The Carlow Sentinel - November 14th 1874
The Late Colonel Kane Bunbury
Colonel Kane Bunbury, whose death we announced in our last
publication, and whose obsequies we chronicle
today, was the last lineal male representative
of the houses of Moyle and Lisnavagh; but the
representation of his name and family, through
the female line, are happily continued in the
person of his great nephew, Thomas Kane
McClintock Bunbury, Esq. Other branches of the
original stock flourish at Lisbryan, in the
county of Tipperary, and at Charleville, in the
county of Cork.
The family is one of great antiquity in these Kingdoms. The
surname was originally ST. PIERRE. One, at
least, of that cognomen accompanied William the
Conqueror to England and shared the rewards of
his enterprises in the Norman fixity of the
country. The original patronymic of St. Pierre
became gradually disused, and in the beginning o
the 15th century we find the name of
BUNBURY substituted for it, that designation
having been probably assumed from its earlier
holders from the locality of their settlement –
Bunbury in Cheshire.
One of the family, Henry
Bunbury of Stanny, in the same
county-palatinate, received the honour of
knighthood from Queen Elizabeth; and as the
virgin monarch was so chary with her favours and
as discriminating in their bestowal, we may
reasonably conclude ‘the belted squire’ Sir
Henry to have been a man of merit and note in
his ay. He married twice: by his first wife, who
was a Shakerly, he had a son called after
himself, from whom the Baronets Bunbury, of
Stanney, sprang; and by his second spouse,
Martha, daughter of Sir William Norris, Knight
of Speke, he had a son Thomas, who by Eleanor,
daughter of Henry Birkenhead, was father of
Benjamin Bunbury, Esq, supposed to be the first
settler of the family in Ireland, and located at
Killerig in the County of Carlow.
Mr Benjamin Bunbury, who served as High Sheriff for the
County of Carlow in 1695, was the father of five
sons, the third of whom was William Bunbury,
Esq., of Lisnavagh, who died in 1710, leaving
issue two sons: William, who died unmarried in
1754; and Thomas, who settled at Kill, in the
County of Carlow.
Mr Thomas Bunbury married, firstly, in 1735 (being at that
time High Sheriff of the County), Catherine,
daughter of Josiah Campbell, of Drumsna, in the
County of Leitrim, and had issue, William, his
heir (the father of the venerable gentleman just
deceased) and two younger sons, George and
Benjamin, besides a daughter, Letitia, who
married George Gough, Esq., Lieutenant-Colonel
of the Limerick Militia, and by him was mother
of the late renowned Field Marshal Viscount
Gough. His second wife was Susanna Priscella,
sister of John Isaac, Esq. (killed at Fontenoy),
and by her he had a son, Thoma, who married Miss
M. Green, and a daughter, who became the wife of
the Rev. Benedict Arthure.
Mr William Bunbury, the eldest son of the first marriage,
succeeded to Lisnevagh and the other estates in
the county, and filled the office of its High
Sheriff in 1760. In 1773 he married Catherine,
daughter of Redmond Kane, Esq, a wealthy and
eminent citizen of Dublin, by whom he had Thomas
his heir; Kane (the subject of the present
sketch) and Jane, who married in 1797, John
McClintock, Esq., of Drumcar, in the County of
Louth, and of which marriage there were issue
two sons, viz, John, enobled in 1868, as Baron
Rathdonnell, in the Peerage of Ireland; and
William, who assumed the name and arms of
Bunbury, and died universally lamented at
Lisnevagh, on the 2nd of June 1866.
On the 18th May, 1776, Mr William Bunbury was
elected, in conjunction with William Burton,
Esq., of Burton Hall, representative in
Parliament for the County of Carlow, after a
contest with William Paul Warren, Esq. The
unsuccessful candidate petitioned the House of
Commons against the return, on alleged grounds
of undue influence and treating, and a day was
appointed for hearing the petition, but before
that moment arrived, Mr Warren asked leave of
the House to withdraw his complaint, and the
order for hearing was discharged. Mr Bunbury,
however, did not long enjoy his senatorial
honours, as his death took place on the 18th
of April, 1778, the result of a melancholy
accident, in having been thrown from his horse.
The vacancy thus created was filled by the
election of Beauchamp Bagenal, Esq, as Knight of
the Shire in room of the deceased. After a lapse
of sixty-three years the representation of the
county in the Imperial Parliament reverted to
his son, the late Thomas Bunbury, Esq., of
Moyle, who at the memorable election of 1841 was
returned, as colleague with the late Colonel
Bruen, after a bitter and protracted contest on
the part of Messrs. O’Connell and Yates, and sat
for the county until his death, which took place
in London on the 28th May, 1846.
The second son, of whom we now treat, received his
baptismal name from his maternal grandfather;
but the precise date, or the place of his
nativity, have not been recorded in any public
account of the family which we have consulted.
His parents, as we have seen, were married in
1773; the father died in 1778, and as there were
the elder son and one daughter at least issue of
the marriage, we may fairly fix the birth of the
younger son, Kane, in the year 1777, a date
which is corroborated by the tradition of the
family. At his period Mr William Bunbury, MP,
was attending his Parliamentary duties in
Dublin, and it is probable that his son was born
in the vicinity of the metropolis, most likely
at Mantua, near Swords, at that time the
residence of Mrs Bunbury’s father, Redmond Kane,
Esq., who did not long survive the death of his
son-in-law. The youthful family, however,
enjoyed the blessings of a prudent and loving
mother, as well as the counsel and protection of
their uncles, Messrs. George and Benjamin
Bunbury, and the affectionate solicitude of
their aunt, the wife of Colonel Gough, and of
other relatives and friends - With such
advantages, the sons were well and early trained
for the position they were destined to occupy in
future life.
Kane Bunbury, in his 17th year, was gazetted, on
1st January 1794, to a Cornetcy in
the 7th or Princess Royal’s) Regiment
of Dragoon Guards, with whom her continued
associated until his final retirement from the
services. In the month of August in the same
year, his cousin Hugh, the son of Colonel Gough,
of the Limerick Militia, who was two years his
junior, commenced his career as an Ensign in his
father’s regiment, from which he was a
transferred to a Lieutenancy in the Line in the
month of October following. The earlier
promotion of the youthful cousins did not keep
pace with their respective entrances into the
service; for while the Cornet had obtained his
troop and was gazetted as Captain by the 1st
January 1797, the future Field Marshal did not
command a company before the month of June
1803.
How different however was the military
lot of each in their meridian services “’mid the chauces of war”. Captain Kane Bunbury witnessed
the deplorable campaign of 1798, in the
miserable and abortive Irish rebellion of that
year, when his regiment was in active service;
but he happily escaped the bloody scenes in
which so many of his companions in arms were
necessarily engaged. He became a Major on the 25th
of October 1809; Lieutenant-Colonel on the 4th
of June 1815 and, as Colonel Kane Bunbury, he
retired from the service in 1823. [NB: That was
the year his uncle Benjamin Bunbury of Moyle
passed away].
In the meantime, his cousin Gough’s
promotions were
as follow: Major, 8th August 1805;
Lieutenant-Colonel, 29th July 1809;
and Colonel, 13th August 1819; his
services were these: He was present at the
capature of the Dutch fleet in Saldanha Bay, was
engaged in the the campaign in the West Indies,
at the attack on Porte Rico, and in the Brigand
War, in St Lucia, before he gained his well
earned promotion in the Royal Irish Fulsiers, a
corps which he subsequently commanded at
Talavera (where he was severely wounded and had
a horse shot under him); at Barossa; and at
Tarifa, which he defended against unparalleled
odds with the most indomitable courage and
singular success, animating his men at every
point , and rousing them to the charge and
annihilation of their assailants by their native
tunes of ‘Garryowen’ and ‘Patrick’s Day’.
At
the battle of the Nivelle, another hard-fought
hold, Colonel Gough was again severely wounded.
But the crowning triumphs of his military genius
were achieved long after his kinsman Colonel
Bunbury had retired into private life. In 1840,
Major General Sir Hugh Gough (as he had then
become) was despatched from India to take
command of the troops employed in China, and the
result of his operations in the subjugation and,
to a great extent, the civilization of the
Celestial Empire, are matters of history.
In
1843, he was invested with chief command in
India, and there the great victories of Maharagepoor and Pantar, and the brilliant
successes at Ferozepore, Moodkee, and Sobrson,
of Chillianwallah, and of Googerat, attest, in
his own words, “that what Alexander attempted
the British army has accomplished”. Full of
honours as of years, a Viscount, GCB, Field
Marshal and, what he prized more than all his
titles, a Knight of St Patrick, the valiant
commander, the kindly Christian gentleman
returned to his native land to close the evening
of his days, and that close was, to borrow the
anticpatory language of his biographer, the Rev.
Samuel O’Sullivan, “as peaceful as the morning
was busy and honourable, and the noontide
glorious”.
The death of his elder brother, unmarried and without issue
in 1846, placed Colonel Bunbury, in his
seventieth year, in possession of the Carlow
family estates, and from that time to the period
of his demise he was a constant resident on his
property. How ell he discharged the duties of
his position it is needless to repeat. He never
aspired however to any territorial or official
honours. From his advanced years, he declined
the Shrievality, and the same reason forbade the
acceptance of a Deputy Lieutenancy and the
Magistracy.
The more quiet and unobtrusive
engagements of private and domestic life, the
improvement of his estates, the comfort of his tenantry and dependents, the amelioration of
their condition, and the exercise of innumerable
offices of charity and goo will, are the traits
which signalise the character and hallow the
career of the departed worthy. He renewed with
Lord Gough, while that nobleman lived, the days
of “auld lang syne”, when they were striplings
together, and mutual visits of courtesy and
affection were interchanged by the veteran
friends. Colonel Bunbury was destined to follow
the remains of Lord Gough to the grave in 1869.
Another and a younger relative, his nephew, the
late Captain M’Clintock Bunbury, whose career
had been an honour to his country as it was a
pride to his friends, had in the inscrutable
ways of Providence been removed to his rest a
few years previously. That these losses
affected and chastened, if not saddened, the old
man’s heart, we may readily suppose if we
ventured to pry into the secrets of a sensitive
nature. In the even tenor of a peaceful life,
lengthened far beyond the ordinary span – with
all,
“That should accompany old age –
Honour, love, obedience, troops of friends,”
With undiminished health and a vigour of body and mind
rarely enjoyed, the patriarch survived many of
his race, and lived to see others, the sons of
his departed friends, rise into youth and enter
into manhood with all the promises that can
render their lives estimable, honourable and
useful. Without a pang of suffering, in a gentle
effort of exhausted nature, his spirit returned
to its Maker, on the 2nd of November
1874 in the 98th year of his
mortality.
Ninety eight years – a century almost! What a space in the
history of the world, much less of an
individual, do a hundred years embrace. So
apposite, in the present instance, are the
reflections of Sir Bernard Burke, the
accomplished Ulster King of Arms, in his remark
on the career of Lord Gough on the occasion of
the Investiture of the Order of St Patrick, that
we venture to quote them here, as applicable to
the subject of this imperfect sketch:-
“When he was born, the independence of the United States of
America had yet to be achieved. Napoleon and
Wellington were then schoolboys. George III and
Queen Caroline, both still young, were holding
their stately receptions at St. James’s, and
Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, their gay and
fascinating Court of the
ancien regime at
Versailles. The Queen of France was ‘just above
the horizon, decorating and cheering the
elevated sphere she began to move in, glittering
like the morning star, fl of life and splendour
and joy’. Edmund Burke and William Pitt and
Charles Fox were the names on every politicians’
mouth; and Goldsmith and Johnson and Gibbon
reigned supreme in literature. Frederick the
great was still alive and Voltaire had only been
a few months dead’.
Funeral of Colonel Kane Bunbury
The remains of this universally esteemed gentleman, whose
lamented demise we recorded in our last issue,
were interred on Thursday last, in the family
vault at Rathvilly Church. Notwithstanding the
early hour announced for the funeral to leave
Moyle (nine o’clock), it was one of the largest
that has taken place in this country for many
years past, all sections of the community being
numerously represented in the morning cortege.
Between three and four hundred scarfs and
hatbands were distributed amongst the tenantry
and employees on the Bunbury estate, most of
whom walked in procession before the hearse from
Moyle House to the high road, where they filed
off and joined the large concourse who followed
the remains (which were enclosed in a suit of
three coffins) to the Churchyard, a distance of
some ten miles by the Tullow Road. The outer
coffin was covered with black cloth and bore on
plated shield the simple inscription, “COLONEL
KANE BUNBURY, died November 4, 1874, aged 97
years”. The Chief mourners were Lord
Rathdonnell, Lord Viscount Gough, Mr Thomas
M’Clintock Bunbury, Mr John Bunbury, Captain
Bunbury (Lisbryan), Mr William Johnson and Mr
James Smith. On reaching Rathvilly, the coffin
was carried into the church by the tenantry,
when the opening portion of this solemn burial
service was read by the Rev. Samuel Quinton. It
was then borne to the entrance of the family
vault, and the remainder of the burial service
having been read by the Rev. James P. Garrett,
it was lowered to its last resting place. The
funeral arrangements were most satisfactorily
carried out by Mr. Boake of this town.
- The above is a true and
accurate transcript of the original document.
- Source: Michael Purcell 2010.
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