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The Singleton family in Quin were originally from Lancashire in England.  They first came to Ballygireen, Newmarket-on-Fergus in the 17th century where John Singleton resided with his wife, Jane Bruffe and their son, John and two daughters, Sarah, and Anne.

Their daughter, Sarah Singleton married Richard Copley, a tobacconist in Boston, Massachusetts.Interestingly, Richard Copley may have also had County Clare connections.  An Anthony Copley was renting lands from Richard Lord Clive as noted in an account book dated 1761.[0]  Those lands were located in the civil parish of St. Patrick’s which is the Roman Catholic parish of Parteen. Sarah Singleton Copley and her husband Richard settled in Boston where they ran a tobacco shop in the city.  Richard was in poor health for several years and died shortly after the birth of their son, John Singleton Copley. 

Sarah later married Henry Pelham, a portrait artist, and teacher.  It was Pelham who most likely mentored John’s artistic abilities and by the time that he was a young adult, he was a well-established portrait artist who had painted for many of New England’s wealthiest families.

John Singleton Copley left Boston in the early 1800s and made his home in England dying there in 1815 in London.

There is a plaque to his memory in Boston on Beacon Street the site of the Somerset Club.

John and Jane Bruffe Singleton’s only son John married Marcella Dalton of Deer Park. This couple resided at Quinville Abbey, and they had several sons: John and Edward Dalton as well as several daughters: Jane and Mary. Edward had become the heir to Quinville on the death of his father, John. He and his wife, Mary Brady resided in Quinville until his death in 1814 when his son, John became the heir to Quinville. John married Isabella Carew Creagh in 1819 and they had the following children: Michael, John, Edward Newport, Sarah, Mary, Susan, Isabella, and Marcella.

It was John Singleton who was a Justice of the Peace (JP) and High Sheriff of County Clare. He was also a large landlord with estates not only in Quin but also in West Clare. He had commissioned the renovation of Quinville House in 1828 and the house was notable for the Elizabethan style. The Singleton family would continue to reside in this house until the early 1900s.

John’s wife, Isabella Carew was an heiress of the Creagh family of County Cork.  The Creaghs were also connected to the Creaghs of Dangan.

It was John Singleton Junior’s second son, John who became the heir to Quinville on his death.  John’s wife, Isabella Carew died in 1861 after a fall from a horse resulting in serious injuries.  Her death was noted in the Limerick Chronicle as follows:

On Monday last, from the effects of a severe fracture of the leg to the great affliction of her attached husband and family, Isabella, wife of John Singleton of Quinville Abbey, County Clare[1]. 

The Singletons had previously suffered the loss of their youngest daughter Marcella in 1857.

Marcella Elizabeth Singleton died very tragically in a house fire when her dressing gown caught fire while she was preparing breakfast for her brother before he headed off for a day of shooting.  The accident and her death were widely reported in the local papers.

Transcribed from the Limerick Chronicle on 21 March 1857:

Yesterday, Marcella, youngest daughter of John Singleton, Esq. of Quinville Abbey, County Clare –much regretted[2]. 

The Limerick Chronicle further published a death notice of Marcella in its edition several days later:

“The Death of an amiable lady, whose demise we recorded in our last, was caused by an accidental ignition of her clothes while preparing breakfast for her brother to go out hunting.”[3]

In the Limerick Chronicle edition of 28 March 1857, her death was noted as follows:

 

In the Bloom of Youth, to the deep regret of her fondly attached parents and friends, Marcella Elizabeth, youngest daughter of John Singleton, Esq., of Quinville Abbey, County Clare.  “Her end was peace, and she gently resigned her spirit trusting alone in the finished work of her Divine Redeemer.”[4]

In 1867, John Singleton Jr married a second time to Emma Woodforde, a widow.

John Singleton Jr died in 1877 and his death was noted in the Clare Journal:

On the 5th Instant at Quinville Abbey, John Singleton, Esq. in his 86th year, beloved and revered by all who know him.[5]

John’s second son, John inherited his father’s estate and he resided in Quinville until his death in 1880 at the young age of 54.  His death notice was published as follows:

“John Singleton of Quinville Abbey, Co. Clare, (Lieut. Col. R.A., Col. In the Army, and retired Lieut-Gen. born 4 April 1826; m. 4 Jan. 1850 Catherine Marianne, eldest daughter of Major Gen. Barry, R.E. Major Gen. Singleton served in the Eastern campaign 1854-5; at the Alma, Balakavia, Inkerman, the siege and fall of Sebastopol, and in India in 1858, commanding the artillery in the repulse of the Sepoys at Mooltan, during the Mutiny.  He had medals and claps, the Order of Medjidie, the Legion of Honour, &c. and was thanked by Lord Raglan for his served 26 Oct. 1854.  He d.s.p. Aug. 1880 and was succeeded by his brother Edward Newport Singleton, late of Quinville Abbey.”[6]

John Singleton and his wife Catherine did not have any children during their marriage so Quinville Abbey was later inherited by his younger brother, Edward Newport Singleton.  Edward was the third son of John Singleton Junior, and he was married to Annie May Richardson.  This couple had a number of children, but the male children diedat young ages, and only the females reached adulthood.  Edward Newport Singleton died on 20 April 1896, and he was buried in Kilnasoolagh Church in the Singleton vault which is located at the back of the church building.[7]  Quinville Abbey later came into the possession of James Butler-Ievers who resided there in the 1901 and the 1911 Censuses with his wife,Isabella, and their household.[8]

Jane Halloran Ryan

February 2022

[0]Thomas Johnson Westropp, ‘Property of Robert Lord Clive in County Clare’ in Royal Society of Antiquaries, vol 13, 5th series, pp. 76-7.

[1]Limerick Chronicle, 5 April 1861. 

[2]Limerick Chronicle, 21 March 1857.

[3]Limerick Chronicle, 25 March 1857. 

[4]Limerick Chronicle 28 March 1857. 

[5]Clare Journal 6 August 1877. 

[6]Burke’s Landed Gentry, (1899) p. 412

[7]Edwin R. Bailey, Kilnasoolagh:Newmarket-on-Fergus —   An appreciation (November 1992), p. 41. 

[8]Census of Ireland, 1901.  www.nationalarchives.ie

What did the Anglo Normans ever do for us?

We are well aware of the impact of the Anglo-Norman invasion on our history, the undermining of Gaelic society and the replacement of our native structures. Poor old Diarmuid MacMurrough takes a lot of blame for all of this, despite the fact that Henry II in England had already sought and had been given approval by Pope Adrian to invade and civilise us. Henry was just waiting to finish his war in France before sorting us out!

Anyway, in they came, conquered, settled, married and eventually becoming more Irish than even ourselves, ‘níos gaelaí ná na Gaeil féin’! But besides building towns and castles, robbing our women (and probably taking our jobs!), what did the Anglo-Normans do for us – if anything?

Well, for one, they gave us a whole new suite of names, both forename and surname, to choose from.

The Norman influence on Irish surnames

Following the invasion of 1169, a large number of Anglo-French first and last names entered into Ireland. Many, such as Power, Browne, Fleming, Joyce, Burke, Barry, Costello, Nagle, Nugent, D’arcy, Roche and Walsh/Welsh/Wallace, are nowadays considered Irish and are commonly found in Clare. So, too, are those with the Fitz prefix such as Fitzmaurice, Fitzgerald, Fitzgibbon and Fitzpatrick which most people would regard as Irish as the shamrock. Fitz, meaning ‘son of’, can be considered the Norman version of Mac (it derives from the Latin/French ‘fils de’, meaning ‘son of’). Burke came from de Burgh, Roche from de Roiste, Power from de Paor.

In 1366, a law was passed that “Every Englishman do use the English language, and be named by an English name, leaving off entirely the manner of naming used by the Irish.” This was introduced to dissuade the settlers from adopting Celtic prefixes or forms of surname. It didn’t have much affect as many settler families added Mac or ‘O’ and Norman names evolved into an Irish form (eg McHenry, McArthur).

In 1465 a law was passed enacting “that every Irishman that dwells betwixt or amongst Englishmen in the County of Dublin, Myeth, Vriell, and Kildare … shall take to him an English Surname of one town, as Sutton, Chester, Trym, Skryne, Corke, Kinsale; or colour, as white, blacke, browne; or arte or science, as smith or carpenter; or office, as cooke, butler ….”

Many of the trades of the early medieval period such as Archer, Butler, Cooper, Carpenter, Draper, Skinner, Tanner found their way into our surnames. Other introductions from this period came from the mercenary soldiers who accompanied the Norman invasion: Walsh (meaning Welsh), Joyce and Fleming (from Flemish mercenaries) are examples.

Incidentally, the Normans usually took their surnames from the place of their family origins. So, D’arcy originates in Arcy in Normandy. De Clare originates in Clare in Suffolk where the Anglo-Norman family were based. While De indicated their place of origin, Le was used to describe them, eg Le Poer meant ‘a poor person’.

De Burgh – Burke – from a placename in Suffolk, France

Le Botilier – Butler – Occupation bottle steward

De Barra – Barry – from an estate in Wales

Le Waleys – Walsh – the Welshmen

De Angulo – Costello/Nangle – from Nangle Pembrokeshire

What of their influence on forenames?

 Many of the Normans forenames introduced here were of a biblical or European saintly origin.

 In 1922, Reverend Patrick Woulfe wrote extensively on the topic of Irish name origins as follows:

In the same manner Norman and English names became current in Irish families during the thirteenth and subsequent centuries. These have now almost completely supplanted the old Gaelic names. The names borne by the Normans and by them introduced into Ireland, were of three kinds :

 (1) names of Scandinavian origin which their ancestors had carried with them to Normandy ;

(2) names of Germanic origin which the Frankish conquerors had brought across the Rhine and which had ousted the old Celtic and Latin names from France ; and

(3) Biblical names and Latin and Greek names of saints,, which the Normans began to adopt about the beginning of the eleventh century.

Together with these came in a few Celtic names from Brittany, a small number of Anglo-Saxon names, some Danish and Norse names from England, and one or two British or Welsh names. These were nearly all very rare and most of them soon died out. Of the Anglo-Saxon names, only two, Edmund and Edward, survived. Alfred has been revived in recent times. At the period of the Invasion, Frankish names were by far the most popular among the Normans, but Biblical and saintly names were coming rapidly into favour.

The following is a list, in order of frequency, of the more common names borne by the early Anglo- Norman invaders, the Biblical and saintly names of Latin and Greek origin being printed in italics :

William, Robert, Richard, John, Walter, Roger, Ralph, Adam, Hugh, Henry, Thomas, Nicholas, Gilbert, Geoffrey, Elias, Peter (Piers), Osbert, Reginald, Jordan, Simon, Alan, Stephen, Philip, David, Arnold, Alexander, Laurence, Baldwin, Herbert, Martin, Maurice, Godfrey, Andrew, Alfred, James, Samson, Turstein, Warin, Ailward, Daniel, Edward, Gregory, Bernard, Benedict, Hamon, Matthias, Michael, Gerard, Gervase, Lambert, Wilkin, Patrick, Edmund, Edwin, Hubert, Ivor, Joseph, Oliver, Mark.

 The following in alphabetical order were rare :

 Abraham, Adelard, Ailmer, Antony, Augustine, Brian, Clement, Constantine, Estmund, Eustace, Everard, Gocelin, Isaac, Leonard, Luke, Matthew, Miles, Milo, Odo, Osbern, Osmund, Pagan, Ponce, Randulf, Redmund, Rodulf, Silvester, Turold, Ulf, Vincent.

 The following names only came in, or at least became popular, at a later period :

Bartholomew, Christopher, Francis, Gerald, George, Paul, Roland, Theobald.

 Women’s names among the Normans were nearly all of the Biblical or saintly class:

 Agnes, Alice, Amelina, Anastasia, Annabella, Catherine, Cecily, Christina, Dorothy, Egidia, Eleanor, Evelyn, Frances, Honora, Isabella, Johanna, Matilda, Margaret, Susanna.

 The name Mary does not seem to have come into use in Ireland before the end of the16th century. Brigid only began to be used about the same period.

 

Extracted from ‘Sloinnte Gaedheal is Gall’, Patrick Woulfe 1922

Out with the old, in with the new

The Anglo-Normans also brought with them new animal species such as the rabbit and fallow deer, new foods such as wheat, orchard fruits, mutton and farming practices such as hay-making. They introduced us to continental European religious saints and practices of the Roman Church. European religious orders soon followed such as the Franciscans, Augustinians, Cistercians, Dominicans etc. These replaced the structures of the native Irish Christian Church.

Up to then, the Irish natives did not adopt the name of saints as they considered this to be placing themselves on a par with the saint. Such naming convention was reserved for those of higher status in the monasteries. This was circumvented by use of the prefix Maol or Giolla meaning follower or servant. The Normans changed all of that and it was now acceptable to be called Peter, James, Michael, John, Mary, Brigid or Margaret.

Very few of us to this day do not have either a forename or surname that is not of Norman origin. Eventually, arising from the Gaelic Revival in the late 19th century, new Irish language versions of these forenames appeared such as Séan, Seamus, Peadar, Máire, Bríd, Mícheál, Cathal and many more appeared.

The Irish Church did not condemn the practice of slave-trading by the Irish until the invasion by the Anglo-Normans and the encroachment of the Roman Church. The story of Patrick (Patricius, son of a Roman administrator), which was introduced here after the Norman conquest, presents the native Irish as uncivilised pagan slavers who needed to be brought to heel. So the Normans inadvertently gave us our native saint and a forename for a good chunk of our population for generations following.

Out with the new, in with the old

Children are rarely given these European saint names today. Authentic Gaelic forenames are much more popular. We are nevertheless, unlikely to see the demise of the Anglo-Normans surnames that were introduced here. But all of us Mikes, Jimmies, Johnnys, Paddys, Kittys, Cathys, Maggies and Bridies can thank the Normans for what they brought us!