EYRE MASSEY (1719-1804) AND THE SECOND-LAST BATTLE (Part 2)

Eyre Massey my Irish 6x great uncle fought on the wrong side, from my Scottish point of view, at the Battle of Culloden, the last battle fought on British soil. Massey’s military career was built on the bravery he showed that day. There, the Scottish Highlanders were massacred by a Hanoverian army of English, Irish and lowland Scots, and the Jacobite cause of an independent Scotland was ended.

Instead therefore, I prefer to concentrate on the second-last battle, fought three months earlier and 100 miles further south! If the Scots had been able to capitalise on their successes that day, the English advance might well have stalled along with Massey’s career.  

The Jacobites had retreated from their advance deep into English territory, but were at full strength and in high morale, 8000 of them encamped at Bannockburn to the south of Stirling. Massey was with Blakeney’s Regiment, under siege in Stirling Castle where they had been garrisoned to harry the rebellious Scots from within Scotland’s borders.

Stirling Castle in the late 18^th century

For the Hanoverian English, an army of 13000 arrived in Edinburgh, and an advance party of 6000 was sent on to relieve the siege at Stirling. But Blakeney, a soldier’s soldier very much in the same mould as Massey, had simply been biding his time, allowing the Scots to commit time, men and money to the siege; hearing of the English advance he easily broke out of Stirling Castle, catching the besiegers by surprise and killing some 300 of them on his way to joining the relief column at Falkirk, a small town southeast of Bannockburn.

Thus it was that Massey found himself on the left flank of the Hanoverian army as the two sides lined up against each other on 17^th January 1746. Despite the strength of the Hanoverian forces they were caught unaware, largely because their commander General Henry Hawley refused to believe early reports of the Jacobite advance on his position. Rushing to meet them at last, Hawley’s men were faced with an uphill climb across boggy ground towards the Highland Scots occupying the ridge of Falkirk Hill.

Battle lines on Falkirk Muir, 4pm, 17^th January 1746

(plan from Wikipedia)

By four o’clock in the afternoon, with the two sides facing each other and spoiling for a fight, the short Scottish winter day was already drawing to a close. As dusk fell, the wind picked up and brought heavy icy rain. It was uncomfortable weather and a bad time of day for a battle.

The right flank was protected by a deep ravine from attacking or being attacked. So it fell to English cavalry on the left to lead the charge, past Blakeney’s infantry, where they faced three regiments of the Macdonald clan. The cavalry were routed by volleys of Scottish pistol fire and by a tactic of wounding the horse not the rider. As the survivors fled, the highlanders drew their claymore swords and charged. It must have been terrifying. The English front line turned and ran – Eyre Massey and the rest of his regiment, in the second line, were simply swept away in the retreat. It fell to Massey and his fellow grenadiers to pull some of the English cannon from the bog, because the horses had all been lost.

The Battle of Falkirk Muir –

wind and rain also shown

The fighting lasted less than half an hour. In the chaos of the rout the Hanoverian army fell back eastwards, first to Linlithgow and then to Edinburgh. As night came on, the wind became a winter storm of piercing cold sleat. Many English lives were probably spared by the poor visibility and confusion. Only in the grey light of morning were the Jacobites able to see the extent of their victory on a battlefield covered by hundreds on Hanoverian dead.

If the Scots had built on the momentum of this convincing and morale-boosting engagement, the future of their Jacobite cause might have been very different. But instead of pursuing the defeated and disorganised English army, they waited for weeks at Bannockburn for their heavy-drinking leader Charles Stuart, Bonnie Prince Charlie, to recover from a head cold and make some decisions. The English were given time to regroup under a new commander, the Butcher Duke of Cumberland. Charles gradually retreated northwards, fighting a defensive rearguard action instead of seizing the offensive.

The Highlanders’ Medley, or the Duke Triumphant, published 1746

to celebrate the victory of the Duke of Cumberland (1721-1765)

(from the US Library of Congress)

By contrast Cumberland moved swiftly north along the east coast of Scotland, supplying his troops by ship. After six weeks spent in training at Aberdeen his forces were well-fed and highly disciplined. The defeat which he was able to inflict on the Jacobite army at Culloden on 16^th April 1746 was crushing and final. Thanks to his subsequent patronage of Eyre Massey (then a lowly lieutenant whose bravery at Culloden had caught the Duke’s eye) my ancestor rose through the ranks to become a general, and was eventually elevated to the Irish peerage as Lord Clarina. And I suppose you don’t get all that just for pulling some guns out of the mud in defeat.

EYRE MASSEY (1719-1804) AND THE SECOND-LAST BATTLE (Part 1)

Culloden is a name that resonates like some doom-laden infinite gong throughout Scotland. It still sounds in Scottish heads, long after the day in 1746 when (as morose Scots will tell you) the birds fell silent on that blasted, blood-soaked moor. It rings with finality, the last battle on British soil; a romantic, heroic Scottish failure; The End of the Dream – as the Scottish Daily Record newspaper describes it in its partisan partwork The Story of Scotland. It haunts us with what might have been had the plucky retreating Jacobites of Bonnie Prince Charlie not been comprehensively, ruthlessly defeated by the Auld Enemy, England.

We conveniently forget that Scots and Irish troops fought alongside the English that day. The truth of history is never as simple as the mist of legend. I proudly call myself Scottish, conveniently forgetting the English and Irish muddle of ancestors who make up a good half of me.

Celebrity souvenir, c1748 (V&A, London)

William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland (1721-1765)

widely lionised in both England and Scotland

for his victory at Culloden

Still, it’s embarrassing in certain circles to have to admit that one of those Irish ancestors lined up with the English ranks at Culloden. Lieutenant Eyre Massey, my 6x great uncle, was not only there on the wrong side. He distinguished himself sufficiently in the battle to attract the attention of the English commander – a man hated in Scottish oral history for his brutal persecution of Jacobites after the victory, William Duke of Cumberland, known around these parts simply as The Butcher.

Eyre served with the grenadiers in Colonel Blakeney’s Regiment, later known as the Enniskillens or the 27^th Foot. Blakeney was another Irishman. Although most of the regiment were held in reserve during the engagement and saw little action, the grenadiers led by Massey were in the thick of it. Massey was descended from a wealthy Irish military family and had bought his commission in the army; but he led from the front, earning the respect and support of his men. He was wounded at Culloden and his bravery won him the useful patronage of the Duke, a son of George II the English king.

2000 Jacobites and 50 Hanoverians died 

at the Battle of Culloden, 16^th April 1746

Under Cumberland’s influence Eyre began to rise through the ranks – Captain-Lieutenant in 1747, Captain in 1751 and Major in 1755. He again distinguished himself in the Canadian campaign of 1757-60 (of which I wrote here some time ago) and afterwards in the West Indies. He was appointed Colonel in the regiment in 1773, Major-General in 1776 and became a Lieutenant-Colonel in 1782. After a period of frustratingly inactive if comfortable semi-retirement, Massey was called into service again to quell a mutiny amongst Irish troops and rewarded in 1796, at the age of 77, with promotion to the rank of full General.

His military career is impressive, even if it was launched with grenades against the Scots at Culloden. It could all have gone very differently. The second-last battle on British soil was fought three months earlier and 100 miles further south. Eyre Massey was there too. If the Scots had been able to capitalise on their successes that day, the English advance might well have stalled along with Massey’s military career.  No Culloden – no end of the Scottish dream. Ironically, it was failure within their own ranks, and at the very highest level, which led instead to the death of the dream and of so many Scots at the hand of other Scots, English and Irish enemies. More in Part 2!

EYRE MASSEY (1719-1804), THE FALL OF NIAGARA AND THE BIRTH OF CANADA

In 1800 the Acts of Union abolished the Irish parliament in favour of direct rule from London. 26 new peerages, the so-called Union peerages, were created in Ireland to ease the passage of the bill, and one of the very last peers to be so elevated – on 27^th December 1800 – was my 6x great uncle Eyre Massey, 1^st Lord Clarina of Elm Park in Co. Limerick. (There was already another Lord in the family, so after 1800 Eyre added the e to distinguish his lordship from that of his brother Hugh, 1^st Lord Massy of Stagdale.)

It’s claimed that Eyre sought the honour not for himself but for his wife, in an attempt to console her for the early death of their eldest son George. And the title that he sought was not Clarina but Niagara. Not in Limerick but in North America. Why, you may ask?

PRO LIBERTATE PATRIAE

The arms of the Barons Clarina

incorporates two Grenadiers of the 27^th Foot,

Eyre Massey’s regiment of 60 years

As the youngest of six Massy brothers he had lived his life with no prospect of inheritance, and had therefore had to work for a living. This he did by a distinguished military career, serving for over 60 years with his regiment the 27^th Foot, the Enniskillings. He fought campaigns in the West Indies, Spain and Scotland with them and in 1757, on secondment to the 46^th Regiment, he sailed to North America as Major Massy, their second in command.

Britain was embroiled at the time in the Seven Years War (1756-1763) – a world war fought by the forces and allies of Britain and Germany on the one hand and France and Austria on the other. It was conducted on several fronts, in Europe, Scandinavia, Western Africa, India, Central and North America. The diplomatic causes of the war were complex, but the expanding British and French Empires of the time frequently collided in the jostle for control of new overseas territories. This was particularly true in what France was calling New France, the lands of the Ohio Valley and the Great Lakes, which both powers saw as the gateway to further acquisitions in the West.

New France in 1750

(from www.worldatlas.com)

Hostilities had been rumbling on in the region since 1754, largely with French success. But after early British setbacks, the tide turned. Britain was in general more willing than France to send troop reinforcements overseas instead of relying on locally recruited militias. Eyre’s arrival was part of this policy, which resulted two years later in the besieging of a French base on the south shore of Lake Ontario at the mouth of the river Niagara.

There is considerable dispute about who really won the Battle of Fort Niagara for the British. General John Prideaux, the British commander at the beginning of the siege of the fort, was killed early in the siege by shrapnel from one of his own guns. Sir William Johnson, a war hero and former major general who had commanded provincial auxiliaries rather than British Army regulars, assumed command and insisted on retaining it even after a more junior but regular army officer arrived. The fate of the fort was decided by a skirmish on 24^th July called the Battle of La Belle-Famille, which Johnson is supposed to have planned or even led. But there is some question as to whether he was even present and to what extent he overstated his role and abilities in official reports.

left: Major General William Johnson

(in 1756, after a portrait by T. Adams)

and right: Major Eyre Massey

(in 1803, then a general, by Robert Hunter)

Eyre Massey claimed in his (let's face it) self-promoting memoirs that he, not Johnson, was the commander and tactician of the victory, which prevented a much larger French relief force from reaching the fort and resulted in its surrender two days later. It was a decisive engagement, and it allowed Britain to attack the French heartlands of Quebec from the west as well as the east. No doubt Eyre’s desire to become Lord Niagara on his elevation 41 years later was an attempt to cement his claim; and no doubt his elevation instead as Lord Clarina reflects the lack of documentary proof of that claim.

New France fell in September 1760, and Quebec (renamed Canada) began its long relationship with the British Empire and Commonwealth. As I write, 251 years later, the future British king and his new bride are in the middle of a Canadian tour, their first as a royal couple, which began with their celebration of Canada Day.

EYRE MASSEY (1719-1804) AND THE UNION PEERAGE

I am writing during a week in which Elizabeth II has made a historic and controversial state visit to the Republic of Ireland, the first by a British monarch to that country since 1911, when it was still under British rule. My thoughts turn to my Irish ancestors, who were themselves descendents of earlier waves of English settlers planted in Ireland by earlier conquests. Known as the Protestant Ascendancy, such descendents were the ruling classes of Ireland, the landed gentry against whom the ordinary people of Ireland fought for their independence.

The Massys were a large and powerful Ascendancy family. They first came to Ireland in 1641 and through consolidation of their position they acquired estates running to many thousands of acres. Such wealth seems to attract further wealth, and in 1757 Hugh, 1st Baron Massy and my 5x great grandfather, inherited the estate of Elm Park at Clarina, Co. Limerick. Having already the huge Duntrileague estate in the county, Hugh passed Elm Park along to his younger brother George, an Anglican clergyman who lived life to the full at Elm Park and died of apoplexy in 1782.

Eyre Massey (1719-1804)
in a portrait possibly by Robert Hunter

sold in 2009 by Christie’s for £22,500

Elm Park then passed to Hugh and George’s youngest brother, my 6x great uncle Eyre Massey. Eyre was 63 at the time. As the youngest of six Massy brothers he had lived his life with no prospect of inheritance, and had therefore had to work for a living. This he did by a distinguished military career, serving for over 60 years with his regiment the 27^th Foot, the Enniskillings.  He fought campaigns in the West Indies, Scotland and Canada (to which I’m sure I’ll return in later posts), retiring from active service with the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel in 1782 to take on the responsibilities of Elm Park.

Eyre came out of comfortable semi-retirement in 1794 to take military command of the city of Cork, then preparing for the threat of invasion by Napoleonic France. His suppression of a mutiny by 2000 young recruits there in 1795 earned him a promotion to the rank of General. Two years later he was appointed Governor of the city of Limerick, and further promoted to Marshal of the Army of Ireland.

You’d think, now that he had estate and rank, that the 78-year old would be content with his lot. He had a very happy homelife by all accounts, having wed Catherine Clements, 25 years his junior, whom he described in 1798 as “a very virtuous good wife, and a most excellent mother … whom I adore” – remarkably affectionate language for the times, and after 30 years of marriage too. But in 1796 their eldest son George had died aged only 25; and more in an attempt to console Catherine than for his own aggrandisement, he now sought a further honour – a peerage.

His desire for elevation coincided with political events in Ireland – the move towards a formal union of Ireland and Britain by the Acts of Union in 1800, which abolished the Irish houses of parliament in favour of direct rule from London. 26 new peerages, the so-called Union peerages, were created in Ireland to ease the passage of the bill, and one of the very last peers to be so elevated – on 27^th December 1800 – was Eyre Massey, 1^st Lord Clarina of Elm Park.

Eyre, by now 81, lived as Lord Clarina for only four years before his death in 1804. The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland legitimised by the act survived until it was violently dissolved by the Irish War of Independence in 1921 – which is why it has taken until now for a British monarch to walk on Irish soil again.

The Union flag, (above) of Great Britain (1606-1800)

(and below) of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (1801-1921)

Information in this article comes from various sources, not least the detailed biography of Eyre by Matthew Potter in the Summer 1998 edition of the Old Limerick Journal.