THE FAMILY OF CARLETON

When a heraldic visitation was paid to Cumberland in 1665, Sir William Carleton of Carleton Hall near Penrith certified that his family was descended from Baldwin de Carleton who had been granted land near Penrith following the Norman Conquest. Charles II had knighted Sir William when the latter entertained Charles at Carleton Hall in 1651.  At the time Charles, with a Scots army, was on his way south hoping to recover the throne for the Stuarts.  He suffered an overwhelming defeat at the hands of Cromwell at Worchester and had to wait in exile for nine years until his restoration in 1660.

Thomas Carleton (1513 - 1586), a predecessor of Sir William’s, had two sons, the second of whom, Lancelot, settled in Ireland as an undertaker in James 1^st. Plantation of Ulster.  In 1619 he built a house at Rossfad on the shores of lower Lough Erne, about five miles from Enniskillen.  No trace of this house now stands the present house on the same site having been built in 1780.  Lancelot left a son also called Lancelot, who was killed in the service of Charles I in Ireland.  This second Lancelot left two sons, a third Lancelot and Christopher of Tullymargy Castle.

Lancelot continued to live at Rossfad.  Christopher married Anne, the daughter and heiress of the Reverend George Hamilton.  Of Lancelot’s three daughters, one married Philip Perceval of TempleHouse and another married Arthur Cooper of Tansie Fort, the previous house which was superseded by Coopershill.  A grandson of Lancelot was General Sir Guy Carleton, later Lord Dorchester, who was governor of Quebec after the British acquisition of that province in 1760 by conquest from the French.  Later he successfully defended Quebec from attacks by the rebel Americans in the American War of Independence.

George Hamilton, the builder of Tullymargy Castle and the father-in-law of Christopher, first made his appearance in Ireland as a commonwealth Minister in 1657 during the Commonwealth.  Cromwell abolished the Anglican church, but in Ulster this had little affect amongst Protestants for already under Charles I the clergymen there had for the most part come from Scotland and were practicing a preaching ministry in the Presbyterian fashion, paying little attention to the prayer book.  At the Restoration in 1660 many of these ministers, without much enthusiasm, slid into the restored Anglican Church.  George Hamilton became Rector of the parish of Devenish and Boho, with two churches at Boho and Monea.  On George Hamilton’s death Christopher Carleton (known as Kit Carleton) became owner of Tullymargy Castle through right of his wife.

This same Christopher during the Williamite war joined the Enniskillen Foot and fought with the Enniskilleners at Newtownbutler and at the Boyne.  Both battles are described in ‘The Family of Wynne of Hazelwood’.  Writing in the 18^th century in a book entitled ‘Upper Lough Erne in 1739’ the Reverend William Henry refers to four officers from Enniskillen who fought in the Williamite wars, one of them being Christopher Carleton. He refers to them as ‘stout men whose names ought ever to be remembered’.  At the end of the war 147 prominent citizens of Fermanagh presented an address to William and Mary at Hampton Court.  Christopher Carleton was one of the signatories.  The address began by thanking God for their deliverance from their merciless and bloody enemies and ended by referring to their most signal and remarkable victory. They had every reason to thank God, for the issue in the Williamite war was the ownership of the land of Ireland.  Were the owners to be the Catholics or the recently settled Protestants?  The name of Christopher Carleton had been included with the names of many other Protestant landowners in an Act of Attainder passed by James’s Parliament in Dublin. Those whose names appeared in the Act were pronounced traitors and their property was forfeited, but owing to William’s victory vast acres of Irish land passed into the hands of Protestants.

Tullymargy Castle fell into ruin in about 1800 and a house was built adjacent to it.  The name may have been changed to Market Hill, the English form of the name, at about this time.  The site lies between Enniskillen and Derrygonnely at map reference 166479. Nothing now remains of either castle or house except for the tell-tale humps and bumps in the grass.  However the Reverend W.B. Steele in ‘The Parish of Devenish’ published in 1937, states that at that time the original castle was a picturesque ivy-clad ruin surrounded by orchards of cherry trees and gooseberry gardens.  The present farm house on the site was built in the 1960’s.