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From The Pale to the Palace

King Charles’s Irish Ancestors

Published in the Liffey Champion, 28^th of June 2025

The British Royal Family have strong ancestral connections to Ireland with King Charles having numerous Irish ancestors. His Irish forebears include families from Anglo-Irish, Norman-Irish and native Irish background.

While the King’s most recent Irish ancestors come from Anglo-Irish stock in the North Kildare – South Meath region, his relationship to Gaelic Irish and Norman Irish families connects him to several other counties throughout the country.

Carbury Connection

The Royal Family’s more recent Irish ancestors came from Carbury and Summerhill with the line extending to the King’s grandmother, Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, better known as the Queen Mother. This line extends back to the Colley family of Carbury Castle and due to this connection, the vast majority of their Irish ancestors were from County Kildare.

Six generations of the Colley royal ancestors lived in Carbury Castle between the 16^th and early 18^th centuries. A branch of the family then moved to Dangan Castle near Summerhill, County Meath where they resided for another two generations. Following the move, they changed the family name to Wellesley. King Charles’s last Irish born ancestor was Richard Wellesley who was born in Dangan Castle in 1760 and died in London in 1842.

The Colley family are of Tudor English background and first became involved in Irish affairs in the early 16^th century. Much of their acclaim came from the successful military career of Sir Henry Colley who died in 1584. Throughout a 30-year period he held various leading military positions which included a role implementing the Plantation of Offaly. For his services he was Knighted by Queen Elizabeth in 1560.

In 1538, he was granted a leasehold of Carbury Castle, which at that time was in ruins. In order to secure a strong fortification and establish a family seat, he reconstructed the medieval section and added the iconic semi-fortified Elizabethan house. Then in 1569 he obtained a full grant of the property.

The castle which is sited close to the summit of Carbury Hill is visible throughout the entire locality. It became an important fortification guarding the Pale. which was an area of Ireland surrounding Dublin that was directly under the control of the English government.

Sir Henry Colley’s marriage to Catherine Cusack daughter of Sir Thomas Cusack (1490–1571) the Lord Chancellor of Ireland enabled him to climb the social ladder of Irish society and become socially accepted by the leading influential Old Norman Families of the Pale. His children from the marriage would have ancestors from old Norman Irish stock such as the Wesleys and Plunkets. More importantly it also linked him to a high official in the administration in Dublin Castle.

Due to excellent marriages arranged for his Cusack’s in-laws, the younger generation of Colleys would be related to other influential Pale families such as Aylmers, Butlers and Nugents as well as O’Briens from native Irish background.

Sir Henry also acquired burial rights for his family and successors in the Church adjoining Carbury Castle which completed a transition from being a newcomer to establishing permanent roots.

The following generation of the Colley family consolidated their status in society and influence with Dublin Castle officials when Henry Colley Junior, married Anne Loftus in 1590.

She was the daughter of Adam Loftus, Archbishop of Armagh and a former archbishop of Dublin, who had served as Lord Chancellor in 1578. The archbishop belonged to the new English establishment in the country which included Dublin Castle officials who had settled in the Pale during the Tudor period. In 1592, the archbishop was the principal and most influential official assisting Queen Elizabeth I in establishing Trinity College and became the first Provost of the College.

In 2011 when Queen Elizabeth II visited the college that was founded by one of her predecessors and namesake, she was unaware of the fact that Archbishop Loftus was an ancestor.

The Colley family were lucky to survive the turbulent years of unrest in 17^th century Ireland. In 1642, during the Confederate Wars, Carbury Castle was captured and burned by rebels. Anne Payton, widow of the previous owner, with her children which included Dudley Colley, the heir to the estate, fled first to nearby Mylerstown Castle before reaching safety in County Meath. The family were not seriously impacted during the next conflict, the Williamite War, from 1689 to 1691. However, their position in society benefited due to support for the Williamite side.

Relocation to Dangan

One factor throughout history that led to the advancement and success of the Colley family was the excellent marriages that they negotiated between the 16^th and 20^th centuries. Dudley Colley’s daughter Elizabeth married Garret Wesley the owner of Dangan Castle an extensive estate in County Meath. Following the death of their last surviving son Garret Wesley without issue in 1728 the estate passed to his first cousin Richard Colley of Carbury.

In relocating to Dangan, he adhered to the usual inheritance obligation for a male relative inheriting through the female line by adding the surname Wesley in lieu of Colley to his name. On the estate in Dangan, he commenced a programme of construction which included a modern addition to the castle and numerous follies. Less than a handful of the follies survive today. In 1746, he was granted a hereditary title Baron Mornington, which elevated the family to peerage status.

His son, Garret Wesley, who was born in 1735 at Dangan Castle, was a politician and an amateur musician. In 1760 he was elevated to a higher title the 1^st Earl of Mornington. His marriage to Ann Hill-Trevor in 1759, linked him to the Earls of Kildare as she was a descendent of Gerald FitzGerald, 11^th Earl of Kildare who was a brother of Silken Thomas.

This union produced four sons of note. William the second eldest had a successful career holding political positions in Ireland and England including membership of the cabinet. His younger brother Arthur, better known as the Duke of Wellington, who defeated Napoleon at Waterloo, served as Prime Minister in the early 19^th century. Henry, the youngest son, was a leading diplomat.

Richard Colley Wellesley (1760–1842)

Richard the eldest son, however, has the distinction of being an ancestor of the Royal Family. He was born in Dangan Castle in 1760 and became the 2^nd Earl of Mornington. In 1790, he altered the spelling of his surname to Wellesley and his brothers likewise adopted the name change. He was the first of the siblings to obtain success in his career. As Governor General of Bengal, he is regarded as the British general that extended British territory in India into an empire. During the Peninsular War between 1809 and 1812 he served first as Ambassador to Spain and subsequently as Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. He also served as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland on two occasions from 1821–28 and 1833–34.

In 1799, he obtained a higher title; the Marquess Wellesley of Norragh. The title comes from an old family title originating in South Kildare.

Although success in both his military and political career was noteworthy, it was eclipsed by his more famous brother the Duke of Wellington.

While the Colley-Wellesley family had improved their social position throughout every generation by making excellent marriages, Richard was an exception to this rule. He married twice, both were mixed marriages and not negotiated unions as was the custom at the time.

In 1785 he began a passionate liaison in Paris with a French actress Hyacinthe Gabrielle who was of Irish Wild Geese ancestry. During the following nine years the couple had three sons and two daughters. Then in November 1794 during the most turbulent years of the French Revolution the couple were married, and Richard brought his wife and children to the safety of London.

Hyacinthe who did not speak English was not accepted in English society. She died in 1812.

Wellesley’s second wife, Marianne Caton, was American and a widow. Her grandfather was Charles Carroll of Carrollton, Maryland, the last surviving and only catholic signatory of the declaration of American Independence. The couple who married when he was serving as the Lord Lieutenant in Ireland took place in the Viceregal Lodge now Áras an Uachtaráin in 1825. She was the first Catholic lady to serve in the position as the wife of the Lord Lieutenant in the building. They had no family.

Connection to the Royal Family

Anne Wellesley, Richard and Hyacinthe’s second eldest was born in Paris in 1788. In her youth she was regarded as one of the beauties in London society and initially she made an excellent marriage to Sir William Abdy in 1806. However, the couple parted following an affair Anne had with Lord Charles Cavendish Bentinck, the son of a former Prime Minister. She obtained a divorce in 1815 and the following year remarried to Charles. The affair shocked London society at the time.

Anne and Charles’s eldest son Charles who was born in 1817 became a Church of England clergyman. His daughter Nina married Claude Bowes-Lyon (1862–1938), the Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorn. The couple had ten children, Lady Elizabeth the second youngest was born in 1900. She married Prince George Duke of York, second in line to the throne in 1923. When her husband ascended to the throne as King George VI in 1937, she was styled HM Queen Elizabeth.

King George also had Irish ancestry with one of his maternal lines leading to Dermot MacMurrough, King of Leinster through his daughter Aoife’s marriage to Strongbow. Following the death of King George in 1952, Elizabeth, his wife the former Queen, became known as The Queen Mother. When she was born in 1900 her last Irish ancestor had only died 58 years previously.

When her daughter Elizabeth became the Monarch in 1952, it was 110 years following the death of her last Irish ancestor.

Irish burial grounds where Royal Family ancestors are buried can be found in many parts of the country from Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, to former monastic sites such as Trevet Graveyard just outside Dunshaughlin, County Meath, where their Cusack ancestors are buried.

But most of the burial grounds are in County Kildare which includes the mausoleum in Carbury where ten ancestors rest. In 2011, when Queen Elizabeth visited the county, she was very close to many of the other cemeteries.

She visited the Irish National Stud at Tully near Kildare town which is close to the Grey Abbey Graveyard beside Kildare Village where many of her medieval FitzGerald ancestors are buried. Gilltown Stud near Kilcullen which she also visited is two and a half miles from Coughlanstown Graveyard where some of her medieval Eustace ancestors are buried. On the journey to and from the stud, she was close to Newabbey Graveyard, Kilcullen, where two more ancestors, Rowland FitzEustace 1^st Baron Portlester and his daughter Alison are buried.

Of fourteen generations from Sir Henry Colley in the 16^th century to King Charles today, six lived in Carbury, a further two were connected to Dangan and the six subsequent generations resided in England.

Sources

1. Lord Walter FitzGerald, ‘Two Colley inscriptions in the Castle Carbury churchyard; with notes on the founder of the family’, in Journal of the County Kildare Archaeological Society, Vol. VIII, No. 5 (1917), pp 369–387
2. C. C. Ellison, ‘Dangan, Mornington and the Wellesleys’, in Ríocht na Mídhe, Vol. III, (1966), 315–37
3. Peter Townsend, Burkes Peerage (London, 1968), pp 2615–17
4. Iris Butler, The eldest brother: the Marquess Wellesley (London, 1973)
5. Hugh Montgomery-Massingberd, Burke’s Irish Family Records, (London, 1976), p. 400
6. Hubert Gallwey, ‘The Cusack Family of Counties Meath and Dublin’ in The Irish Genealogist, Vol. 5, No. 3 (1978), p. 591–600
7. G.E. Cokayne; et all., The Complete Peerage of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain and the United Kingdom, Extant, Extinct or Dormant, Vol. IX, (Gloucester, 2000), p. 236
8. C. A. Bayly, ‘Wellesley, Richard Colley, first Marquess Wellesley’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, (Oxford, 2004)
9. Lesley Whiteside, ‘The barony of Carbury in early modern times: Anglican settlement from the medieval foundation to the consecration of Carbury Church in 1775’ in Journal of the County Kildare Archaeological Society, Vol. XXIV (2022-23), pp 195–200
10. Terry Clavin, ‘Cusack (Cusacke, Cusake), Thomas’ in Dictionary Irish Biography, www.dib.ie/biography/cusack-cusacke-cusake-thomas-a2350 (assessed Jan. 2024)
11. James Murray, ‘Loftus, Adam’ in Dictionary Irish Biography, www.dib.ie/biography/loftus-adam-a4867 (assessed Jan. 2024)
12. Patrick Geoghegan, ‘Wesley, Richard (Colley)’ in Dictionary of Irish Biography, www.dib.ie/biography/wesley-richard-colley-a8964 (assessed Feb. 2024)
13. Patrick Geoghegan, ‘Wesley, Garret’ in Dictionary of Irish Biography, www.dib.ie/biography/wesley-garret-a8965 (assessed Feb. 2024)
14. Virginia Crossman, ‘Wellesley (Wesley), Richard Colley’ in Dictionary of Irish Biography, www.dib.ie/biography/wellesley-wesley-richard-colley-a8962 (assessed Feb. 2024)
15. The Peerage: A genealogical survey of the peerage of Britain as well as the royal families of Europe, www.thepeerage.com/e10323.htm (assessed Feb. 2024)

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