Here for many generations his descendants lived, for the most part taking
an active share in the wars and disturbances which, with scarcely an
interval of rest, agitated the country.
The castle had continued to deserve its name until forty years before the
time this story commences, when Cromwell's gunners had battered a breach
in it, and left it a heap of smoking ruins. Walter Davenant had died,
fighting to the last, in his own hall. At that time, the greater part of
his estate was bestowed upon officers and soldiers in Cromwell's army,
among whom no less than four million acres of Irish land were divided.
Had it not been that Walter Davenant's widow was an Englishwoman, and a
relation of General Ireton, the whole of the estate would have gone; but
his influence was sufficient to secure for her the possession of the
ruins of her home, and a few hundred acres surrounding it. Fortunately,
the dowry which Mrs. Davenant had brought her husband was untouched, and
a new house was reared within the ruins of the castle, the new work being
dovetailed with the old.
The family now consisted of Mrs. Davenant, a lady sixty-eight years old;
her son Fergus, who was, when Cromwell devastated the land, a child of
five years; his wife Katherine, daughter of Lawrence McCarthy, a large
landowner near Cork; and their two sons, Walter, a lad of sixteen, and
Godfrey, twelve years old.
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