Analysis of data relating to Roger Jones of Sligo
The existing documentation does not enable us to verify that Roger Parke was brother-in-law to Roger Jones, Constable of Sligo. The deed of 1635 does, however, tell us that Robert Parke of Newtown was the nephew of a Sir Roger Jones. This can only mean that this Roger Jones had a sister who married Robert Parke’s father.
The genealogy of Roger Jones, later knighted and later Viscount Ranelagh, shows two sisters, neither of whom married Roger Parke, and no brother.
There was a Sir Roger Jones who died in 1635 and was buried in St John’s Church. Sir Roger Jones (Viscount Ranelagh) was, according to ‘Cracroft’s Peerage’, killed in 1643.
Other sources tell us that Roger Jones was an ex-lieutenant in the Elizabethan army, from Denbigh in Wales; from Derbyshire (mistaken for Denbigh?); from Lancashire.
Either the early commentators were just repeating family anecdotes (which may have been partly fact and partly fiction) without any proper research or there were several Roger Jones in Sligo at the beginning of the 17th Century. Given the frequency with which the surname Jones appears in the British Isles, this is a possibility.
It is, however, unlikely that there was more than one Sir Roger Jones at that time.
Viscount Ranelagh first married Frances Purdon, with whom he had sons Arthur and Thomas and two daughters, Margaret and Mary. He had a daughter Elizabeth by a second wife Catherine Longueville).
Two deeds shed some light on the Sir Roger Jones in Sligo:
A deed from 1635 (p. 15-16 of ”Deeds etc.” ) which tells us that Robert Parke is Sir Roger Jones’ nephew also tells us that Thomas Jones is his supposed (i.e. illegitimate)son. The deed also mentions three Smith recipients (Richard, Roger and William). It also suggests that his wife’s father was Roger Smyth of Crackmarsh, County Stafford.
A deed from 1638 -(PAGE 139, VOL. 6, KING CHARLES I, 1648 (15-17) —— William Smyth and Roger Smyth received lands in the Barony of Rosclogher and Drumahaire, Co. Leitrim possessed by MARY JONES, alias SMYTH, RELICK of Sir Roger Jones of Sligo. Other townlands, including LOUGHMORANE, and lands in CARRIGALLEN, Co. LEITRIM, were included. This DEED is dated 18 February 1638). So, the relict/widow of the Sir Roger Jones of Jones’ castle is purported to have been Mary Smyth and the two children Thomas and Mary were his natural (i.e. illegitimate) children.
Three questions arise as a conclusion to this section:
- There is no evidence (other than oral history from later Parke descendants) that a sister of Sir Roger Jones married Roger Parke, yet a Robert Parke was the nephew of Sir Roger Jones. Is this a loose interpretation of the term “nephew”? Finding an official record of marriage between a Parke and a Jones in the years 1580 – 1610 is an important priority for research.
- Is it possible that the Sir Roger Jones, later to become 1st Viscount Ranelagh,who appears to have had children Arthur, Thomas, Margaret and Mary by Frances Moore (and a child, Elizabeth, to his second wife Catherine Longueville) also had at least one other ‘wife’ Mary Smyth? If so, why has this not been documented in “Cracroft’s Peerage”? Is the latter source just repeating ‘wishful thinking’ or were Common-Law and bigamous marriages accepted in those years?
- -Were there two Sir Roger Jones in Ireland during this period and were they both associated with Sligo?
Jones’ Castle
Jones’ Castle was an urban tower-house, the site of which is considered to be at the corner of Telling Street and Abbey Street in Sligo. It was built in the 1590s by Sir Roger and came under siege during the Rebellion of 1641 when it was occupied by Lady Mary Jones. Until the mid-1700s the land east of Jones’ Castle was rural in nature, occupied by garden plots, orchards and grazing land. In 1714 a deed of sale for the castle describes the property as including ‘barns, stables, dovehouses, malt-houses, haggard, gardens [and] orchards’. In the 1750s the castle appears on a sketch map as belonging to Richard Gethin near the corner of Old Market Street (now Teeling Street) and Abbey Street, probably not far from the modern ACC Bank.
Both the Jones and Parke families also had extensive lands in Leitrim and, it is believed, collaborated in the building of Parkes Castle at Newtowne on the shores of Lough Gill.
Leitrim was established in 1583 when Lord Deputy Sir John Perot marked out its boundaries. The county formed part of the old Gaelic kingdom of Breffni, which was ruled by the O’Rourkes.
Many of the Irish landholders were disenfranchised in the early 1600s.
Early in this century, land in the Ulster area had become available for distribution by the Crown as a result of defeat of the Irish Nobles. The battle of Kinsale was lost on December 24th 1601. Following this, O’Sullivan Beare, head of the Irish forces sheltered in Cork. In 1602, O’Sullivan Beare and his followers were declared outlaws and he decided to retreat to Leitrim (village) to try and link up with his northern allies. With a thousand followers he left Glengarriff on December 31st 1602. For the entire journey, the fugitive group was attacked by both English forces and Irish clans loyal to Elizabeth I of England. Only thirty five reached the Leitrim destination in mid-January 1603. The defeat culminated in the ‘Flight of the Earls’ in 1607. This was one the most defining incidents in Irish History marking the final overthrow of the old Gaelic aristocracy. With their power broken Hugh O’Neill, Earl of Tyrone and Rory O’Donnell, Earl of Tyrconnell, together with many other chieftains fled to Europe to escape capture by the English.
Now that the Irish leaders were no longer organising resistance the English took the opportunity to consolidate their control. They quickly settled the land with loyal subjects from Britain who would not present a threat of rebellion. Large parts of the county were confiscated from its owners in 1620 and given to English landlords, including Villiers and Hamilton, who founded the town of Manorhamilton. The objective was to plant the county with English settlers, however this was largely unsuccessful.
This Hamilton family was to figure significantly in the history of the early Parke and Jones families.
Manorhamilton Castle was built between 1634 and 1638 by Sir Frederick Hamilton, a Scotsman and British courtier, who had been granted land in this area of Leitrim in 1621. Hamilton’s estate comprised 6,300 acres of arable land and 10,650 acres of bog and waste. However, rebellion broke out nationwide in 1641 against the new planters. Irish forces unsuccessfully tried to destroy Manorhamilton but Hamilton responded with devastating raids on the countryside and in a night attack succeeded in surprising Sligo and burning the town including Sligo Abbey (photo at right), killing 300 people. Subsequent Irish raids failed to remove Hamilton or destroy his Castle.
Both the Jones and the Parke families were friendly with, and supportive of, the native Irish and were both targeted by Sir Frederick Hamilton. The History of Sligo: Town and County page 156 states:
“Setting out from Manorhamilton soon after dark, and stopping for a little at Newtown, where he took Mr. Parke prisoner, and put a creature of his own in command, he resumed his journey, and arrived at Sligo between one and two o’clock. Having reached the spot where the Ulster Bank now stands, and spoken a few burning words to his followers, calling on them to have ” stomachs” like his own for the work before them, he divided his force into two parties, a party of horse and a party of foot, and, directing the horse to remain with himself, he ordered the foot to cross the bridge, and proceeding as silently and swiftly as they were able, ” to destroy with fire and sword all they could come at.”
On pages 157 – 158, T. O’Rourke reflects the common anger against Sir Frederick Hamilton:
“Let nobody try to excuse Sir Frederick Hamilton’s excesses on the score of strong religious feeling, a plea sometimes put forward to extenuate the conduct of other fiery spirits of the seventeenth century. Religious feeling is respectable and, to a great extent, extenuating, even when it is abused, or perverted; but there is nothing to show that Sir Frederick was ever much moved either by religious feeling, or religious conviction. As far as evidence of any kind goes, religion as well as politics consisted for him in self-agrandisement ; and whoever thwarted him in this, be he Catholic or Protestant, Celt or Saxon, became his enemy. It was thus with “ all the Protestant gentlemen and officers in the North,” who were disgusted by the mean and low arts with which he endeavoured to raise himself by depreciating men of the greatest merit and worth. And he acted on the same principle at Manorhamilton towards those Protestants whose lands he coveted, or who stood otherwise in the way of his greed or ambition ; representing one neighbour, Sir W. Cole, as disaffected to the English Parliament ; charging another, Mr. Parke, of Newtown, with being in collusion with the O’Rorkes ; and giving out that the Very Rev. Dean Berkley, who disobliged him in some way ” carried himself more like a devil than a dean.”
The outbreak of the English Civil war, also in 1641, between the royalist forces of King Charles 1st and the Parliamentarians resulted in fighting in Ireland as well. Hamilton, who sided with the Parliamentary forces, later moved to Derry, where he had interests, and then to Scotland where he died in 1647. Manorhamilton Castle continued to be a Parliamentary outpost throughout the 1640’s but was destroyed by the Royalist Earls of Clanrickard in 1652 in one of the final engagements of the Civil War.