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.
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