Kirjahaku

Benedict Arthur was just seventeen when he wed Catherine Hacket. She was at least thirty-eight. The year was 1712 and the allegations of seduction and abduction that followed their secret marriage would lead to a famously bitter legal battle that would take almost two decades to resolve. Unable to divorce, it would not be until Catherine's death, in 1749, that Benedict could finally legitimise his mistress and children and move them into the magnificent Palladian villa that he had built on the shores of the Broadmeadow Estuary, close to the village of Donabate. This is the story of the origins of Seafield House, and how the Arthurs of Great Cabragh became the Arthurs of Seafield.

One of the most divisive figures in Irish history, the Rev. Matthew Pilkington once allegedly attempted to sell his children into slavery and pimp out his wife to his libertine friends in order to procure a divorce. For almost thirty-three years, he laboured as Anglican Vicar of Donabate, his time and attention frequently absorbed less in the spiritual needs of his ever-diminishing flock, than in the creation of his famous Dictionary of Painters - the first handbook of connoisseurship to be written in English. He also helped to establish the famous Cobbe Art Collection at Newbridge House. Latterly regarded by Jonathan Swift (his former mentor) as 'the falsest rogue' in the kingdom, Matthew Pilkington's story has historically been overshadowed by that of his wife, Laetitia, a woman who, for more than two centuries, has provoked more than her fair share of scandal, folklore and academic debate. Matthew, however, had a life after Laetitia and left a legacy of his own. This is his story.

For more than 120 years Seafield, a large estate bordering the village of Donabate in north County Dublin, had been the family seat of the Arthures, a wealthy and influential family that owned, at least on paper, a considerable portion of inner city Dublin. In 1849, however, in the space of a single year, their loans were called in, a receiver was appointed, and they lost everything. The event that appears to have precipitated this dramatic reversal of fortune was the killing of one Thomas Towson and the dogged determination of police inspector Robert Walpole to see Benedict Arthure stand trial for the crime. This is the story of Walpole's investigation, the early days of the G-Men (the Detective Division of the Dublin Metropolitan Police), and the demise of the Arthures of Seafield.

William Kelly was a modernizing influence on Irish farming whose tillage practices and self-invented mangelwurzel bread helped save many lives in Donabate and Portrane during the Great Famine. A leading light in the tenants' rights leagues of the 1870s, he was a council member of the Irish Home Rule League, one of the founding fathers of the Land League and a signatory to a pivotal document of Irish history. A champion of the poor, he was largely forgotten following his death in 1881.