Irish Titles of Honour
Titles of honour are still borne by the representatives of some of the old Milesian families in Ireland. Some of these titles have become extinct in course of time, such as the M‘Carty More, the White Knight, the O’Sullivan Bear, the O’Moore, &c., and some have been merged in peerages. The O’Bryens in the titles of Thomond (now extinct) and Inchiquin, the O’Neills in an Earldom (extinct), the O’Callaghan in Lord Lismore, and the descendant and representative of the O’Byrnes in Lord de Tabley. But the following titles are still preserved and generally acknowledged:—
These are the O’Donoghue of the Glens, the O’Conor Don, the Knight of Kerry, the Knight of Glen, the O’Grady, the M‘Gillicuddy of the Reeks; and the M‘Dermot, Prince of Coolvain. The two first of these represent Irish constituencies, and it is believed are the only Irish chieftains who have adhered to the national religion; all the others are Protestants. Indeed, it is a curious circumstance that while we see the O’Neills, the O’Briens, the O’Callaghans, the O’Byrnes, indeed almost all the lineal descendants of the old Irish families, staunch Protestants (some of them even Orangemen; the late Lord O’Neill was Grand Master of the Orangemen); we find, on the other hand, that the leading Roman Catholic nobility and gentry in Ireland are mostly of English and Protestant extraction. Thus the Brownes, Earls of Kenmare, came over originally in the reign of Queen Elizabeth; and being Protestants obtained large grants of the O’Donoghue property in Kerry, forfeited by Roderick O’Donoghue, in the reign of Elizabeth, and by Geoffrey O’Donoghue, “dead in rebellion,” in the reign of her successor. The Earls of Kenmare are now, as is well known, at the head of the Irish Roman Catholic peerage, and so of the Dillons, Plunkets, Burkes, Nugents, Prestons, and other Irish Roman Catholic families of importance; they are all, with few exceptions, of English and Protestant descent, while we have seen that the descendants of the native Irish are almost all Protestants.