John Power (1597 - abt. 1665)

Born 1597 in Curraghmore House, County Waterford, Ireland

Ancestors

Husband of Ruth (Pypho) Power — married [date unknown] in Ireland

Descendants

Died about 1665 at about age 68 in Curraghmore House, County Waterford, Ireland

John Power was a member of the aristocracy in British Isles.

Biography

Sister of Ellinor Power, who married Thomas Butler, 3rd Baron Cahir, grandson of Theobald Butler, 1st Baron Cahir.^[1]

"Circa 1630 he became a lunatic. In 1654 he thereby escaped 'transplantation."

"During the turbulent years of the rising and Commonwealth, it was the lunacy of Lord Power that saved the Curraghmore estate from confiscation: he was placed under the protection of the lords justices in 1642, and was exempted from transplantation by order of the lord protector in 1654."

His son succeeded him in 1665, so possibly he died later than 1661.

Excerpts from the book Dromana: The Memoirs of an Irish Family^[2]

• Sir John Power, born in 1601, was one of the boys of the Irish aristocracy, whom King James I caused to be brought up at Lambeth Palace under the charge of the Archbishop of Canterbury,^[3] so that they might be bred in the Protestant faith. However, in the Calendar of State Papers it is recorded that Lord Power afterwards returned to the Catholic faith.

• When Oliver Cromwell arrived in Ireland in 1649, Sir John Power applied for protection -- or more probably his friends on his behalf, Sir John not being in his right mind. Cromwell acquiesced, as follows:
  • These are to require and strictly to charge all officers, soldiers and all others under my command as they pass by or quarter at ye habitation of ye Lord John Power Lord Baron of Curraghmore in ye county of Waterford, who is taken into my special protection, that they comport themselves peacefully and friendly towards his person, family, goods and habitation and any thing to him appertaining, without offering violence injury or damage, as they will answer to the utmost peril. Given under my hand and scale at Dublin this twentieth of Sept 1649. (Signed) O. CROMWELL.

• The following incident is said to have happened when Cromwell visited Curraghmore:
  • "The Lord of Curraghmore had a shrewd daughter [Katherine] who, knowing her father to be a staunch royalist, devised a plan to save him. She contrived to entice the old man into one of the dungeons of the Castle, and there she safely bolted and barred him in. She then received Cromwell at the door and placed the key of the Castle in his hands. She assured him, that although her father had thought it prudent to remove for a time out of the way, he was not only well-disposed towards the ruling powers, but willing to give any proof of his allegiance that might be required. The consequence was that Curraghmore remained in possession of its Lord."^[4]

• In 1654 we find [Sir John's son Richard] petitioning against "transplantation" for himself and his father. The petition for pardon was based on the plea that " John Lord Power Lord Baron of Curraghmore" is a lunatique and hath been so these four or five and twenty years past" and recommending that his estates and person should be put under the guardianship of Katherine Power, daughter of ye said Lord Power (of whom we are well satisfied) touching her good behaviour and capacity for ye same, being bred up from her infancy in the Protestant Religion and hath hitherto constantly professed the same."

• The recommendation to appoint Katherine as guardian to her father was adopted, and she held the responsibility for several years, entering into lawsuits and drawing up petitions. She was evidently very strong-minded and a good business woman, managing affairs at Curraghmore until her marriage with John FitzGerald of Dromana in 1658, when she petitioned to be relieved of the guardianship.

Research Notes

Removed daughter Mary - her dates don't match and this family wasn't associated with Virginia.

Sources

1. ↑ There were 2 creations of "Baron Cahir". Theobald inherited the title in 1583, some years after the death of his cousin Edmond Butler, and the numbering returned to "1st Baron".
   • Lodge, Edmund, "The genealogy of the existing British peerage with brief sketches of the family history of the nobility.", 1832, pg 160.
2. ↑ Dromana: The Memoirs of an Irish Family, by Therese Muir MacKenzie (Therese Villiers Stuart), published 1907 (Dublin: Sealy, Bryers & Walker), pp.121-124:
   • https://www.ebooksread.com/authors-eng/thrse-mackenzie/dromana--the-memoirs-of-an-irish-family-ala.shtml
3. ↑ In the first decades of the 1600s, the successive Archbishops were Richard Bancroft and then George Abbot.
4. ↑ B. Burke's Romance of the Aristocracy, Vol. I, p.81

• http://thepeerage.com/p20624.htm#i206233
• Julian C. Walton,‘Power, Richard, first earl of Tyrone (1629/30–1690)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004