Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-ws8qp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-28T13:42:38.028Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

1 - ‘I hope all will end well with our New Interests’: The rise and fall of a ‘new interest’ landowner, 1666–89

from Part I - The Rise and Fall of the ‘New Interest’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 June 2018

Eoin Kinsella
Affiliation:
University College Dublin
Get access

Summary

John Browne of Westport, County Mayo, was the quintessential representative of the Catholic ‘new interest’. Called to the Irish bar in 1669, he was a self-made man. As one of the greatest beneficiaries of the upheaval caused by the Restoration land settlement, between 1666 and 1685 Browne accrued an enormous estate in Galway and Mayo of more than 155,000 acres (with over 39,000 acres classed as profitable), as well as property in Counties Sligo, Roscommon, Clare and Dublin. He was an ambitious man who used family connections to great advantage. Married to a daughter of the 3rd Viscount Mayo, Browne was also linked by his siblings’ marriages to several prominent families, both Catholic and Protestant, including the Dillons of Roscommon, the Malones of Westmeath, the Binghams of Mayo and the Talbots of Dublin. At least one of his nephews, George Browne, was commissioned in the regiment John raised for James II in 1689. Two other nephews were prominent lawyers: Garrett Dillon in the reign of James II, and Edmund Malone from the 1680s until the 1720s. Both were intimately acquainted with Browne's financial affairs – Dillon became a business partner with his uncle in the 1680s, while Malone proved an important lobbyist for Browne and others in Dublin and London during the 1690s and beyond.

During the Williamite war Browne established himself as one of the most important Irish Jacobites and acted as a negotiator and signatory of the articles of Limerick. He used this position to secure a controversial article, which ensured that liability for his personal debts – at least £30,000, incurred before the outbreak of the war and owed mostly to Irish Protestants – was not to be borne by him alone, but shared with all Catholics who retained their land under the various articles of surrender. Nonetheless, the settlement of these debts eventually stripped Browne of almost his entire estate, a process that took more than two decades and was still not complete at the time of his death.

This chapter surveys Browne's rise to prominence as a landowner and lawyer, and his attempts to establish himself as an ironmaster. As with many of his ‘new interest’ contemporaries, Browne's training at the inns of court in London equipped him to explore opportunities for investment in land.

Type
Chapter
Information
Catholic Survival in Protestant Ireland, 1660–1711
Colonel John Browne, Landownership and the Articles of Limerick
, pp. 17 - 40
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Print publication year: 2018

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×