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BERMINGHAM
The medieval Irish lineage of Bermingham (in the
sixteenth century, sometimes written Brimegham) was
a branch of a knightly family resident at Birmingham
in England. The first to appear in Ireland was Robert
de Bermingham, to whom Earl Richard “Strongbow”
granted the Irish kingdom of Offaly. Although Robert
left only a daughter and heiress Eva, wife of Gerald
fitz Maurice (FitzGerald), he seems to have divided
Offaly with a brother, perhaps the William who occurs
circa 1176, the latter receiving the northern part,
known as Tethmoy (Tuath Dhá Mhuigh), in modern
northeastern County Offaly. Tethmoy descended to
Piers de Bermingham (d. 1254), the real founder of
the family in Ireland, and from whom they derived the
Irish surname of “Mac Feorais.” Piers participated in
the occupation of Connacht by Richard de Burgh after
1225, receiving the territories of Dunmore (County
Galway) and Tireragh (County Sligo), while his sec-
ond son Meilir received a separate enfeoffment of
Athenry, where he founded a walled town and a
Dominican friary. Piers’s heir was his grandson, Piers
fitz James de Bermingham of Tethmoy, celebrated by
the colonists as a great warrior against the Gaelic Irish,
but infamous in history for his treacherous massacre
(1305) of the O’Connors of Offaly, who were his
guests. His uncle Meilir married Basilie de Worcester,
heiress of the great Tipperary baronies of Knockgraffon
and Kiltinan, and these lands were to be the subject
of complicated exchanges, difficult to disentangle,
between their son and heir, Piers fitz Meilir of
Athenry, and his cousins of Tethmoy. Another son of
Meilir, William, was archbishop of Tuam from 1289
to 1314.
Piers of Tethmoy’s son, John de Bermingham, as a
reward for defeating Edward Bruce at Faughart in
1318, was created earl of Louth in 1319, with a grant
of liberty authority over that county, and was chief
governor of Ireland from 1321 to 1323. Resentment
against his rule in Louth, with which he had no hered-
itary links, led to his massacre, along with his follow-
ers and many of his Connacht kinsmen, by the local
gentry in 1329. His brother Sir William, who inherited
his lands, was accused in 1331 of plotting with the
first earl of Desmond and others to divide up Ireland
between them and make Desmond king. He was
imprisoned with his son Walter (d. 1350) by the new
English governor Sir Anthony Lucy, and hanged in- Walter was released, pardoned, and reinstated,
becoming chief governor of Ireland (1346–1349), in
which capacity he made a last, briefly successful
attempt to reestablish the royal authority in Connacht.
The direct Tethmoy line ended with his son, another
Walter, in 1361. Most of Tethmoy was retaken by the
O’Connors, while a collateral line of Berminghams,
rejecting royal authority and the claims of the Preston
family, heirs of Walter’s sister, established an autono-
mous Gaelicized lordship in the adjacent lands of
Carbury (County Kildare), which lasted until 1548.
They figure through the fifteenth century alternately
as ravaging Meath in company with the O’Connors
and as allies of the English against them, while suc-
cession to the lordship passed in the Gaelic manner by
“tanistry” between several lines.
Richard de Bermingham of Athenry (d. 1322), son
of Piers fitz Meilir, was later remembered for his great
defeat of the Gaelic Irish of Connacht at Athenry
(1316); he was, however, married to a Gaelic wife,
the mother of his successor Thomas (d. 1375). During
the latter’s time the Bermingham lands in Connacht,
now concentrated in the hands of the Athenry family,
suffered severe losses: Tireragh was recovered by its
Gaelic lords, the O’Dowdas, while the O’Kellys—
who inflicted a severe defeat on Thomas in 1372—
subsequently occupied much of the Athenry territory,
reducing the Bermingham lordship to Dunmore and a
small area around Athenry. Knockgraffon and Kiltinan,
after being held by a junior branch, reverted briefly
to Thomas’s son, the long-lived Walter (d. 1431),
before being sold to the Butlers in 1410. Walter of
Athenry, who served as sheriff of Connacht, was
knighted by Richard II at Waterford in 1394, but
thereafter the family’s links with the English admin-
istration disappear. On the death in 1473 of Walter’s
son Thomas, the latter’s son and namesake had to
contend in turn with two cousins, one of whom—the
son of a Richard who had died in 1438—succeeded
in ousting him for a year. It is obvious that the lord-
ship of Athenry in spite of being recognized as a
peerage dignity by the Crown—perhaps a recognition
of the former importance of the Bermingham name—
was starting to pass by Gaelic modes of succession.
After the death of the younger Thomas’s son Meilir
Buidhe(the yellow-haired) in 1529, the lordship passed
to a Thomas whose descent is unclear, and then to
Richard (a descendant of the Richard of 1438), who
consolidated his position by killing his namesake,
Meiler’s son, and whose descendants continued as
lords of Athenry.
BARDIC SCHOOLS, LEARNED FAMILIES