Hervey Morris - 1798 Hero or Genealogical & Historical Embellisher (or somewhere in between)?

 

Hervey Morres (1767 - 1839) A leader of the United Irishmen in Tipperary.

He was born outside Nenagh in Rathnaleen. He was said to be from a poor catholic gentry family.

In 1782, at the age of 15 he went with his kinsman Lieutenant-General Edward Count D'Alton of Grennanstown (near Toomevara) to Flanders and enlisted in the Austrian army. He fought in various campaigns for the Austrians before returning to Ireland around 1794.

He moved back to Knockalton outside Nenagh and initially it is said that he was pro British and the status quo at the time.

However, he became disillusioned and joined the United Irishmen and began work on preparing Tipperary and Munster for rebellion.

He ended up on the United Irishmen's executive and began plans for taking a large arms store at the Phoenix Park.

He narrowly avoided arrest when this didn't work out and made his way to Co. Westmeath where he eventually joined up with the French army that had invaded under General Humbert.

Following the French defeat he fled eventually to Hamburg and was arrested.

His wife, living in Knockalton passes away, probably from the shock of his arrest. He only serves 10 months in jail in Britain and is sent for a trial in Ireland. He wins his case after various errors in his arrest were shown.

He remarries to Helen Esmonde who is an heiress to a wealthy landowner and he lives a genteel life and pursues his interests in genealogy and antiquarianism in Dublin.

He had plans to write a book on Irish history and has a number of sketches commissioned of various sites around the country.

The aim of his genealogical studies seems to be to prove that his family were the senior branch of the Morres family and also to show that his family were an offshoot of the de Montmorency dynasty in France.

As part of this it is said that he concocts evidence including exaggerated sketches and sometimes attributes tombs etc to the Morres family that have no connection at all.

He goes to Paris in 1811 and joins the French army in May 1812 serving in numerous engagements. In 1816 he becomes a French citizen and 1817 a Knight of Saint-Louis.

In Ireland his claim that he is descended from the Montmorency's is recognised and members of his family are granted permission to use the Montmorency name by royal license. However ironically Hervey himself isn't listed as a family member that can use it the name.

He publishes his history of his family Genealogical memoir of the family Montmorency in 1817. In it, it contains "fake illustrations designed to support Morres’s claims, including renderings of supposed de Marisco tombs in Ireland showing the Montmorency arms. The French Montmorencys, however, never acknowledged his claims, even protesting to the king of England regarding the royal licence granted in 1815. His genealogical forgery was accepted in Britain and Ireland until its exposure by the historian John Horace Round in the 1890s." 

He retires from the French army and dies in 1839.

Summarised from Patrick Geoghegan’s article on him from the dictionary of Irish biographies.

https://www.dib.ie/biography/morres-hervey-montmorency-a5980

William Hayes in his book "Tipperary in the Year of Rebellion 1798" broadly agrees with the above and adds a few bits that aren't included above. He was not aware of the controversy surrounding Morres's genealogy and claims. (The Mountmorency bit).

On pg 32 it says "Morres had been journeying to Dublin, liaising with the United executive on behalf of the Nenagh committee".

The same page mentions how the rebellion was to be organised in Nenagh by "the appointment of captains for all the major streets, namely Castle Street, Barrack Street, Silver Street and Pound Street".

Morres is again mentioned as a liaison between the Cahir United Irishmen and the main Dublin United Irishmen on pg 37.

Hayes states on pg 54 that Morres was to lead the attack on the Phoenix Park magazine / gun stores and following the abandonment of this plan and arrests of key leaders, it says Morres lies low.

In some confessions by United Irishmen, it is said that in the event of a rebellion in Dublin - that additional fronts were to be opened up with a General Egan rising in Nenagh and General Morres was to oppose Sir James Duff (in Limerick).

Things differ with Geoghegan's account after this in that Morres is given a larger role in the French invasion.

On pg 93 it states "Fitzgerald went on to inform Castlereagh that General Henry Morres had returned in disguise into Tipperary from Carrick-on-Suir and that he has a list of people he was inquiring after. The sheriff added that he believed Morres was going into the county Galway, and that he would make every exertion to arrest him." Hayes states that Morres "has information that a French force had set out".

Hayes refers to a letter from Fitzgerald to Lord Castlereagh that states "Hervey, "the Rebel General", had made his way up to Nenagh, and that he believed he was now gone on to Killala. He made reference again to Morres's movements, mentioning significantly that he had escaped from county Wexford into the county Waterford."

On p94 it seems to suggest from Fitzgerald's letters that Morres is trying to recruit and arrange people to rise up in North Tipp and Offaly to go to Clare to join up with the French who are supposed to land there.

It then ties back into Geoghegan's history of Morres where we find Morres in Westmeath trying to get United Irishmen together to meet the French army that have arrived.

The outcome is the same with the French and Irish suffering defeat at Ballinamuck.

Hayes says that Morres escapes in disguise to England. From there he journeyed on to Hamburg and is arrested there and eventually extradited to England.

The final mention of Morres in Hayes's book is as follows (pg 97).

“Hervey Montmorency Morres, who had an intense pride in his Anglo Irish lineage, has yet to receive due recognition for his role in the '98 Rebellion, and for his endeavours to involve his native county."

In the next post I will look at some of the exaggerated claim relating to his genealogy. Although this doesn’t negate his record, it does show that you do need to careful when taking antiquarian sketches as first hand evidence.

Hervey Morres and exaggerated antiquarian sketches.

What initially attracted me to his story was the article by Conleth Manning in History Ireland.

https://www.historyireland.com/hervey-morres-and-the-montmorency-imposture/

In it the following is mentioned

"There is also a print of his family home at Rathnaleen, near Nenagh, and it is difficult to know how much credence can be given to it. It does not survive and even its exact location is uncertain. It is depicted as a five-bay two-storey house with attached wings to the rear. A ruined castle is shown beyond it, which was relatively small in the version of the print published in the 1817 book. He must have considered it insufficiently impressive and had the engraver enlarge it for the 1828 book." - Conleth Manning

I know Rathnaleen and I wondered would it be possible to figure out where this house was. From the first picture / sketch (picture 1) you can see an impressive house with the ruins of a castle to the rear and a tower in the back left and in the back right as well. I've highlighted these in picture 2.

It dawned on me that it must be an exaggerated version of the house marked as Woodbine Lodge that I featured in a blog post to do with the name Sheane forts.

https://thetipperaryantiquarian.blogspot.com/2017/04/rathnaleen-fairy-mound.html

What is interesting is that, in what was the back right of the photo, in reality there was a possible folly built inside a ringfort.

There are two ringforts near Woodbine Lodge and a landscaped avenue linking the two. The ringforts, it has been suggested, were landscaped to form tree-rings.

Picture 3 (above) is why it is very hard to identify it today.

However in picture 4 (above) I've marked the house in red and also where the back left tower roughly would have been. 

In picture 5 (above) you make out the rear of the house. 

Picture 6 (above) is a zoomed in picture of the house from the road.

Picture 7 (above) is the OS map of the location.

Picture 8 (above) I’ve marked up the buildings in the original sketch.

So I think this is the house "pre-exaggeration". It is located in the townland of Rathnaleen South and the tree-rings / rignforts hint at the basis of the exaggerated sketch. It was still a substantial residence at the time and I would think lived in until relatively recently as it appears to have electricity going to it.

So I think this was Hervey Morres's homeplace in Rathnaleen. So just to be clear – it seems that the Morres’s were a well-off family, certainly in terms of Catholic’s at the time.

It looks like the main exaggeration / fantasy was in relation to the claim to be Montmorecys. At this remove we don’t know the reason why he wanted to put forward this claim. Was it purely out of wishing to be a higher-status than they were? was it necessary to get by at a time when being a Catholic was a big disadvantage or did he commission people to carry out sketches and research and perhaps he was mislead / they created what they thought he wanted?

Whatever it was it is an interesting story and I will look at a few other sketches below.

Embellishment or just plain fraud (Hervey Morres pedigree)?

When I initially read about Hervey Morres and the exaggerated sketches that were used to support his false claim to be descended from the Montmorceys, I actually went into it thinking that maybe the accusations were false and they were just exaggerated. However when I saw this sketch (below) from Holycross Abbey of the Sedilia there and the caption "Tomb of de Marisco at Holycross co. Tipperary" (pg 399 of the Google books version). I knew then that something wasn't right!

This sedilia to my knowledge isn't even a tomb - a sedilia was a place where the celebrants sat at times during a ceremony so it isn't a tomb.

I wondered could one of the crests be the de Marisco crest of arms, however this doesn't seem likely based on this either:

"Reading from left, the first is a plain cross, possibly the coat of arms of the Abbey.

The second and largest, carries the royal arms of England in a form adopted after 1405.

The third shield carries the arms of the Ormonde Butlers, an acknowledgement of the patronage of the earls of the period and the arms of the fourth seem to be those of one of the Desmond Geraldines. The fifth shield is blank; like the first shield it is only cut into the face of the sedilia, not in bold relief like the other three; possibly those shields were not part of the original design. The sedilia has been popularly known as the “Tomb of the Good Woman’s Son.” A tradition still surviving claims that this is the burial place and monument of the English prince who was murdered locally."

http://www.holycrossballycahill.com/news/abbey/history/

Picture of the Sedilia today. 

I will look at some of the other sketches, they probably aren't as blatant as this one but to me it really calls into question them all.

Everyone knows this effigy tomb of Sir Oliver Morres in Holycross Abbey in Tipperary, right? (Sketch pictured below).

Well you shouldn't because it doesn't exist nor (to my knowledge) did it ever exist!

In Morres's book, it features the caption:

"Tomb in the Abbey-church of Holy-cross, county of Tipperary, of Sir Oliver Morres, styled MacMorres, Lord of Lateragh, Baron de Montemarisco, chief of the house of Montmorency-Morres. Died AD 1620. Erected by Oliver Mac ? Laghan, his Son and heir"

(From page 433 of the Google Books version.)

This is even more blatant than him trying to link the Sedilia in Holycross Abbey to his pedigree where he called it the "Tomb of de Marisco at Holycross co. Tipperary"

It is through this lens that we have to analyse some of the other sketches used in his book from 1817. 

It just reiterates that you can't take old sketches as facts, you don't know what the agenda behind them was.

This drawing of Nenagh Castle (above) from Hervey Morres's book (pg 385 of the Google Book version) is fairly accurate. It seems to portray the round tower, the hall and entrance that are still existing and some of the curtain walling. However it is more likely that the other towers of the curtain walling were round (similar to the existing one and as per Leask's projected plan see below).

The picture (below) is a sketch by Austin Cooper dating to 1784, the sketch in Morres's book would have dated after this so they couldn't possibly have been recording what the actual condition of the castle was at the time, only a projected one.

Lastly the caption on it is

"Nenagh Castle. The Keep or great tower built 1215 by Lord Geoffrey de Marisco, the rest of the Fortress by Theobald Walter, progenitor of the House of Butler".

This is a big claim that I came across before elsewhere and took at face value based on a secondary source. I even created a post about it! However I would really call it into question based on some of the other unsupported claims in the book.

https://www.facebook.com/Thetipperaryantiquarian/posts/2471654693054788

This drawing of Latteragh Castle and Church from Hervey Morres's book (pg 367 of the Google Book version) could be fairly accurate.

The church ruins don't look outlandish compared to the ruins today (see two pictures below) and there is at least the ruins of a castle at Latteragh.

We don't have an alternative sketch from around the same time but we know today that it isn't perched on the edge of a rock precipice as shown in the sketch. Those high chimneys (below) maybe also look a bit off to me.

It is at least associated with the De Marsico's and is described as follows on archaeology.ie

"The first reference specifically to the 'Old Castle' of Latteragh is mentioned in documents as early as 1269 (Cunningham 1987, 147). In 1284 William de Marisco held 11 carucates of land in Laterah Otheran (Cal. inq. post mortem, 321), and by 1384 John Laffan was listed as owner of the manor of Latteragh (Cal. doc. Ire., no. 269). Described in the Civil Survey 1654-6 as a 'ruined castle & a Barbicon' the proprietor in 1640 being listed as Sir John Morres (Simington 1934, vol. 2, 225). Present remains consist of a natural hillock which has been scarped and flattened on top to form a low square-shaped platform (dims. 23m E-W; 24m N-S) on top of which are the fragmentary remains of a thirteenth-century circular keep (Wall T 2.6m). A garderobe chute is the only architectural feature visible. The base of the platform is enclosed by a curtain wall (wall T 1.1m; H 3m) built with coursed rubble limestone with a nineteenth-century limekiln inserted into the S wall and a contemporary gateway to the E. A protruding wall returns from the W face of the curtain wall indicating the possible location of a rectangular building built up against it."

Another sketch from Morres's book is of Knockagh or Knocka castle (above) not far from Templemore in Tipperary.

This one does have a Morres link with -Sir John Morres is listed as proprietor in 1640.

It is probably one of the more accurate ones sketches, the first picture is the sketch from Morres (pg 427 of the google books version) shows a round castle surrounded by a bawn wall and entrance.

The next picture (below) is by Robert French and is housed in the National Library and dates to sometime between 1865-1914. So sometime after the sketch was made.

The next picture (below) is from around 2017 and shows what the castle looks like today.

We are kind of back to the start of where my interest in the De Marsicos and in turn Hervey Morres started.

Back in 2019 I wrote a post based on secondary sources that had taken information by Hervey Morres as being accurate.

In the post I wondered was this effigy (pictured above) - Geoffrey De Marsico as outlined in Morres's book (see pg 334 of the Google book version).

However the table tomb that the sketch shows no longer exists (and likely never did).

Manning, in his piece in History Ireland states "A print of the effigy of a knight at Hospital, Co. Limerick, from Morres’s 1828 book. He added the fictitious tomb surrounds with the de Montmorency arms, and further embellished the print by adding an inscription to the base of the tomb surround."

https://historyireland.com/hervey-morres-and-the-montmorency-imposture/

Some reputable sources such as Hunt's Irish Medieval Sculpture Figures records the effigy as De Marisco and so does the Trinity website.

The SMR note on archaeology.ie also notes it as De Marisco.

However I personally think, based on the fraud / embellishment shown to date in my other posts in relation to sketches in this book, that this needs to be called into question.

https://www.facebook.com/Thetipperaryantiquarian/posts/pfbid02z9w8jAvBnPNECKC18NQprgTTXmQz7vFTyLMRUPXR7HLLegWqMGsMCRbXi4moL7Wpl

So the big takeaway for me is to check your sources and try to go back to the primary source if possible.

It also shows that even supposed sketches of monuments drawn historically aren't always accurate and when it comes to history, to always watch out for biases or an agenda.