Plantation. Others came over in Munroe’s army ….. only to be slaughtered at Benburb in 1646. Then there was the Royalist force, based mostly in Dublin and commanded by James Butler, Marquis of Ormond as he then was, and Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.  This is the man who is the subject of Thomas Carte’s book, being promoted to a dukedom in 1660. The fourth group in Ireland were the Protestants of Munster. Their military leaders were David Barry, 1st Earl of Barrymore, who died of wounds shortly after the victory of Liscarroll in 1642, Morrough O’Brien, Lord Inchiquin who led the Munster Protestant Army for most of the period, and Roger Boyle, Lord Broghill, a younger son of Richard Boyle, the same 1st Earl of Cork who had obtained a license for a market at Corabbey in 1624. The Munster Protestant victory at Liscarroll secured Cork and the area around Cork Harbour, as well as Youghal, for the Protestant cause, and, ultimately, for the Parliamentary cause.  Initially the Munster Protestant leaders’ loyalties were still somewhat vaguely aligned in favour of the king, although they treated James Butler, Marquis of Ormond, and Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, with great suspicion.

Roger Boyle, Lord Broghill, Cromwellian commissioner for forfeited estates in the County of Cork.
Created 1st Earl of Orrery in 1660, Broghill helped secure Cork for Cromwell and, in 1660, he secured Ireland for King Charles II . He founded Charleville in North Cork, where he built a huge mansion, which he abandoned by the mid-1670s, when he moved his seat to Castlemartyr a few miles from Midleton. A good friend of St John Brodrick, his neighbour in Midleton, Broghill was a younger son of Richard Boyle, Earl of Cork and an older brother of Robert Boyle, the scientist. His descendants resised at Castlemartyr until the early 20th century.

During the period up to 1648, a strong rivalry existed between Inchiquin and Broghill. It didn’t develop into an open dispute – they managed to get along sufficiently to keep their hold on Cork secure. But the Parliamentary victory in the English Civil War, and execution of King Charles I in 1649, threw everything into confusion. Inchiquin was certainly disgusted by the death of the King. Broghill’s reaction, however, was more problematic. He later claimed that he was upset by the execution of the king, however, it does seem that his sympathies were very close to the Parliamentary side. One story put about after the Restoration of King Charles II (1660) is that Broghill was on his way to the Continent to consult Charles II when he was accosted by Oliver Cromwell in London and given a choice that was difficult to refuse – join fully and openly with Parliament or else get to know the Tower of London very intimately.  Broghill was in Somerset when he eventually decided to take up Cromwell’s offer of a commission in the Parliamentary army.  He apparently had a small part to play in the bloody sack of Wexford in 1649 before being sent by sea to Cork to secure that harbour and city for Cromwell. On Broghill’s arrival in Cork, Lord Inchiquin packed his bags and sailed off to Spain – where he became a Catholic! This left Broghill in total command of Cork. Cromwell spent the winter of 1649/50 in Youghal, a town controlled by the Boyles, in acknowledgement of Broghill’s importance in securing the area, and, presumably to keep Broghill firmly within the Parliamentary camp.

Murrough of the Burnings. Murrough O’Brien, Lord Inchiquin was the leader of the Protestant forces in Munster during the 1640s until ousted by Broghill in 1649.

(Murrough O’Brien, Lord Inchiquin, was the infamous ‘Murrough of the burnings’ of Irish popular history and he came from County Clare – hence his title. His descendants later returned to Imokilly and settled at Rostellan where, as the Earls of Thomond, they built a new house on the site of Rostellan Castle and the medieval church. On discovering that the old church and graveyard had been violated, a local woman pronounced a curse that no son would ever inherit the Rostellan estate – and it worked! The property passed via daughters into the hands of other families. Inchiquin’s descendants also came into possession of Petworth House in East Sussex which contains a superb collection of paintings by Turner. The vitally important Petworth House papers have yielded astonishing detail on the history of County Clare, but they have not yet been explored for the history of Rostellan and Imokilly. Petworth is now owned by the National Trust.)

But what of St John Brodrick?  We know nothing, as yet, of his military career in England, which probably didn’t start until about 1645/46. One source suggests that Brodrick was appointed Provost Marshal to Broghill’s force in Cork. A Provost Marshal was an officer in charge of enforcing military discipline. But they often had another role – the gathering of intelligence. Basically, if his role as Provost Marshal is true, then St John Brodrick was indeed a spy for Cromwell, but not a secret agent. It is highly possible that Brodrick may have been given orders to keep Broghill on the straight and narrow path of Parliamentary loyalty. As an intelligence officer, it is also possible that Brodrick was instrumental in securing the transfer of loyalty among the Protestant troops in Cork from the king to Parliament by way of a mutiny. What is clear is that Brodrick and Broghill became great and firm friends. They appear to have shared a common religious outlook, both being ‘low church’ men. It seems likely that Brodrick got to know Oliver Cromwell during the latter’s sojourn in Youghal.

With the defeat of all the opposing armies in Ireland, the Cromwellian regime set about securing the country……and paying off its debts.  The Adventurers, the people who had loaned funds to Parliament, had to be repaid (with interest), and the soldiers in the Parliamentary army had to be paid.  The decade of civil wars meant that there was a serious shortage of funds, so Parliament came up with a better idea – pay everyone in land. The lands of Irish Catholics and Royalists would be confiscated and distributed to the Adventurers and old soldiers as payment.The bonus was that if these lands could be settled by good English protestants then Ireland would be secured against future Catholic rebellions.

Part of the Down Survey map of Barrymore  showing the parishes.The former monastic estate of Manisitir na Corann/Corabbey is shown as a yellow area marked ‘Unforfeited Land.’ Parts of Mogeesha parish, as well as Templenacarriga, Ballyspillane, Dungourney, and Clonmel parish on Great Island as well as areas were also given to St John Brodrick in the 1653 settlement. Mainistir na Corann was considered to be part of Barrymore since the dissolution because its last abbot was a Barry. During the 1700s, the parish was transferred back into Imokilly. This copy of the map is preserved in the Bibliotheque National in Paris. Source: downsurvey.tcd.ie.

One of the commissioners appointed to supervise the distribution of lands in County Cork was Roger Boyle, Lord Broghill. And he made sure that his good friend, St John Brodrick, got some choice parcels of land, often right next to his own estates.  One of those parcels was Mainistir na Corann/Corabbey now called Midleton. This was the old estate of the Cistercians of Chore, which had remained Crown property since the dissolution in 1543 and had been leased to Roger Boyle’s father, Richard, 1st Earl of Cork, by the 1620s. Brodrick also got estates in Orrery barony in North Cork – also next to Broghill’s lands in the same barony.  To ensure that his friend didn’t want for much, Broghill also ensured that Brodrick got lands in Mogeesha parish, Templenacarriga parish, Ballyspillane parish, Dungourney parish and non-monastic lands in Corabbey parish as well as parcels in Ballyoughtera Parish and Clonmel parish on Great Island – all confiscated from ‘Irish Papists,’  By 1653, St John Brodrick, a younger son, had obtained a considerable estate in Ireland.

St John Brodrick established a deerpark from Cahermone to Park South and Park North townlands and chose Ballyannan Castle as his seat. This fortified house had previously been held by a Mr Gould, an ‘irish Papist.’  Not a bad return for a ‘spy.’ There’s still a lot of research to be done on St John Brodrick and his background and career.