Item 6 - Letter from William Monsell to his uncle, the Reverend Samuel Monsell

Identity area

Reference code

IE 2135 P29/1/6

Title

Letter from William Monsell to his uncle, the Reverend Samuel Monsell

Date(s)

  • 11 January 1814 (Creation)

Level of description

Item

Extent and medium

4 pp.

Context area

Name of creator

(c. 1660s-)

Biographical history

The Monsells, of French extraction, were a plantation family from Dorsetshire, England, who had settled in Tervoe, county Limerick by the 1660s. Many of the early members of the family were prosperous merchants and landowners, most notably Samuel Monsell (d. 1735), a shipping merchant whose business extended from Ireland to England, France, Holland and Spain. Of his several sons, the eldest, William (1705-1772) became a lawyer. His second marriage in 1751 to Dymphna Pery (d. 1774), sister of Edmond Sexton Pery, MP and three-time Speaker of the Irish House of Commons, gave the Monsells not only a distinguished pedigree but considerable political influence. Their son, Colonel William Thomas Monsell (1754-1836), married Hannah Strettell of Dublin, whose father Amos Strettell was director of the Bank of Ireland. Their younger son, Thomas, became Archdeacon of Derry and was father to the noted hymnologist John Samuel Bewley Monsell and to the celebrated botanical artist Diana Conyngham Ellis née Monsell. Colonel Monsell’s elder son, William, was grandfather to and namesake of the distinguished politician William Monsell (1812-1894). His first wife, Anna Maria Wyndham Quin (1814-1855), whom he married in 1836, was daughter of the second Earl of Dunraven of Adare Manor, county Limerick, then one of the wealthiest men in Ireland. William Monsell was created 1st Baron Emly of Tervoe in 1874. The title became extinct on the death of his only surviving son, Thomas William Gaston Monsell (1858-1932), from his second marriage to Berthe de Montigny Boulainvilliers (d. 1890).

Archival history

Immediate source of acquisition or transfer

Content and structure area

Scope and content

Letter from William Monsell (1772-1837), Windsor Castle, to his uncle, the Reverend Samuel Monsell, ‘to be left until called for Pos=offce [sic] Edinburgh Scotland’. William hopes to have the pleasure of his uncle’s company in Windsor. He gives a detailed description of apartments taken in the Horseshoe Cloisters within Windsor Castle by Mrs Stock, presumably the widow of Bishop Joseph Stock who had died in August 1813, for William notes that ‘she is pitied by everyone she appears in so much grief’.

Appraisal, destruction and scheduling

Accruals

System of arrangement

Conditions of access and use area

Conditions governing access

Conditions governing reproduction

Language of material

  • Béarla

Script of material

    Language and script notes

    Physical characteristics and technical requirements

    Finding aids

    Allied materials area

    Existence and location of originals

    Existence and location of copies

    Related units of description

    Related descriptions

    Notes area

    Alternative identifier(s)

    Access points

    Subject access points

    Place access points

    Name access points

    Genre access points

    Description control area

    Description identifier

    Rules and/or conventions used

    Status

    Level of detail

    Language(s)

      Script(s)

        Sources

        Accession area