AUNGIER, Francis, Lord Aungier of Longford (c.1632-1700), of Whitefriars, Dublin.

The Aungier family had originated in Cambridgeshire, but during Elizabeth I’s reign Francis senior (the MP’s grandfather) became a London lawyer, an MP and a landowner in Surrey. Under James I he moved to Ireland and was appointed master of the rolls and privy councillor in 1609.14F. Elrington Ball, The Judges in Ireland, 1221-1921 (2 vols. New York, 1927), i. 322. During the next 20 years he increased his influence in Ireland, through his family links with Sir Oliver St John and his patron, the 1st duke of Buckingham, who secured him the grant of a handsome estate in co. Longford and the title baron of Longford in 1621.15V. Treadwell, Buckingham and Ireland (Dublin, 1998), 51, 55, 135. Francis senior, although a rank outsider in Irish society, had gained social acceptance through his first marriage, to the sister of the 14th earl of Kildare. He took his obligations towards the Fitzgerald family very seriously. When the 14th earl died in 1612, Francis senior oversaw the wardship of the infant 15th earl, and when the title passed to a cousin, the 16th earl, in 1620 he again took a leading role in securing the inheritance by arranging a marriage with the daughter of the wealthy and powerful 1st earl of Cork.16Treadwell, Buckingham, 118-21; PRONI, D. 3078/3/1/5, pp. 3-4, 9-10, 17, 20; NLI, MS 13237(9). He also helped to sort out the claims of the dowager countess and intervened in disputes over the wardship of Gerald Fitzgerald of the Decies in co. Waterford.17Chatsworth, Cork Letterbook I, p. 350; CSP Ire. 1625-32, p. 394; 1647-60, p. 120; Lismore Pprs. ser. 1, iii. 143. Francis senior died in 1632, and the barony passed to his eldest son, Gerald, who died unmarried in 1655, and was in turn succeeded by his nephew, Francis junior.18CSP Ire. 1625-32, p. 674.

The younger Francis Aungier was born in or around 1632. His father, Dr Ambrose Aungier, was a leading Church of Ireland clergyman, who had married a daughter of the archbishop of Dublin, and was rector of Callan, co. Kilkenny, by the early 1630s. He may have owed his living to the 12th earl of Ormond, who was the dominant figure in Callan, and whose residence at Kilkenny Castle was only eight miles away. In July 1635 Ormond and his wife leased further lands in Kilkenny to Aungier.19NLI, D. 3994. Ormond seems to have recognised the closeness of the Butlers and the Fitzgeralds (who, despite their traditional rivalry, had intermarried in the past) and treated his new neighbours with courtesy, preserving their Dublin house from the attentions of the soldiery during the mid-1640s.20HMC Ormonde, o.s. i. 152. By the outbreak of the Irish rebellion in October 1641, Ambrose Aungier was chancellor of St Patrick’s Cathedral, and held lands at Ratoath in co. Meath as well as in Kilkenny.21TCD, MS 809, f. 291; 1641 Depositions website; CSP Ire. 1633-47, pp. 594, 701-2. During the Irish wars Ambrose remained loyal to Ormond and the Church of Ireland, and in June 1647 signed the protest of the Dublin clergy against the order of the parliamentary commissioners banning the Book of Common Prayer.22St J.D. Seymour, The Puritans in Ire. (Oxford, 1921), 3.

With the deaths of his father in 1654 and his uncle a year later, Francis Aungier came into his inheritance, and the barony, in his early twenties. In the second half of the 1650s, Aungier joined the Old Protestant group which supported Henry Cromwell’s* reform programme, and he had connections throughout Ireland. In January 1655, for example, his sister married Sir James Cuffe of Ballinrobe, co. Mayo, whose family had links with that of Sir Charles Coote*, whose wife was a Cuffe.23Lodge, Peerage, iii. 38n. In June 1657 Aungier was nominated as one of the assessment commissioners for co. Longford.24An Assessment for Ire. In the following December, when an award was made by Arthur Annesley* and Arthur Hill* in the land dispute between Robert Parkhurst and George Rawdon* in Ulster, Aungier was one of the witnesses.25CSP Ire. 1647-60, p. 659. In 1658 he joined many other Old Protestants in signing the proclamation of Richard Cromwell* as protector.26TSP vii. 383-4. Aungier’s election for Westmeath, Longford and King’s Counties in 1659 was presumably on his own interest as one of the largest landowners in Longford, but he may also have benefited from the backing of Henry Cromwell. Once at Westminster he took little part in proceedings, but he continued to support the protectorate. His one committee appointment was an important one - to the committee considering the manner of transacting with the Other House, and he maintained a regular correspondence with Henry Cromwell throughout the session.27CJ vii. 627a.

Of Aungier’s correspondence with Henry, six letters survive, all of which contain detailed information about political events at Westminster. In February and early March 1659 Aungier sent news that the commonwealthsmen planned to topple the protectorate, and gave accurate information about their opposition to the Other House, including the involvement of ‘Praise God Barbon’s* gang’ from the City of London, and the increasing restlessness of the army.28Henry Cromwell Corresp. 454, 455-6, 468n; Lansdowne 823, f. 241. On 22 March he reassured Henry Cromwell that the Irish, like the Scots, would soon be confirmed in their right to sit at Westminster: ‘One grand difficulty we have removed this week, and I am no way doubtful, but that tomorrow will remove another of the like nature’.29Henry Cromwell Corresp. 481. The vote to admit the Irish MPs was duly passed on 23 March. In April he reported on the increasing factionalism in the Commons, and related how he had penetrated the opposition’s meetings, as those who ‘are not noted for discoursers’ and ‘want years or judgement’, were not perceived as a threat.30Henry Cromwell Corresp. 497-8. On 18 April he sent his last letter, which dealt with the travails of ‘our learned doctor’ – Dr William Petty*, who faced a parliamentary investigation at this time.31Henry Cromwell Corresp. 501. The obsequious tone of some of these letters was perhaps due to Aungier’s courting of a lady very close to Henry Cromwell: he refers to ‘that lady to whom my person was so ungrateful’, and expressed the hope that ‘alms will reconcile with my enemy’, adding ‘thus (sir) I have made you my confessarius’.32Henry Cromwell Corresp. 480. The identity of the lady in question is uncertain, although remarks made by Sir Francis Russell* in December 1658, and Aungier’s repeated request, in February and March 1659, that Henry Cromwell present his service to ‘Mrs Russell’, suggest that his paramour was Katherine Russell, the unmarried younger sister of Lady Cromwell.33Lansdowne 823, f. 241; Henry Cromwell Corresp. 428, 455. Such a marriage would certainly enhance Aungier’s position in Ireland; but the match, like the regime, had but a short time to live.

The collapse of the protectorate in May 1659 hastened the move of some of Aungier’s associates, including Arthur Annesley, into the royalist camp. Their principal contact was the marquess of Ormond, who was in exile with Charles II on the continent. Despite his close association with the Cromwells, it is possible that Aungier’s permission to pass ‘beyond seas’, granted in July 1659, involved more than just a return journey to Ireland.34CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. 561. There is no doubt that, after his return to Dublin, Aungier established contact with Ormond and his friends.35Irish Census, 1659, 365. On 17 April 1660 he wrote to Charles II, offering his services in the Convention Parliament (for which he had been elected as MP for Surrey).36CCSP iv. 642, 663. This letter was enclosed in one sent to Ormond, in which Aungier reminded the marquess of the long-standing friendship between their families.37Bodl. Carte 214, f. 48. The king replied on 3 May, acknowledging Aungier’s loyalty.38CCSP v. 6. In the meantime, Aungier had again written to Ormond, asking him to assure the king of the loyalty of Sir Charles Coote and his friends in Ireland, and at the end of May he warned the marquess that other Old Protestants, led by the Presbyterian Sir John Clotworthy*, were concerned at the degree of influence that Catholics would have in a new Irish Parliament.39Bodl. Carte 30, ff. 651, 657, 667, 669; Clarke, Prelude to Restoration, 290, 296-7. Aungier’s attempts to mediate demonstrate his closeness to the Old Protestants of the General Convention and the strength of his inherited ties with Ormond.

After the restoration of the king, Aungier reaped his reward. In December he was nominated as privy councillor in Ireland; in January 1661 he became governor of Westmeath and Longford and captain of a troop of horse; and thereafter he acquired numerous posts and land grants from the crown.40CSP Ire. 1660-2, pp. 141, 203, 211, 218, 306, 341, 346. In 1661 Aungier was elected for the Cavalier Parliament as MP for Arundel alongside the earl of Orrery (Roger Boyle*), and he retained many of his Old Protestant contacts in later years, but during the post-restoration period his main patron was the duke of Ormond: a connection which he cemented in 1678 when he took for his second wife the widow of Ormond’s youngest son, the earl of Gowran. After Ormond’s death in 1688, Aungier’s career faltered. He tried to work with James II and sat in the Irish Parliament of 1689, but he was shunned by the earl of Tyrconnell and eventually defected to William III. The war had ruined his estates, and in the last years of his life his finances were shaky. Aungier died childless in 1700 and was buried in St Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin. He was succeeded by his younger brother, Ambrose, whose death in 1704 rendered the earldom extinct.41CP; DIB; Lodge, Peerage, iii. 38n.