Captain Hugh Massey, I

Captain Hugh Massy (Hugh I) In 1641 Catholic landowners in Ireland rebelled against strictures imposed on them by the English Crown. Bitter fighting ensued and many atrocities were committed, particularly against the Protestant population. Hugh Massy was a cavalry officer with a force sent by King Charles I to crush the rebellion in Ireland. Although he was almost certainly one of the Cheshire Masseys, exhaustive work by many researchers has failed to definitively link him with any particular branch of that family. The clues to his family origin are conflicting. Hugh I adopted the coat of arms of the Sale Masseys, but there is no record of him in their genealogy. The only Massey family of that period to make consistent use of the name Hugh was that of Edgerley, who were descended from the Masseys of Coddington. Hugh I was a captain of cavalry when he first came to Ireland. He returned to England after the 1641 expedition and, following the outbreak of civil war in England in 1642, joined the forces of the Parliamentarians against Charles I. In 1644 Arundel Castle was captured by Parliamentary forces and Hugh I was appointed Constable of Arundel. In 1647 he was back in Ireland as part of an army commanded by Colonel Michael Jones that left Dublin on August 8th to relieve the town of Trim, which was being besieged by Catholic Confederates under Thomas Preston. Following the execution of Charles I on January 30th 1649, Oliver Cromwell was appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and on August 15th 1649 landed at the mouth of the River Liffey near Dublin with a large and well-equipped army of 8,000 infantry, 3,000 light cavalry and 1,200 dragoons to suppress the Irish rebellion. Hugh I served with the Cromwellian forces as a captain in the First Troop of Horse, in a regiment commanded by Col. Chidley-Coote, and campaigned mainly in Limerick and Tipperary. The Irish rebel forces were led by the royalist Earl of Ormonde and Lord Inchiquin, Protestant landowners based in Leinster and Munster respectively. In the North, the Catholic Owen Roe O’Neill, nephew of Hugh O’Neill the exiled Earl of Tyrone, returned from the SpanishNetherlands to lead the rebel forces in Ulster. O’Neill hoped to take advantage of the rebellion to regain his family’s landholdings in Ulster. Ormonde and Inchiquin were largely ineffective military leaders, losing a succession of major encounters against Parliamentary forces. O’Neill however was a brilliant military strategist, a fact openly acknowledged by Cromwell, who treated O’Neill’s forces with great caution. The sudden death of Owen Roe O’Neill in November 1649 removed the Confederation’s most effective military leader. Over the following two years Cromwell’s armies ruthlessly suppressed supporters of the Confederation. Ormonde, Inchiquin and Owen Roe’s nephew Daniel fled Ireland in December 1650. Ormonde and Inchiquin had their lands returned 12 years later upon the restoration of the English monarchy. The O’Neills did not have their lands returned. By the end of 1652 the rebellion was effectively crushed. Over 40,000 Irish rebel soldiers and their families were transported as slaves to sugar plantations in the West Indies and tobacco plantations in Virginia. Few ever returned. In 1653 a total of 20 million acres of land was confiscated and apportioned out among new Protestant owners in repayment for services rendered during the military campaign. Under an Act of the English Parliament the value of land for sale to military campaigners in Ireland was set at £200 per thousand acres in Ulster, £300 in Connaught, £450 in Munster and £600 in Leinster. Acreage was determined by the Irish measure of 7,231 sq. yards as against the English measure of 4,840 sq. yards. The cost of land acquisition was offset against wage arrears, which stood at £1,550,000 at the end of the campaign. Afurther Act of Parliament enabled purchasers to double their land allocation for an extra quarter of the price. The Cromwellian land settlements established the Protestant Ascendancy as the predominant ruling class in Ireland for the next 250 years. In 1659, following the successful outcome of the Cromwellian campaign in Ireland, Captain Hugh Massy (Hugh I) acquired landholdings totalling around 1,800 Irish acres at three locations near Galbally in Co. Limerick in lieu of military wage arrears. These landholdings previously belongedto John Cantwell, Henry Wall and John Burgett, Catholic landowners and descendants of Norman settlers who had been granted their lands by the Crown in the 13th century. Part of the landholdings acquired from John Cantwell comprised 263 acres at Duntrileague, Co. Limerick. The name Duntrileague comes from the Gaelic Dún Trí Liag , the Fort of Three Pillar Stones, a nearby megalithic tomb. Captain Massy established his demesne at Duntrileague, where he built a residence. He married Margaret Percy, by whom he had a son, Hugh, and a daughter, Elizabeth. He married a second wife, by whom he had a second son Samuel, and two daughters, Alice and Mary. He subsequently married a third, fourth and fifth time, but had no further children. Hugh I probably died about 1691. Earlier that year he had transferred ownership of Duntrileague to his eldest son, Hugh II. An early family history, Pedigree of Lord Massy, states that the Deed of Settlement for the transfer from father to son was drawn up in a Limerick inn and that “Hugh, the elder, knew that his time was but short.”

Hugh Massy married Margaret Percy.
He fought in the 1641 Uprising in Ireland in 1641, which he helped to put down.
Child of Hugh Massy and Margaret Percy

1. Hugh Massy+
   

The Peerage

The Massys, an English family of Norman descent, arrived in Ireland in 1641 in the person of one General Hugh Massy. He came over from England to fight the Irish Rebels who had taken up arms that year. Hugh Massy claimed descent from Hamo De Massy, a Companion-In-Arms of William the Conqueror. After the Rebellion was finally crushed, General Massy acquired about 1,800 acres in Co. Limerick during the Cromwellian Plantation. He settled at Duntryleague near Galbally in East Limerick, and prospered. He was married five times, and on his death was succeeded by his son and heir, Hugh Massy.

"The Life and Times of Eyre Massy, First Baron Clarina of Elm Park (1719-1804)" by Matthew Potter. The Old Limerick Journal, 20-23.

http://source.southdublinlibraries.ie/bitstream/10599/4924/2/If%20T...