Trim. The family of Thompson, according to Burke, descended from the Thompsons of Barton, Cumberland, a branch of which settled about the 16th century in the county of Hertford, England. The Irish branch are descended from those who crossed over to Ulster when that province was first taken in hand by King James, and engaging in the prosperous linen trade made large fortunes. Mrs. Ussher’s family history on the male side is interesting, as leading back to the famous Thomas Carter, who took so active a part in the Irish revolution, ending with the battle of the Boyne, 1690. This Thomas Carter was sergeant-at-arms, a partisan of King William III. at the siege of Derry, and battle of the Boyne. He was, as Burke, Ulster King of Arms, says “a gentleman whose services to his country at the revolution were very considerable, for he not only served King William at the battle of the Boyne (July 1st, 1690), but secured divers useful books and writings belonging to King James and his secretaries.” These documents he secreted in the vaults of Christ’s Church Cathedral, Dublin, until after the disturbances. He married for his second wife, the Countess of Roscommon, widow of Wentworth Dillon, the poet, who was publicly buried in Westminster Abbey. By her he had no family, but his only son Thomas became Master of the Irish Rolls, for twenty-four years, Privy Councillor, and Secretary of State. This Right Hon. Thomas Carter had two sons and three daughters, from the eldest of whom Mrs. Ussher is descended. The eldest sister of this Thomas Carter married Doctor Philip Twysden, bishop of Raphoe, and son of Sir William Twysden, baronet, of Roydon Hall, Kent. The issue of this marriage, Frances, married George Bussey, fourth Earl of Jersey and first cousin to Anna Maria Carter, Mrs. Ussher’s grandmother. This latter alliance resulted in the birth of two sons and six daughters, her eldest son being George, fifth Earl of Jersey, and the daughters became Ladies William Russell, Ann Lambton, Sarah Bailey, Lady Ponsonby, Lady Henrietta, who married the bishop of Oxford, and Lady Anglesey, wife of the Marquis of Anglesey, a hero of Waterloo, and for her second husband the Duke of Argyll, which Duchess of Argyll was cousin german to Mrs. Skeffington Thompson, Mrs. Ussher’s paternal grandmother. The Right Hon. Thomas Carter’s second daughter, Susan, married Thomas Carter, of Duleek Park and Castle, county Louth, and her grand-daughter, Elizabeth, became Marchioness of Thomond by entering the family of William O’Bryen, descendant from Brien Boroimhe, King of Ireland, and whose line was continued by the King of Munster and of Thomond to the reign of Henry VIII., King of England (see Sharpe’s Peerage). Mrs. Ussher’s family history on the female side is even more interesting. Her mother was Elizabeth Margaret, eldest daughter of the Rev. Joshua D’Arcy, Rector of Lacka, county Kildare. This D’Arcy family came to Ireland early in the 14th century and settled at Platten in the county Meath. In a book “Maynooth Castle,” written by the present Duke of Leinster when Marquis of Kildare, on page 5, we read, “Sir John D’Arcy, Lord Justice of Ireland, married the Countess Johanna de Burgh, daughter to the Red Earl of Ulster, and sister to Ellen, wife of Robert Bruce, King of Scotland. They had a son, William, born at Maynooth, in 1330, from whom the present family of D’Arcy are lineally descended, and are represented by George James Norman D’Arcy, of Hyde Park, county Westmeath (see Burke’s “Landed Gentry”, also Walford’s “County Families”), the worthy head of both English and Irish families and representative of twenty-eight peerages of Great Britain.” The Irish D’Arcys were governors of Ireland in the reign of the three Edwards, with extraordinary privileges, the power to appoint a deputy, which as Fynes Thompson remarks, neither before nor after was granted to any but some few of the royal blood (and which he exercised on two several occasions). A descendant, Sir William D’Arcy of Platten (or Platyn) was the person who carried Lambert Simnel on his shoulders through Dublin after he had been crowned in Christ Church Cathedral, for which he was obliged to do homage to his viceroy, in 1488. This Sir William D’Arcy’s descendant, Vice-Treasurer of Ireland, in 1523, was the author of a work entitled, “The Decay of Ireland and the causes of it,” the MS. of which is now in the library of Trinity College, Dublin. It is quite beyond the limit of this sketch to give a full history of a family dating back to their ancient seat in Arcques, in Normandy, whence they came to England with the Conqueror, into whose family they had married previously—then settled in Lincolnshire and are given in extenso in Burke’s “Extinct Peerages.” The Yorkshire histories contain a full pedigree of about twenty-five generations, and the English and Irish pedigree illuminated by Camden, the historian, and author of the “Brittania,” dating from 1066 to 1617, is in the possession of the present head of the D’Arcy house, Mrs. Ussher’s cousin. This history says, that Nicholas D’Arcy, of Platyn, espoused the cause of King James II., and was a captain in his army. He was consequently attained in 1690, and his estates were forfeited and sold in 1691; his only son Christopher, dying unmarried, George D’Arcy, the surviving lineal heir, male, succeeded to the family headship. This George D’Arcy entertained James the Second in his Castle of Dunmow the night after the battle of the Boyne, and King William was his guest previous to the battle. King James in his hurried departure next morning forgot his pistol which yet remains in the D’Arcy family. It is related of him that on the occasion he repeated the following couplet:
“Who will be king I do not know,
But I’ll be D’Arcy of Dunmow.”
He was declared an innocent Papist in 1693, and died in full possession of his estates in Meath and Westmeath, in 1718. His descendant John D’Arcy, born 1700, married, 1727, and was the first of the family to conform to the Protestant faith, which took place before his marriage with Miss Judge, of Grangebey, county Westmeath. He died in 1785, leaving four sons, Judge, Francis, Arthur, and James. Francis D’Arcy, on the death of his brother, Judge D’Arcy, became heir male of Sir William D’Arcy, of Platyn, second son of Lord D’Arcy, viceroy of Ireland. On the death of Robert D’Arcy, fourth Earl of Holderness, in Yorkshire, 1778, heir male of John D’Arcy and Norman D’Arcy. Francis D’Arcy died in 1813, without issue, and his youngest brother James D’Arcy, who alone had sons and daughters, thus continued the line—his eldest son, John, claimed the older D’Arcy baronies, held by the last Earl of Holderness, and this claim after trial was established. But it appears that as Robert D’Arcy, fourth Earl of Holderness, left an only child, Lady Amelia, who married the Marquis of Carmarthan, afterwards fifth Duke of Leeds, thus carrying off the Yorkshire estates into the Osborn family, the title has not been resumed by the present family. James D’Arcy, born in 1740, had three sons, John, born 1767, Joshua, the grandfather of Mrs. Ussher, and Thomas, who was a major in the army, and at his death, Inspector General of Police, in Ulster. It is interesting to know that the marriage of Lady Amelia D’Arcy, Baroness Conyers in her own right, was dissolved by Act of Parliament in May, 1779, after the birth of three children, and both parties remarried the following year, the Lady Amelia marrying John Byron, father of the poet, Lord Byron (she died January 20th, 1784, Dodd’s Peerage, Genealogical Volume and Plates of Arms, page 5). The foregoing is a very condensed account, necessarily, of Mrs. Ussher’s family history. A more extended history involving, as it would, the introduction of many other distinguished families in every department of the state, and covering many professions, literary, scientific, military and naval, we must ask our readers to spare us. Reference to the usual standard histories, genealogies and heralds of Great Britain, would confirm the above. It must be remembered that all the history of the English D’Arcys, dating from 1066, their possession of thirty-three baronies in Lincolnshire and Yorkshire, their active part with the other barons in extracting Magna Charta from King John, their subsequent prominent part in the state during every reign down to that of George III., the Pilgrimage of Grace, these and many other matters have been omitted, but what has been said will suffice to show whence we have come, and we trust that the present and future will verify the wise man’s saying (Prov. xvii, 6.) in the history of Mrs. Ussher, that if “Children’s children are the crown of old men, the glory of children are their father’s.” The following are the surviving children of Bishop and Mrs. Ussher:—Sydney Lahmire Neville Ussher, Clarence Douglas Ussher, Charles Edward Cheney Ussher, George Richard Beardmore Ussher, Elizabeth Henrietta Ussher, Warwick Wellesley Ussher.
Bayard, William, M.D., Edin., St. John, New Brunswick, was born in Kentville, Nova Scotia, on the 21st day of August, 1814. The ancestors of our subject were Huguenots, and directly connected with the family, represented by the famous knight, “sans peur et sans reproche,” whose coat of arms is carried by them to this day. Having been driven from France, they landed in New Amsterdam, now New York, in the
