Caroline, Countess of Kingston

O’Sullivan, Eilís

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-54639-1_8

Caroline, Countess of Kingston

Eilís O’Sullivan²

Chapter
First Online: 05 June 2017

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Abstract

This chapter outlines the life and contribution to education of Caroline, Countess of Kingston (1754–1823). Born in Ireland, Caroline FitzGerald was a member of the Anglican community. Wealthy in her own right, she brought great riches to her marriage and, though predeceased by Robert King, her husband and cousin, she retained that personal wealth. The couple and their large family lived in Mitchelstown Castle, Co. Cork. Their newly renovated home was situated in an extensively remodelled demesne. The couple, together and separately, provided employment and social supports for the people of Mitchelstown and surrounding areas. Caroline was the sole benefactor of an orphanage and a number of schools. Her involvement with educational provision met with such robust opposition, especially from local Catholic clergymen, that eventually she withdrew her support.

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Notes

1.
Dictionary of National Biography, Vol. XI, 156, 157; B. Burke, Peerage and Baronetage, 1500; R.D. King-Harmon, The Kings, Earls of Kingston: An Account of the Family and their Estates in Ireland between the Reigns of the two Queens Elizabeth, Chapter Three; R.M. Wardle, Collected Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft, 111, footnote 2. Mount Ophaly was either in Co. Kildare or Queen’s Co. (now Co. Laois).
2.
Burke, Peerage, 1900; B. Power, White Knights, Dark Earls: The Rise and Fall of an Anglo-Irish Dynasty, 10; J. Todd, Rebel Daughters Ireland in Conflict 1798, 13. Caroline was either fourteen or fifteen when she married in 1769. She may, therefore, have been born in 1754.
3.
King-Harmon, Earls of Kingston, 23.
4.
Todd, Rebel Daughters, 2, 3, 4, 339.
5.
King-Harmon, Earls of Kingston, 39, 73. “In the summer of 1797 Caroline was staying in London with one of her younger daughters, Mary King, then aged fifteen. Mary is described as a possessing a graceful figure, with a soft and pleasing air, of striking features, and her appearance rendered remarkable by the extreme length and great beauty of her hair, of which she had an extraordinary profusion. This description might well be that of Caroline herself at the same age, to judge by the pastel portrait we have of her.” Todd, Rebel Daughters, 12–14. Todd cites The Hibernian Chronicles.
6.
C. Tomalin, The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft, 67. Tomalin points out that the income from Irish estates was “always larger in theory than in practice.”
7.
Power, White Knights, 10.
8.
A. Foreman, Georgina Duchess of Devonshire, 4. According to Foreman, “the usual method for estimating equivalent twentieth-century values is to multiply by sixty.”
9.
King-Harmon, Earls of Kingston, 26, 59. Bought by the King family in 1748, it remained their residence in Dublin until 1829.
10.
Wardle, Collected Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft, 120. Caroline had three half sisters, at least: Maria, Harriet and Margaret.
11.
King-Harmon, Earls of Kingston, 63 citing a letter from Robert to his father dated January 29, 1773.
12.
Wardle, Collected Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft, 70.
13.
King-Harmon, Earls of Kingston, 40 citing the “Diary of a Young Lady of Fashion” kept by Caroline’s sister-in-law, Eleanor King, for the year 1774.
14.
Burke, Peerage, 1502.
15.
Todd, Rebel Daughters, 19.
16.
King-Harmon, Earls of Kingston, 123.
17.
Ibid., 61.
18.
Todd, Rebel Daughters, 27–29 citing King-Harman Papers, Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, D/4168, 21 January 1773.
19.
King-Harmon, Earls of Kingston, 61.
20.
Ibid., 66 (letter dated February 23, 1774), 70.
21.
Ibid., 116, 121, 123. Henry: July 4, 1776; Richard: April 8, 1779; James William: 1786.
22.
M. Wollstonecraft, Mary, A Fiction, (University of Adelaide, South Australia: The University of Adelaide Library, 2014), https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/w/wollstonecraft/mary/mary/index.html (accessed June 25, 2016), 1.
23.
A. Young, Arthur Young’s Tour in Ireland: 1776–1779, Vol. 1, 458–467.
24.
Power,White Knights, 21.
25.
H. Townsend, Statistical Survey of the County of Cork with Observations on the Means of Improvement: drawn up for the Consideration, and by Direction of the Dublin Society, 533.
26.
B. Power,Mitchelstown through Seven Centuries: Being a Concise History of Mitchelstown, County Cork, 28.
27.
Young,Tour 1, 462, 463.
28.
R.B. McDowell, “Ireland in 1800,” in A New History of Ireland 4: Eighteenth-century Ireland 1691–1800, ed. T.W. Moody and W.E. Vaughan, 667.
29.
Young,Tour 1, 458; Todd,Rebel Daughters, 241.
30.
S. Lewis, A topographical dictionary of Ireland with historical and statistical descriptions, Vol. 2, 372, 373.
31.
W. Coppinger, Letter to the Right Honorable and Honorable The Dublin Society from the Right Rev. Doctor Coppinger Titular Bishop of Cloyne & Ross, occasioned by Certain Observations and Misstatements of the Rev. Horatio Townsend, in his Statistical Survey of the County Cork, 13, 14.
32.
J. Kelly, “A Tour in the South of Ireland in 1782,” North Munster Antiquarian Journal Vol. 29, (1987): 54 quoting X.Z. who wrote the original articles for Walker’s Hibernian Magazine.
33.
Power, White Knights, 20.
34.
Power, Seven Centuries, 31.
35.
McDowell, “Ireland, 1800,” 667.
36.
Power, Seven Centuries, 31; Todd, Rebel Daughters, 71.
37.
Todd, Rebel Daughters, 56, 76, 77, 88, 93.
38.
Tomalin, Life and Death of Wollstonecraft, 70.
39.
Todd, Rebel Daughters, 73.
40.
Wardle, Collected Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft, 126 citing Wollstonecraft in a letter to George Blood, dated November 7, 1786.
41.
Todd, Rebel Daughters, 73–78.
42.
M. Broderick, Wild Irish Women: Extraordinary Lives from History, 124–128.
43.
Todd, Rebel Daughters, 108.
44.
Wardle, Collected Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft, 108, 110, 111 citing Wollstonecraft in letters to George Blood, dated May 22, July 6 and August 25, 1786.
45.
Ibid., 120, 123, 124, 125, 131, 132, 133, 137, 138, 145, 151 citing Wollstonecraft in letters to family and friends, dated variously October 30, 1786 to May 11, 1787.
46.
Todd, Rebel Daughters, 92, 94, 114, citing Cini Papers.
47.
Wardle, Collected Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft, 120, 165, 166.
48.
Wollstonecraft, Mary, A Fiction, Chapters One and Two.
49.
M. Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Chapter 12, “On National Education.”
50.
Dictionary of National Biography, Vol. XI, 156.
51.
Todd, Rebel Daughters, 64, 121, 122.
52.
Wardle, Collected Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft, 118.
53.
J. McAuley, “From the Education of Daughters to the Rights of Woman: Mary Wollstonecraft in Ireland, 1786–7,” History Ireland, 24 (1), January/February, 2016.
54.
Power, White Knights, 17, 36; Todd, Rebel Daughters, 55, 101, 139; Tomalin, Life and Death of Wollstonecraft, 86.
55.
Power, White Knights, 40.
56.
Todd, Rebel Daughters, 127. Todd cites Walker’s Hibernian Magazine, April 1790.
57.
J. Robins, Champagne and Silver Buckles: The Viceregal Court at Dublin Castle 1700–1922, 60, 61.
58.
Todd, Rebel Daughters, 137, 138. Todd cites More, Strictures, 148n.
59.
Ibid., 138, 168.
60.
King-Harmon, Earls of Kingston, 73.
61.
Todd, Rebel Daughters, 226, 234 citing “The Harcourt Papers,” 5, 56 quoting Queen Charlotte to Lady Harcourt, October 30, 1797.
62.
Ibid., 208–269.
63.
J. Barrington, Personal Sketches of His Own Times, Vol. 1 and 2, 196–201.
64.
Dictionary of National Biography, Vol. XI, 157.
65.
Lewis, Topographical Dictionary 2, 372, 373.
66.
Todd, Rebel Daughters, 316, 334.
67.
Ibid., 48, 50, 58, 123. Todd cites B.C. MacDermot, ed., Correspondence etc. of Dr. Hugh MacDermot, M.D., 1754–1824, 131.
68.
Ibid., 314.
69.
Townsend, Survey, 528; Wardle, Collected Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft, 123, 124, 125, 126, 133, 137, 138, 140, 141, 143, 151.
70.
McDowell, “Ireland, 1800,” 667.
71.
Power, Seven Centuries, 44; Todd, Rebel Daughters, 314.
72.
Townsend, Survey, 529.
73.
H. Townsend, Observations on Dr. Copinger’s Letter to the Dublin Society, Appendix, 52. The Appendix to Townsend’s Observations comprised letters from the Rev. Charles Fennell, Curate of Mitchelstown, Mary Hudson, superintendent of the Mitchelstown Charities and the Rev. Robert Disney, Rector of Mitchelstown.
74.
Townsend, Survey, 529; Townsend, Observations, Appendix, 61–64.
75.
Townsend, Observations, Appendix, 58.
76.
Ibid. Townsend was later commissioned by the Dublin Society to compile a Statistical Survey of the County of Cork with observations on the Means of Improvement. This was published in 1810 and was dedicated to the Earl of Shannon, Robert King’s political rival.
77.
Todd, Rebel Daughters, 101, 102 citing Gentleman’s Almanack, 1799.
78.
Commissioners of Irish Education Inquiry, Second Report of the Commissioners of Inquiry (Abstract of Returns in 1824, from the Protestant and Roman Catholic Clergy in Ireland, of the State of Education in their respective Parishes), 1826–27, Appendix 40, “Act of Incorporation, 40 Geo. III. c. 65. An Act for incorporating the Governors and Governesses of the Female Orphan House, on the Circular Road, near Dublin,” 90, 91.
79.
A.P.W. Malcomson, “The Dunraven Papers Detailed Calendar,” D/3196, 71, D/3196/E/3/30, letter dated March 30, 1811; Todd, Rebel Daughters, 315.
80.
Townsend, Survey, 528.
81.
Todd, Rebel Daughters, 49, 50.
82.
J. Howard, An Account of the Principal Lazarettos in Europe; with various papers relative to the Plague: together with further observations on some Foreign Prisons and Hospitals; and additional remarks on the present state of those in Great Britain and Ireland, 110.
83.
Commissioners of Irish Education Enquiry, Report of the Commissioners of Irish Education Enquiry, 1791, 1857–58, 357; Commissioners of Irish Education Inquiry, First Report of the Commissioners of Irish Education Inquiry, 1825, 7; Commissioners of the Board of Education in Ireland, Third Report from the Commissioners of the Board of Education in Ireland on the Protestant Charter Schools, 1809, 23; J. Robins, The Lost Children: A Study of Charity Children in Ireland 1700–1900, 81–84.
84.
Townsend, Survey, 528.
85.
Townsend, Observations, Appendix, 52–54.
86.
Ibid., 52–54.
87.
Townsend, Survey, 529.
88.
Ibid.; Oxford Illustrated Dictionary, 494. “List n. Selvage or edge of cloth, usu. of different material; such edges used for slippers, cushions, etc.”
89.
Todd, Rebel Daughters, 314.
90.
Townsend, Observations, 58.
91.
J. Logan, “How many pupils went to school in the nineteenth century?,” Irish Educational Studies 8, No. 1 (1989): 27.
92.
Ibid. Logan cites T. Laqueur, Religion and Respectability.
93.
Coppinger, Letter, 11; Townsend, Survey, 531; Townsend, Observations, Appendix, 51. The Sunday school may have begun in the Protestant Church and moved to the market house when the Church fell into disrepair. Alternatively, it may have begun in the market house and moved to the Church on Caroline’s orders, thus displeasing the Catholic clergy.
94.
Townsend, Survey, 530.
95.
Coppinger, Letter, 16; Townsend, Survey, 532.
96.
Coppinger, Letter, 8, 11, 12, 14–16, 20, 21.
97.
Townsend, Observations, 16, 35.
98.
Ibid., Appendix, 51.
99.
Coppinger, Letter, 19, 20.
100.
Townsend, Observations, Appendix, 54.
101.
Ibid., Appendix, 55.
102.
Townsend, Survey, 532.
103.
Freeman’s Journal, January 21, 1823.
104.
Todd, Rebel Daughters, 130.
105.
Robins, Viceregal Court, 99, 100; S. Tillyard, Aristocrats: Caroline, Emily, Louisa and Sarah Lennox 1740–1832, 463–465.
106.
Todd, Rebel Daughters, 315.
107.
Power, White Knights, 67, 68.
108.
Todd, Rebel Daughters, 316.
109.
Wardle, Collected Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft, 123, 124, 133 citing Wollstonecraft in letters to her sisters, Eliza Bishop and Everina Wollstonecraft, dated November 5, 1786 and circa January 15, 1787.
110.
Power, White Knights, 71.

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Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick, Limerick, Ireland
Eilís O’Sullivan

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O’Sullivan, E. (2017). Caroline, Countess of Kingston. In: Ascendancy Women and Elementary Education in Ireland. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-54639-1_8

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-54639-1_8
Published: 05 June 2017
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-54638-4
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-54639-1
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