BLAYNEY, Richard (d.1670), of Castle Blayney, co. Monaghan.

The Blayneys of Castle Blayney were the most important resident settler family in co. Monaghan in the early seventeenth century, with estates rivalling those of the absentee 3rd earl of Essex – the only other major English landowner in a county dominated by Gaelic Irish and Old English families.10CSP Ire. 1633-47, p. 278. The 1st Lord Blayney (Richard’s grandfather) was a Welshman who had fought in Elizabeth I’s Irish wars and taken an active part in the Irish administration thereafter, as privy councillor and seneschal of Monaghan. Despite the 1st Lord Blayney’s political prominence, by the time of his death in 1629 the family was severely encumbered by debt, and the mortgaging of land was already in full swing.11CSP Ire. 1625-32, pp. 420, 544; 1647-60, pp. 62, 127, 128, 141. Henry, 2nd Lord Blayney, managed to maintain his position in Monaghan during the 1630s, and, as hereditary seneschal, co-operated with Lord Deputy Wentworth (Sir Thomas Wentworth†).12SCL, Strafford MS 17(220); CSP Ire. 1633-47, pp. 65, 214. On the outbreak of the Irish Rebellion in October 1641, Lord Blayney narrowly defeated an Irish attempt on Monaghan town, but his own seat at Castle Blayney was captured, and his wife and children were imprisoned by the rebels.13HMC Ormonde, n.s. ii. 3. Lord Blayney continued to hold out in Monaghan, working with the royalist forces under the marquess of Ormond until the cessation of arms of 1643; thereafter he shifted allegiance to Parliament, and was killed at the head of his regiment at the battle of Benburb in 1646.14CSP Ire. 1633-47, pp. 395, 433, 475; CSP Dom. 1644-5, pp. 15, 361; HMC Ormonde, n.s. i. 77.

Before 1646 the career of the young Richard Blayney cannot easily be separated from that of his elder brother, Edward. It is uncertain, for example, whether ‘Lord Blayney’s son’, who left Oxford to join the parliamentarians in the summer of 1644, was Edward or Richard; or whether the various references to one ‘Captain Blayney’ – an officer in Ireland – can be attributed to one man or the other, as both seem to have fought against the Confederate rebels.15CSP Dom. 1644, p. 357; CSP Ire. 1633-47, p. 443. Not that the two brothers saw eye-to-eye on political matters. Edward, who became 3rd Lord Blayney in 1646, was at first a supporter of Parliament, but by September 1649 he was imprisoned in London for corresponding with Charles II, and released only on bonds for good behaviour.16CSP Dom. 1645-7, p. 528; 1648-9, pp. 323, 333, 524, 547. In September 1650 he was allowed to go to France as an exile.17CSP Dom. 1650, p. 558. Richard seems to have had no such qualms about serving the commonwealth and protectorate, and in May 1650 the council of state granted him £20 to enable him to return to Ireland as a captain in the army.18CSP Dom. 1650, p. 578. In 1648 Edward, facing bankruptcy, mortgaged the entire family estate to a London merchant, Alderman Thomas Vincent. Vincent had been a substantial investor in the original Irish adventure, and in the early 1650s bought up the shares of others, amassing a vast estate of 19,000 acres of good land in Meath, King’s and Queen’s counties. In a deft move, in 1654 Richard Blayney married Vincent’s daughter, who brought the Blayney lands back to the family as her dowry. In agreeing to the match, Vincent was no doubt influenced by Blayney’s position as heir to the title held by his unmarried brother.19Lodge, Peerage, iv. 122-5; Bottigheimer, English Money and Irish Land (Oxford, 1971), 155-6; Clarke, Prelude to Restoration, 183-4.

Blayney’s election as MP for cos. Cavan, Fermanagh and Monaghan in the 1656 Parliament reflected the revival of his family’s fortunes in the area. But two events in the same year suggest that Blayney may also have received the support of the Dublin administration: first, his sister, Alice, married Thomas Sandford, the secretary to the lord deputy, Charles Fleetwood*; and secondly, Blayney was appointed custos rotulorum of co. Monaghan in early August – just days before the parliamentary elections – a position which he probably owed to the acting governor of Ireland, Henry Cromwell*.20NLI, GO 109, pp. 379-80; Lodge, Peerage, iv. 123-4; Henry Cromwell Corresp. 323-4. Despite his connections in high places, Blayney’s parliamentary career was rather lack-lustre. Blayney had travelled to Westminster by 23 September 1656, when he was named to the committee of Irish affairs, but apart from one other committee (that on the bill to sell off the earl of Huntingdon’s lands, of 6 Dec.) he took no other part in proceedings, and on 27 December was given leave to ‘go into the country’.21CJ vii. 427a, 465a, 476b. In the later 1650s Blayney remained a prominent figure in southern Ulster: he was appointed to various local positions, including that of escheator first in co. Tyrone and then in the province generally, and he was also named as commissioner for seeking out forfeited estates.22Lodge, Peerage, iv. 124. In 1659 he was employed as a captain of horse in the militia for co. Monaghan, and was listed as residing in the county town in the census taken that year.23HMC Ormonde, o.s. ii. 249; Irish Census, 1659, 149.

Blayney was returned for co. Monaghan in the elections for the General Convention which met in Dublin in March 1660; his father-in-law, now established as a Dublin alderman, sat for Monaghan borough.24Clarke, Prelude to Restoration, 183. In 1660-1 Blayney was twice nominated as poll money commissioner for Monaghan, but he seems to have taken little part in politics after this time.25Irish Census, 1659, 626, 645. In 1669, when his brother died, he became the 4th Lord Blayney of Monaghan. Whether his accession spurred him to re-enter politics is uncertain, but in the autumn of 1670, in an uncharacteristic burst of energy, he travelled from Monaghan to Dublin to attend the vice-regal court for its annual Gunpowder Plot commemorations. On 5 November, having spent the previous evening ‘in company’, Blayney ‘died suddenly in his chamber’.26CSP Ire. 1669-70, p. 298. He was buried in St Michan’s Church, Dublin, and was succeeded by his son, Henry Vincent, 5th Lord Blayney, who was attainted by James II for supporting the Williamite cause.27Lodge, Peerage, iv. 125-7.