CADOGAN, William (1601-61), of Galmoystown, Kells, co. Meath.

The Cadogans of Pembrokeshire claimed descent from Cydwgan, a Welsh prince of the twelfth century. By the end of the sixteenth century the family had acquired interests across the Bristol Channel in Somerset, and had extended their Welsh land-holdings into Monmouthshire and Glamorgan. William Cadogan, whose father was seated at Llanbedr Felffre in Pembrokeshire, was born at Cardiff, and always considered himself a Welshman, although his career was almost entirely concerned with the affairs of Ireland.24Collins’s Peerage of England, v. 410-1; Herbert Corresp. 103; HMC Ormonde, o.s. ii. 85; R. Morgan, The Welsh and the Shaping of Early Modern Ire. (Woodbridge, 2014), 123, 128. Cadogan came to Dublin before 1630, and a few years joined the administration of Lord Deputy Wentworth (Sir Thomas Wentworth†), working first as a clerk under the lord deputy’s secretary, Thomas Little, and from 1636 as secretary to the master of the rolls, Sir Christopher Wandesforde.25CSP Ire. 1633-47, p. 229; McGrath, Biographical Dict. His attachment to Wentworth’s regime increased over the next few years: he was on intimate terms with Little and other civil servants, such as Robert Carr, by the late 1630s; his election for Monaghan borough in 1640 was probably through Wandesforde’s influence; and he seems to have been commissioned as captain in the Irish army (and provost marshal of Meath, Louth and Drogheda) shortly afterwards.26Herbert Corresp. 103; HMC Ormonde, o.s. ii. 1-4; McGrath, Biographical Dict.; CJI i. 219. However, when the Wentworth regime fell in late 1640, Cadogan was quick to disassociate himself from it. In contrast to the first three sessions of the Irish Parliament, when his activity had been nominal, in the fourth and fifth sessions (from January 1641) he was one of the most active members.27Perceval-Maxwell, Outbreak, 130, 134. In April 1641 he closely monitored the attainder proceedings in Westminster, and in June he was one of the committee which drew up charges against Sir George Radcliffe, Bishop Bramhall of Derry, and other Straffordians.28HMC Ormonde, o.s. ii. 2-3; CSP Ire. 1633-47, p. 309; Perceval- Maxwell, Outbreak, 167, 323. Cadogan’s pragmatism may have been influenced by the desire to continue his career in Ireland, where he had made a series of financial investments. During the 1630s he had purchased and leased property in co. Meath sufficient to run a considerable number of livestock (3,000 sheep, 400 cows and 70 horses, according to his own estimate), and also acquired two houses in Dublin in the same period.29TCD, MS 816, f. 223; HMC Ormonde, o.s. i. 154.

On the outbreak of the Irish rebellion in October 1641, Cadogan was in Dublin, but hearing of the plot he immediately returned to co. Meath, where he witnessed at first-hand some of the ensuing violence. His own house at Galmoystown was attacked, and his livestock stolen.30TCD, MS 816, f. 223. Initially he acted with some of his fellow magistrates in arresting some known troublemakers, but it soon became clear that the rebellion was not a local phenomenon.31Perceval-Maxwell, Outbreak, 224. By December Cadogan had sought refuge at Drogheda, where his company mustered as part of Sir Henry Tichborne’s regiment, and he joined the mayor of the town in imposing martial law.32HMC Ormonde, o.s. i. 125, 129; ii. 3-4; SP17/H/7, ff. 88, 102v. After the failure of rebel attempts to take Drogheda, Cadogan transferred to Viscount Moore’s regiment at Dundalk, and in the new year of 1643 he was in Dublin ‘about his majesty’s special service’.33TCD, MS 834, f. 26; CSP Ire. 1633-47, p. 789; HMC Ormonde, o.s. i. 135, 140; ii. 16. Cadogan readily served in the marquess of Ormond’s army after the cessation of arms signed with the Confederate Catholics of September 1643, and in May 1644 he was selected to take his company across to England in the king’s service.34HMC Ormonde, o.s. ii. 18. Cadogan may not have left Ireland at this juncture, as by the spring of 1645 he was deputy governor of Trim.35HMC Ormonde, o.s. ii. 20-1. Over the next 18 months, Cadogan faced the increasingly difficult task of policing the truce between the Protestant garrison and their Catholic rivals, and this seems to have brought a gradual change in his political views.36HMC Ormonde, o.s. ii. 20-8, 31-9. As early as September 1645 he told one of Parliament’s Ulster commissioners that he wanted the Irish Protestants to join with the Ulster Scots ‘and make up the slight breach that keeps us asunder from joining together in the persecuting and chastising of those miscreants, who have surfeited with the blood of our nation’. In the same letter he condemned the continuing truce with the rebels, as ‘every man is able to discern how the Irish, to gain time to provide themselves arms and ammunition, have played the poltroons with a good king’.37HMC Ormonde, o.s. ii. 24-5. From this it is clear that Cadogan’s loyalties were beginning to waver, but unlike Viscount Ranelagh (Arthur Jones*) and other Protestant commanders in the west, he was not prepared to join Parliament at this stage. He was still at Trim in June 1646, when news broke of the Ulster Scots’ defeat at Benburb, and he remained under Ormond’s command even after the royalist peace treaty with the Irish Catholics was made public in August of that year.38HMC Ormonde, o.s. ii. 43-7.

Political events would eventually solve Cadogan’s dilemma for him. In October 1646, as Ormond opened formal negotiations with Parliament, Cadogan was moved to Drogheda, where (in November) he was commissioned as provost marshal of cos. Dublin, Westmeath and Louth.39HMC Ormonde, o.s. ii. 48. When Ormond surrendered Dublin and the other garrisons to Parliament in June 1647, Cadogan automatically came under the command of the new governor of Dublin, Colonel Michael Jones, who kept him on as commander of the Trim garrison. In August, Cadogan took part in Jones’s new campaign against the Irish which culminated in spectacular victory at Dungan Hill, not far from Trim.40HMC Egmont, i. 444. Thereafter, Cadogan remained at Trim, and was promoted to the rank of major in 1648.41HMC Ormonde, o.s. ii. 64, 67-8, 72-4, 79, 81, 85; HMC 8th Rep. 592; TCD, MS 844, f. 47. The trial and execution of the king in the winter of 1648-9 seems to have had little practical effect on Jones’s officers. As Matthew Rowe told Cadogan from Dublin on 23 January 1649, news of the trial was unwelcome, but, more importantly, ‘we have greater hopes now than ever ... that Ireland will be looked after effectually’.42HMC Ormonde, o.s. ii. 86-7. In any case, the convergence of the royalist and Catholic forces on Dublin and the out-lying garrisons kept Cadogan preoccupied in the spring of 1649. The Trim garrison was reinforced by George Monck’s* troops, and Cadogan was ordered to harass Ormond’s supply lines as the royalists prepared to besiege Dublin.43HMC Ormonde, o.s. ii. 90-2, 96. This he did to such great effect that it was reported in April that ‘the Irish are more afraid of Cadogan than of their God: they call him the Great God of Trim’.44Cal. Lttrs. relating to N. Wales, 81. Despite his aggressive resistance, Trim soon fell to Ormond’s men, and in late June, Cadogan was one of the defenders at Drogheda when Lord Inchiquin besieged the town, distinguishing himself in a desperate sally against the enemy positions, in which most of his men were captured or killed.45CCSP ii. 16; DIB. Cadogan escaped, and may have reached Dublin in time to take part in Jones’s crushing defeat of Ormond’s forces at Rathmines in August; shortly afterwards he became major of Sir Theophilus Jones’s* horse regiment, continuing in that post until August 1650.46Wanklyn, New Model Army, ii. 195.

After leaving the army, Cadogan lived quietly on his estates in co. Meath. In December 1653 he was appointed as one of the surveyors for setting out lands in co. Louth, in January 1654 he joined the governor of Drogheda, Colonel John Fowke* on a commission to allocate the lands to the officers and soldiers in the barony of Ardee in the same county, and later in the same year he was appointed assessment commissioner for Meath and Louth.47Bodl. Firth c.5, f. 126; Ire. under the Commonwealth, ii. 394; An Assessment for Ire. It was no doubt as a result of his long association with the region that Cadogan was elected as Member for the two counties in August 1654; his fellow MP was Colonel Fowke.48Mercurius Politicus, no. 219 (17-24 Aug. 1654), 3709 (E.809.5); TSP ii. 445. In the Commons Cadogan seems to have been allied to the Old Protestant interest, and in January 1655 sent copies of the ‘act for settling the court of justice’ back to Dublin.49HMC Egmont, i. 564. After the dissolution of Parliament, Cadogan stayed in London, where he struck a deal with a London merchant to purchase adventurers’ lands in his home barony of Navan.50CSP Ire. Adv. 228, 344. He also pushed for the payment of arrears for those (like himself) who had served in Ireland before 1649: his own petition for arrears received a favourable hearing at the protectoral council in April 1655, and thereafter he also certified the claims of Sir Thomas Wharton* and the earl of Kildare.51Add. 46936A, f. 23; CSP Dom. 1655, p. 380. On his return to Ireland, Cadogan was appointed agent (with Chidley Coote and others) for the officers’ widows and orphans who were also seeking land grants in lieu of arrears, and by September 1657 he was in negotiation with the Irish council on their behalf.52CSP Ire. 1647-60, p. 646. Cadogan became further enmeshed with Old Protestant society in the years that followed. His son entered Trinity College Dublin in 1657; he was made sheriff of co. Meath in 1658; and in 1659 he took command of the county militia troop.53Al. Dub.; NAI, Ferguson MS 10, pp. 11, 165; HMC Ormonde, o.s. ii. 247. He joined Dr Henry Jones as representative for co. Meath in the General Convention that assembled in Dublin in March 1660, and shortly afterwards was appointed to the poll money commissions, Cadogan for co. Meath as well as the town of Navan, where he had recently been elected port reeve.54Clarke, Prelude to Restoration, 189-90; Irish Census, 1659, 622-3, 641. Cadogan died at Trim on 14 March 1661, and was buried at Christ Church cathedral, Dublin, a few days later.55Regs. of Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, ed. R. Refrausse and C. Lennon (Dublin, 1998), 92, 121. His eldest son, Henry, who had married a daughter of Sir Hardress Waller*, was the father of the 1st Earl Cadogan.56Collins’s Peerage of England, v. 411.