Item 1 - Bound manuscript in secretary hand containing transcripts of letters and petitions by Edmund Sexten the elder (1486-1555) and his grandson Edmund Sexten the younger (1595-1636).

Identity area

Reference code

IE 2135 P51/1/1

Title

Bound manuscript in secretary hand containing transcripts of letters and petitions by Edmund Sexten the elder (1486-1555) and his grandson Edmund Sexten the younger (1595-1636).

Date(s)

  • c. 1535-1641 (dates covered by contents) (Creation)

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Extent and medium

140 pp.

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Name of creator

(Title created 1803)

Biographical history

The Earls of Limerick are descended on their maternal side from Edmond Sexten (1486-1555), who held the office of Mayor of Limerick in 1535 and was the first mayor of native Irish extraction. Originally closely associated with the Earl of Kildare, Sexten changed allegiances and ingratiated himself to King Henry VIII. He was given custody of Derriknockane Castle and remained active on the Crown’s behalf, carrying out much of this work at his own expense and at times pleading financial hardship to the Crown. By way of compensation, Sexten was granted the dissolved priory of St. Mary’s in 1537. St Francis’s Abbey came into his possession in the same year. Bartholomew Striche, who succeeded Sexten as Mayor, made an attempt to overturn the grant of St Mary’s by alleging that the expenses which Sexten claimed had not been paid out of his own purse but at the expense of the city of Limerick, and that by implication the grant should therefore have fallen to the corporation. In 1538, Sexten was committed to Dublin Castle for high treason on grounds dating back to his time as Mayor but was later released and continued to enjoy the favour of the Crown. His grandson and namesake Edmond Sexten (1595-1636) was four times Mayor and five times High Sheriff of Limerick city. He, too, was engaged in a series of disputes with Limerick Corporation, primarily concerning the immunity of the lands of the two dissolved abbeys mentioned above, and whether Sexten alone, or the parish generally, was responsible for the upkeep of the church of St John the Baptist, Limerick, whose tithes were appropriate to St Mary’s. His only sister Susan Sexten married Edmond Pery of Limerick (1599-1655) and succeeded as sole heiress to the Sexten property. Her son, Colonel Edmond Pery married Dymphna Stackpole, a wealthy heiress, and when Colonel Perry died in 1721, his son the Reverend Stackpole Pery succeeded to the Sexten, Pery, and Stackpole fortunes. His second son, the Reverend William Cecil Pery (1721-1794) became Bishop of Limerick in 1784, and six years later was created Baron Glentworth. The peerage title was derived from his maternal great-grandfather Sir Drury Wray of Glentworth, Lincolnshire. Three of William Pery’s sisters married in to Limerick families of note: Dymphna to William Monsell of Tervoe, County Limerick; Lucy to Sir Henry Hartstonge of Bruff, County Limerick, Baronet and MP for that county; and Jane to Launcelot Hill of Limerick city. William Pery’s only surviving son, Edmund Henry Pery (1758-1844) was created Viscount Limerick in December 1800 and the Earl of Limerick in February 1803. He fell out with his eldest son and heir apparent because of the latter’s recklessness with money. In order to protect the family’s future, the 1st Earl made a will in which he vested the estate in a trust and made his heirs tenants for life. He was succeeded in the title by his grandson, William Henry Tennison, who did not mix much in society and who died from a sudden attack of bronchitis at the relatively early age of 56. He was twice married, and was succeeded by his son William Hale John Charles Pery from his first marriage to Susanna Sheaffe. In 1868, the 3rd Earl commissioned Edward William Godwin to design Dromore Castle in the Gothic Revival style near Pallaskenry, County Limerick as a country retreat. The building was completed in 1874. In the event, it was rarely used as a residence and eventually sold in 1939. Like his father, the 3rd Earl was twice married. With his first wife, Caroline Maria Gray, he had one son, William Henry Edmund de Vere Sheaffe, who succeeded him as the 4th Earl. He married May Imelda Josephine Irwin but the marriage ended in a separation in 1897. The couple’s only son Gerard, Viscount Glentworth was an RAF pilot and was killed in action near the end of the First World War in May 1918. The title then passed to the 4th Earl’s half-brother, Colonel Edmond Pery from his father’s second marriage to Isabella Colquhoun. His eldest son Patrick succeeded to the title as the 6th Earl in 1967. The current holder of the title is his son, Edmund Christopher, 7th Earl of Limerick. For a more detailed pedigree of the Earls of Limerick and associated families, please refer to P51/9/5-7.

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Scope and content

Paginated 17th-century manuscript in secretary hand, bound in 19th-century tooled leather covers and embossed on the spine Historical Notices of the Sexten Family & City of Limerick. Pages 1-15 contain an additional set of pagination, which runs from 47 to 61. The manuscript comprises primarily transcripts made by Edmond Sexten the younger (1595-1636) of letters and petitions (mostly in English, with some items in part or fully in Latin), which his grandfather Edmond Sexten the elder (1486-1555) had collected in order to defend himself against allegations that ‘my service to the kinge majestie is deemed... not to be such as did deserve the bountifull remuneration of his heighnes unto me’ and to prove that ‘my service was freely doone without receavinge wages or hire of the king majestie as others dothe’. In addition to letters and petitions, the transcribed items include a narrative of the costs and charges incurred by Sexton in the King’s service; a list of havens, rivers, creeks, places of importance, territories and lordships with their landlords ‘from Lupes head which is the further land a seaboord by north the river of Limerick as also within the said river’; a declaration of the proportions of Ireland; and King John’s, Queen Elizabeth’s and King James I’s charters to Limerick. To the abovementioned transcripts, Edmond Sexten the younger has added copies of letters and petitions relating to his own disputes with Limerick Corporation, primarily concerning the immunity of the lands of the dissolved abbeys of St. Mary’s and St Francis’s, which had come into his grandfather’s possession in 1537, and whether Sexten alone, or the parish generally, was responsible for the upkeep of the church of St John the Baptist, Limerick, whose tithes were appropriate to St Mary’s. In addition to transcripts of formal documents, the manuscript contains a list of books in the possession of Edmund Sexten the younger, grouped under the headings of 'Divinyty', 'History & other bookes of morallyty', 'Scoole bookes', and 'Lawe bookes'; a list of lord deputies and governors of Ireland, and of the mayors, bailiffs, and high sheriffs of Limerick from 1154 to 1636; and pedigrees of branches of the Sexten family descending from Denis Sexten and Simon Sexten, and of the Golde, Comyn, Mortagh, White, and Arthur families of Limerick. To the list of lord deputies mentioned above has been added a short account dated 22 May 1641 by Edmond Sexten’s son Christopher Sexten relating to the deaths and funerals of his father, daughter Jean (who died of smallpox), and eldest son Stephen, and the burning of his tenements in St Francis’s Abbey in Limerick, all of which events occurred in 1636.

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  • Béarla
  • Laidin

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    Written in secretary hand, which requires specialist knowledge to decipher.

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