Lettice Baroness Offaly & The Siege of Geashill

Synopsis: In 1563 the Barony of Geashill (30,000 acres) was granted to Gerald FitzGerald, 11th earl of Kildare. Subsequently, his granddaughter Lettice FitzGerald (Baroness Offaly) was granted the barony in 1619 by King James I, following a ten-year family inheritance dispute. She married Sir Robert Digby from Warwickshire, thus establishing the 300-year history of the Digby Estate at Geashill. Lettice planted some English settlers on her lands and instructed an English clergyman to preach ‘good doctrine;. She had ten children and her heirs were granted the title Barons of Geashill.

During the 1641 rebellion by Catholic Confederates against English settlers, Lettice at Geashill Castle was besieged by the O’Dempseys, who were her neighbours and cousins. An intriguing correspondence of letters, poems and documents describe in detail the siege of Geashill Castle: including, casting a cannon from 140 pots and pans, and building a timber battering ram in the church yard. Contrary to expectations, after several assaults, the assailants were forced to retreat. They were humiliated by Lettice, a defiant elderly widow in her sixties. Eventually in her own time Lettice retired to England. In old age she became blind, wrote poetry and religious reflections and died in 1658 at almost 80 years of age.

Speaker bio: Clemens lives near Geashill village in County Offaly. He is married to Carolina with a family of three young children. His current occupation is in tillage farming and forestry. His parents emigrated from Germany to Ireland in the 1960s and Clemens is the second generation living on the family farm in Offaly.
In 1992 Clemens completed his degree in Engineering at University College Dublin. This was followed by a PhD in Engineering awarded in 1995. He lectured as an assistant lecturer in the Engineering Department of University College Dublin from 1995 to 1998. His research topic was about developing new sensors for the automation of peat harvesting machinery and his work was sponsored by Bord na Móna. In 1998 he ended his research activities and returned to the family farm near Geashill.
Ten years ago, Clemens became interested in the history of his local district and subsequently published two books. His first book was Heremon & Heber and the Battle of Geashill (2017). This is a mythological story about the two Milesian brothers Heremon and Heber who fought a battle at Geisill in Ui Failge. He researched the original manuscripts referring to this story at the Royal Irish Academy and Trinity College.
His second book was Lettice Baroness Offaly & The Siege of Geashill, published in 2019. He researched this topic for two years, gathering documents from archives in Ireland and England. Lettice Baroness Offaly was granted the 30,000 acre barony of Geashill in east Offaly in 1619, which subsequently became the Digby estate and existed for 300 years until the early twentieth century.