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Paginated manuscript, with an index, bound in tooled leather covers and embossed on the front cover Abstracts & Copys of Records, Relative to the Sexton, Casey, & Stackpole Familys. The manuscript comprises abstracts and copies of seventeen documents relating to the Sexten family; eight relating to the Casey family; and two to the Stackpole family. The documents relating to the Sexten family include a memorandum of a decree in favour of George Sexten in a dispute against James Roche concerning a title and possession of a store house (17 October 1531); grant to Edmond Sexten to be Chief Sewer of County Dublin (2 September 1532; in Latin); warrant to pass a grant of the monastery of St Mary’s House in Limerick to Edmund Sexten (24 September 1537); grant to Edmond Sexten of the fee farm of Limerick, with a release of all arrears then owing (1 August 1542; in Latin); free pardon to Edmond Sexten of all offences committed by him (14 December 1545); certificate by the Sheriff of County Limerick of Edmond Sexten having entered into security for his good behaviour (14 December 1545); grant of the office of Gauger and Searcher of Limerick to Humfry Sexten (10 June 1548); a protection to Humfry Sexten (23 April 1555; in Latin); grant to William Sidney of the custody and wardship of Stephen Sexten, brother and heir of Nicholas Sexten deceased (13 September 1558); grant to Edmond Sexten (son of Stephen Sexten) of the livery of his estate and lands (1 June 1559; in Latin); letter of King James I of England on behalf of Edmund Sexten’s favour (7 February 1608/9); grant to Edmond Sexten, his heirs and assigns for ever of several lands in the County and City of Limerick (10 July 1609/10; in Latin); abstract of an inquest held by Edmond Sexten in 1614 which proves that he was that year High Sheriff of County Limerick; abstract of letters patent showing that the wardship of John Gold, son and heir of Thomas Gold, deceased, was granted to Edmond Sexten (4 February 1623/4); inquisition taken at St Francis’s Abbey in County Limerick following the death of Edmond Sexten (22 January 1638; in Latin); inquisition (for which see P51/1/1/6) taken at the Tholsel of Limerick City in 1639 after the deaths of Edmond Sexten and his son Nicholas (9 October 1639; in Latin and English); and an inquisition taken at St Francis’s Abbey in County Limerick in 1639 after the deaths of Edmond Sexten and his son Nicholas (9 October 1639; in Latin and English). The documents relating to the Casey family include abstracts of letters patent creating William Casey Bishop of Limerick (23 October 1551); letters patent granting the wardship of Thomas Thornton, son and heir of Sir George Thornton Provost Marshal of Munster to James Casey and his assigns (5 June 1605); letters patent granting a pardon of alienation and mesne rates of lands in County Cork to James Casey and Ulick Roche (8 March 1629); letters patent granting special livery to Thomas Casey (18 November 1633); inquisition taken at Kilmallock after the death of Thomas Casey of Rathcannon, incorporating a family settlement made by Thomas Casey, his will, and a variety of other matters (12 March 1637; partly in Latin); inquisition taken at Newcastle, County Limerick after the death of Thomas Casey (10 July 1638; in Latin); bill filed in chancery by the Rev Stacpole Pery and other against Lord Vere Bertie and others relative to the Casey estate and family (25 January 1735); and Lord Bertie’s answer to the same bill (15 February 1737). The documents relating to the Stackpole family include a grant to Bartholomew Stacpole of Stacpole Court and several other lands in County Clare with liberty of keeping annual fairs (17 July 1676); and a deed of feoffment by way of family settlement made by Bartholomew Stacpole (3 November 1685).

This series contains material pertaining to the Sexten family, maternal ancestors of the Earls of Limerick.

The main portion of this collection consists of wills, accounts, correspondence and statements from the mid- to late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries relating to the family’s financial affairs, mostly arising from the will of the 1st Earl of Limerick and the dramatic reduction in rents at the turn of the century, which necessitated the sale of holdings through the Land Commission Court in the early 1900s. There is a small but interesting series of leases of property in Limerick City (P51/3/1/1-3 and P51/4/1-2) and a comprehensive set of documents (P51/3/2/1-28) relating to a dispute over title to St George’s Church at No. 1 Mallow Street, Limerick, which was demolished to make way to the Provincial Bank of Ireland, designed by James and George Richard Pain (for a ground plan of the bank by the Pain brothers, see P51/3/2/11).

While much of the early material relating to the Earls of Limerick and their antecedents is deposited in the National Library of Ireland, some interesting early documents can also be found in this collection. Of particular note is a compilation of manuscript transcripts of letters and petitions (P51/1/1) by Edmond Sexten the elder (1486-1555) and his grandson Edmond Sexten the younger (1595-1636) concerning among other things their disputes with Limerick Corporation. The document is written in secretary hand, but a more easily legible version can be found in P51/1/2. Also worth noting is a compilation of abstracts and copies of early deeds relating to the Sexton, Casey and Stackpole families (P51/1/3). A wonderful example of the emergence of the Age of Enlightenment can be found in P51/2/1 in the shape of a commonplace book, in which Colonel Edmund Pery kept notes between 1671 and 1681 on weights and measures, foreign coins, chronology, geography, astronomy, orthography, pronunciation and usage of English, significance of colours, instructions concerning the keep of horses, recipes for ink, boot polish etc., gardening activities and meteorological predictions.

A shortcoming of this collection is its limited scope. There are no rent rolls, no estate correspondence and no personal correspondence of family members. The building of Dromore Castle remains unrecorded, except for a scrap book (P51/5/4/1) compiled in 1868-1869 to contain sketches by the architect Edward William Godwin and rare photographs of Dromore Castle taken at various stages of its construction and a sketch of fireplace tiles by Godwin (P51/5/4/2). The only item of personal nature in the collection is an album of photographs, sketches, and signatures collected by May, Countess of Limerick during house parties (P51/6/3/2/2).

It should be noted here that the material deposited in the National Library of Ireland dates primarily from 1371 to 1806. A significant gap of the nineteenth-century material therefore exists, both in terms of estate and personal documentation.

Paginated manuscript, with an un-paginated table of contents, bound in tooled leather covers and embossed on the spine Historical Notices of the Sexten Family & City of Limerick. The contents constitute a copy in copperplate script of P51/1/1, lacking the pedigrees.

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.

List of six generations of Bishop William Casey’s direct descendants and their spouses. Originally inserted between the pages of P51/1/3.

List of wardships, leases, licences and offices granted to George Sexten between 1605/6 and 1623. A comment at the bottom of the page notes that ‘being doubtful that the above named George Sexten was of the family of Edmond Sexten of Limerick this sheet was omitted to be bound in the collection relative to the said Edmond.’ Originally inserted between the pages of P51/1/3.

Manuscript bound in vellum, written in secretary hand and by the same hand as P51/1/1, so presumably Edmond Sexten the younger (1594-1636). The manuscript is in two parts. The first part, dated 1629, is paginated from 1 to 504 and comprises lines copied from the Bible, with the relevant book, chapter, and verse provided at the start of each line. The copied texts are arranged under various headings, such as 'Abraham & Sarah', 'Bees', 'Ezra', 'Fraillty', 'Fraude', 'Free Will', 'Hezekiel', 'pride', 'purgatory', 'Sabath', 'Titus', 'Visitations' and 'Youth'. The headings appear in no particular order in the main body of the text but have been collated into an alphabetical index of six un-paginated pages at the start of the book. The second part, dated 1627, is paginated from 1 to 287 and is similar in content to the first part. An index for the headings has been begun at the end of the book, but only extends to entries for the letter A.

Inquisition bound in vellum concerning the lands of Edmond Sexten, who died 10 March 1636/37, acknowledging that he died possessed in fee tail of the site of the dissolved monastery of Blessed Virgin Mary and St Edward (also called Holy Cross), and various lands in Limerick city, of which the inquisition gives details. The ownership passed to his eldest son Nicholas, who died 1 January 1637/38. The inquisition further acknowledges that the lands now belong to Christopher Sexten, Edmond Sexten’s second son. For an abstract of this document, see P51/1/3.

This collection contains material created and generated by the Armstrong and Kemmis families during their ownership of Moyaliffe House, county Tipperary, and includes both administrative records and personal documents. Seventeenth-century material is scarce and limited in the main to leases of small pockets of land in counties Tipperary and Limerick. A more unusual item from this period is the satirical manuscript poem On the Bill of Conformity (P6/2137), attributed to Henry Hall, one of only sixteen known copies in the world. Eighteenth-century administrative records are mainly of financial and legal nature and arise from the badly managed affairs of William Armstrong (1704-1768), which affected his brother, the Reverend John Armstrong, who succeeded to the estate. Of personal items, the collection of early eighteenth-century sermons (P6/375-P6/427) attributed to the Reverend Edward Armstrong, the Reverend John Armstrong and others is of particular interest.

The nineteenth-century administrative material relates predominantly to the management of the Moyaliffe estate, and the succession to and management and eventual disposal of the family’s estates in Mayo and Sligo. There are also some clerical records of interest, most notably material relating to tithe wars of the 1830s (P6/758-P6/766 and P6/789-P6/813), and the state of dilapidation of the Mansion House of the See of Tuam discovered after the death, in 1819, of the Most Reverend Honourable William Beresford, first Baron Decies, Archbishop of Tuam, whose daughter Catherine was married to the Reverend Willam Carew Armstrong (1791-1847) (P6/850-P6/860).

By far the most voluminous, and perhaps the most interesting, part of the collection is that relating to the twentieth century. The administrative records in this section are in the main concerned with the management not only of Moyaliffe House but also of Ballinacor, county Wicklow, home of Captain William Daryl Olphert Kemmis. There is also a large quantity of material relating to Moyaliffe Stud (P6/1547-P6/1595), and to the problem of succession to the Moyaliffe and Ballinacor estates following Captain Kemmis’s death without issue in 1965 (P6/1812-P6/1834). On the personal side, the extensive correspondence of Rosalie Armstrong and her daughter Jess provide a unique insight into the genteel Anglo-Irish lifestyle and the irrevocable changes wrought upon it by the onset of the First World War. Of unique significance are the letters of Captain Kemmis to his father (P6/1475-P6/1479), and the letters and diaries of Captain William Maurice (‘Pat’) Armstrong written during the First World War (P6/1209-P6/1212 and P6/1414-P6/1418), providing first-hand accounts of events as they unfolded in the various theatres of war.

The twentieth-century material was roughly arranged by Jess Kemmis, who also appears to have destroyed some of it for personal reasons. Items thus lost included letters written by her niece, Bettyne Spencer (née Everard), to justify her actions during the Moyaliffe House dispute (for which see P6/1821-P6/1831). The letters were destroyed by Mrs Kemmis because she felt her niece’s views to be wrong. Also missing are Jess Kemmis’s diaries for the years 1955-1982 which she is known to have kept assiduously with the view to their permanent preservation within the family papers.

Jess Kemmis provided many explanatory notes and dates relating to the Armstrong Papers and the people and events to which they relate. These notes, which can be found scattered throughout the collection, should be treated with due caution as most, while well-intentioned and often helpful, can be misleading or inaccurate, written as they were in advanced old age.