We have been looking at the Sproule with the odd name, Armour Curry Lowery Sproule. In this post we will look at one of the characters who are of interest in the telling of Armour’s story, the man in the title above.
Some of you folk may think that the name in the title is that of our Armour Sproule. Observant folk, especially those who know me well, might just assume that Kate has again misspelt something, on this occasion our Sproule man’s name in the title. But that’s not him - that's not our Sproule man. Armar Lowry-Corry is an astoundingly similar name, but that’s not our Armour Curry Lowery Sproule of Mullaghabane. This man is a very, very far cry from the life of a small farmer living on 11 acres of leased land in Mullaghabane. This man owned Mullaghabane, he owned Grennan, he owned much, much more.
Armar Lowry, for that is the name that he was born with, was
the son of Galbraith Lowry and Sarah Corry, born on 07 April 1740 in Aghenis,
County Tyrone. By a series of early deaths and lack of male heirs, Armar Lowry inherited 3 different, very large
estates, the Lowry, Corry and Armar estates. By 1779, Armar Lowry had become an
extraordinarily affluent man, probably the richest in Ireland, owning
over 70,000 acres of land in 6 different counties, including large tracts of
land in Fermanagh and Tyrone.
Armar Lowry-Corry (1740–1802), 1st Earl Belmore, by Robert Hunter (c.1715/1720–c.1803), National Trust, Castle Coole
When his mother’s family estate, that of the Corrys of Castle Coole, County Fermanagh, came to Armar in 1774, he added the name ‘Corry’ to his own ‘Lowry’ name. (It was part of the Will of John Corry that the heir should do this) His home estate remained there at Castle Coole, where, in the late 1700s, Armar built a new house, the most elaborate house in Ireland.
 |
| Castle Coole, near Enniskillen, Fermanagh, National Trust |
Armar Lowry-Corry was not only rich, he was a Member of Parliament and he was very well connected. This helped him to also marry well, as they say. His first wife, Margaret Butler, was the daughter of an Earl, the Earl of Carrick, and the granddaughter of another, the Earl of Shannon, one of the most powerful men in Ireland at that time.
But Margaret died in 1772 and later Armar married an even
higher ranking lady, Lady Henrietta Hobart, daughter of the 2nd Earl
of Buckinghamshire. That marriage, by
the way, was a disaster! It was an arranged marriage, and the 17 year old Lady
Henrietta hadn’t set eyes on Armar before the wedding. She stayed only a short
time in Ireland, just long enough to produce a daughter, and then headed off to
sow her wild oats.
On 6 January 1781 Armar Lowry-Corry was raised to the
peerage. The story goes that he wanted to take the name ‘Fermanagh’ – Baron Fermanagh.
However, this name was already used by an English peer. Apparently, it was his wife,
Henrietta, who chose the name Belmore, after a hill in County Fermanagh, and he took that name. He later became
Viscount Belmore and then Earl Belmore.
Armar Lowry-Corry was Lord Belmore. The ‘Belmore’ part of
the name was introduced in 1780 – no earlier.
So now you see the dramatic similarity in these names, and
equally just how incongruous this similarity is! Armar Lowry-Corry, the
affluent, high ranking Lord Belmore, and Armour Curry Lowery Belmore Sproule,
the lowly, small farmer from Mullaghabane.
How could Armour Sproule possibly have acquired this name?
Well, the first possibility was that this name was an ‘Ancestry myth’, but we’ve
have established that the name was known long before this. It was on a document
in written about 1900.
The second obvious possibility that hit me was, could Armour’s
name long name have been a nickname? Our Armour Sproule is believed to be the
son of John Sproule of Grennan, and he has to have been born somewhere round
1780, exactly the time when Armar Lowry had
just acquired all of his estates and was about to become a Baron. Armar Lowry-Corry was the landlord of the
Grennan Sproules, and his rise to fame would have been well known to those local
families of Grennan. It would be a
natural thing to give young Armour Sproule that nickname, adding Curry Lowery
Belmore to his own name.
That is a definite possibility. However, when I saw the
letter to Mrs Hugh Keys, which contained information that I believe only the Rev
Edward Edwards could have known, the nickname theory became less likely. If the
Rev Edward Edwards had known this long name to be a nickname, and he definitely would
have known that, he would have said so – they always did. John ‘Jack Roe’
Sproule of Curraghamulkin was never called Jack Roe Sproule in documents of any
kind. He was John Sproule, or as it is written above with the ‘Jack Roe’ in
quotes. The writers of the 1900 letter, Charles Cooper and Edward Edwards,
would definitely have said in the letter something like, “Armour Sproule, known
locally as …” They didn’t do that.
The nickname is still a possibility, but I believe there is
a also strong possibility that it actually was Armour Sproule’s real name.
In the next post we’ll look at the other character in this story, the father of Armour Sproule, John Sproule of Grennan.
Other Posts in this Series;
The information on Armar Lowry-Corry came from the following:
- Introduction to the Belmore Papers, PRONI D3007, Nov 2007
- The History of Castle Coole from the National Trust
- Ulster Archaeological Society Castle Coole, Derryvullan, Co.Fermanagh, author Ian Gillespie, in association with the National Trust
- The History of theTwo Ulster Manors of Finagh, in the County of Tyrone, and Coole, Somerset Richard Lowry-Corry Earl of Belmor, Longmans, Green & Company, 1881
- Armar Lowry-Corry (1740–1802), 1st Earl Belmore, Robert Hunter (c.1715/1720–c.1803), National Trust, Castle Coole
No comments:
Post a Comment