Where did it come from? How did Armour Curry Lowery Sproule get a name that was almost identical to that of Armar Lowry-Corry, Lord Belmore? We have looked at one possibility in an earlier post. This time we will look at a few more. Now I am a facts and figures type of person, and a post based entirely on speculation is very rare for me, but I have to emphasise that this one definitely is. My motivation is to encourage a male Sproule descendant of the Mullaghabane Sproules to come forward for Y-DNA, to help us to get closer to the truth. So, here we go...
Are John Sproule of Grennan and Lord Belmore somehow linked?
Firstly we'll ask the question, could John Sproule have named his child after someone that he knew personally? Were they friends, or relatives, or had some kind of personal relationship? The short answer to this is no, I can find no connection between these two at all. They definitely were not related. They are roughly the same age, Armar Lowry was born in 1740 and John Sproule in 1744, but they grew up on opposite sides of County Tyrone, very far apart. Armar Lowry was raised in Aghenis, in the parish of Aghaloo, in the far east of Tyrone, and John Sproule was in Grennan, parish of Dromore, in the far west.
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| Grennan where John Sproule lived, and Aghenis where Armar Lowry was reared |
They couldn’t have met at school or in the army. According
to Somerset Richard Lowry-Corry, his
great grandson, Armar Lowry was educated by a tutor at home and he did not
graduate from any university. He wasn’t in the army either. [1]
After 1774 Armar Lowry-Corry was the landlord of John Sproule, John was leasing land in 3 townlands that were owned Armar. However, that process would not normally have involved either of them meeting or communicating in any way. Armar Lowry had agents to look after each of his estates. Each of the agents would have had bookkeepers to record all of the due rents and payments. John Sproule would have met the bookkeeper when he was paying his rent. He would probably only have dealt with the agent when there was a lease to renew, a default on payment or some other issue. He would be nowhere near Armar Lowry-Corry. [2]
Under normal circumstances, therefore, I don’t believe these
two would ever have met at all, never mind have been friends. And abnormal circumstances? We don't know anything about those, of course! Maybe Armar Lowry-Corry wanted to improve his swordsmanship and duelling skills from the expert swordsman, John Sproule of Grennan!
So there doesn’t seem
to be any logical reason why John Sproule of Grennan would have chosen this
name, Armour Curry Lowery Sproule, for his child.
What if this wasn’t
John Sproule’s child?
From my earliest look at Armour Sproule, it did occur to me
that there was the possibility that Armour was, in fact, not the child of John Sproule
at all. He could be an ‘illegitimate’ child that John Sproule was raising
as his own. There are a couple of options to be considered when looking at this
possible scenario. The first is that Armour Sproule is the child of Armar
Lowry-Corry and a Grennan Sproule female. I actually kept this one alive until
fairly recently, even though it really made no sense at all!
I couldn’t make it work in any scenario that I considered. Let’s paint the picture. The lady in question could be the daughter of John Sproule of Grennan, or maybe it is his sister, and this Sproule lady has got pregnant by Armar Lowry-Corry. Let’s say that John Sproule decides to bring this child into his family and to raise him as his own.
Now, in this situation is he likely to give this child the name of the man who
had disgraced the lady in his family - Armar Lowry-Corry? And even if the child
did have that name, and John Sproule
accepted that, would John also have given him his own Sproule name? Ah, no, definitely not. I couldn’t
see that happening at all. That is broadcasting the scandal to the whole
countryside!
But even if we got past the name issue, there were two other
big practical problems. First none of the dates added up. John Sproule’s eldest daughter would have been
too young to have a baby round 1780 when Armour was born. His eldest daughter
was Mary who married Chadwallade Blayney and she was born round 1768.[3] And any
sister of John Sproule would probably be too old for Armar Lowry-Corry.
And the second problem was even bigger, it was back to how could they possibly have met? Grennan was a long way from either Aghenis or Castle Coole - the two places where Armar Lowry had lived. It couldn’t really happen.
But there is a second option to this ‘illegitimate’ child scenario, a different one that I am favouring at the moment. The more I learnt more Armar Lowry-Corry and also, more recently about John Sproule of Grennan, the more likely I think this option becomes.
Did Armour Sproule
have any Sproule blood at all?
When we look more closely at Armar Lowry-Corry, Lord Belmore,
we can actually get some indication as to how he would treat a child of a lady
with whom he had had some dalliance. (I
read those regency novels too) To be honest, I was surprised when I saw
this.
When Armar’s second wife, the young Lady Henrietta
Hobart-Hampden, left him in about 1781 and returned to London, he remained ‘single’ for quite
a while. During this time Armar had liaisons with
two ladies who lived on the Castle Coole estate, and Armar had
children with both of them.[4] One of these ladies was apparently a Miss Bowen, the
coachman’s daughter, and the other a Margaret Begby. If this is true, it must
have been public knowledge, made more so by the names that Armar Lowry-Corry
gave to these children.
Margaret Begby gave birth to a daughter in 1784, her name
was Emily Maria Lowry Corry. In 1787 Margaret Begby had a son, and he was called
John Corry. Both children got Corry names, and on Lowry Corry.
In 1793 Miss Bowen, the coachman’s daughter, apparently gave birth to a son and he was named Armar Lowry Corry! If this is true, that this Armar Lowry Corry was the son of Miss Bowen, he still managed to go on and have a very successful career in the Royal Navy, rising to the rank of Admiral. (1793-1855)
I also noticed his name on the bottom of some of the encumbered estates documents
in the mid 1850s, and this certainly supports the idea that he is, indeed, the son of Miss Bowen.
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| Capt. Armar Corry Lowry named Encumbered Estate, Townland of Gortaclare |
In very tinly writing at the bottom of that page, it says;
"This lot will be sold primarily subject to £23 8s yearly to be paid thereout on foot of an annuity of £1076 18s to Julianna Countess of Belmore and £40 12s yearly to be paid thereout on foot of an annuity of £184 12s to Captain Armar Lowry Corry R.N...."
Julianna Countess of Belmore has the large annuity. She is the daughter of Armar Lowry-Corry and Margaret Butler, his first wife. Captain Armar Lowry Corry has an annuity considerably smaller.
So we see a definite pattern of Armar Lowry-Corry giving his children who were born out of wedlock his own name, even his full name. These liaisons took place after the marriage of Armar Lowry-Corry to Henrietta in March of 1780. So let's look at what was going on before this marriage. His first wife had died eight years before in 1772. There is an eight year gap in between these events in which Armar Lowry-Corry would certainly have had one or more liaisons with local ladies. It is logical also that if the couple had children, he would be likely to have given them some or, indeed, all of his own name too.
How would something like this be done? Again, this would be
the role of the agents. There were two agents for Tyrone at this time, as we
learnt from Sommerset Lowry-Corry, his great grandson,
“He appointed for his Tyrone estate prior to his mother's death, viz. — Messrs. James and Samuel Galbraith.” [1]
The Galbraith brothers, who were the agents, were the nephews of Armar, so he would be keeping this very much within the family. If it were the marriage situation, their task would be to find a suitable suitable man of reasonable means, who could support this lady and her child or children, and who would be willing to give them a good home. It would, of course, be known who the father of this child was, as he would still carry the name. I don't believe it would have been all that easy to find the right home. A home just for the child without the mother would have been easier. A financial contribution would also have been made of course.
And then we have John Sproule of Grennan, a farmer from a very well respected family, and who seems to be in great need of financial support! Would he marry a woman and take a child who tied him to the great Lord Belmore? Yes, I think this is possible, assuming he had no living wife at the time. Of course we don’t know, but I believe he would, whereas I wouldn’t believe the earlier suggestion. Or what about the second situation, would he take in the child with the Lowry-Corry name, into his own home, for a fee? Yes, I think he would.
How would the rest of the family react? Well, they wouldn’t
be witnesses at a wedding of his daughter, that’s for sure!
So my bottom line from this whole story is this. My best guess is that there are two possibilities, and only two, why our Armour Sproule was given the name Armour Curry Lowery Sproule;
- Either -The Armour Curry Lowery Sproule is a nickname for the boy who was called simply, Armour Sproule
- or John Sproule of Grennan took in a child whose parents were Armar Lowry-Curry and some unknown lady. He may or may not have married this lady. There may or may not have been other children, but one of these children was called Armour Curry Lowery Sproule.
Again, both of these could be very far from what was in
fact the real truth! I only hope that I live long enough to find out!
References:
[1] The History of the Two Ulster Manors of Finagh, in the County of Tyrone, and Coole, p.41, Somerset Richard Lowry-Corry Earl of Belmore, Longmans, Green & Company, 1881
[2] Some information on this is in The History of the Two Ulster Manors of Finagh above, but most of my knowedge of the agent / landlord relationship comes from the extensive letters in PRONI between the Earl of Abercorn and his agent in Strabane, James Hamilton, also a relative of the Earl.
[3] Mary Sproule, John's eldest daughter who married Chadwaladar Blayney, ended up in Prescot, Ontario, Canada. She is in the 1851 census there which gives her birth year as 1768. This is, of course, may not be accurate, but it effectively means that the chances of her having a baby before 1780 are slim to none.
[4] This appears in Ulster Archaeological Society Castle Coole, Derryvullan, Co.Fermanagh, author Ian Gillespie, in association with the National Trust 2015, where he quotes from the book Belmore : the Lowry Corrys of Castle Coole, 1646-1913, Peter Marson, Belfast : Ulster Historical Foundation, 2007
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