The Will of Catherine Bonynge of Ratoath

The Four Courts, 30 June 1922
Photo courtesy NLI Commons

30 June 1922:  Three days into the Battle of Dublin, the first conflict in what will become the Irish Civil War, fire breaks out at the Four Courts, home to the Public Records Office, leaving the building a burned-out shell and destroying most of its 800 years' worth of holdings.  To this day the precise point of origin of the conflagration remains unclear; the building had been under heavy shelling by the Free State army for the previous two days while anti-Treaty Irregulars were holed up inside. The one indisputable fact of the destruction of the Four Courts is that much of Ireland's official recorded history went with it, including nearly all of the wills held by the Principal Registry.  This background is necessary to explain why the survival of any of Catherine Bonynge's will, let alone as large a portion of it as we have, is somewhat remarkable.

Catherine Bonynge (or Bonnynge) was one of the two sisters memorialized at Glasnevin Cemetery by Dr. Laurence O'Reilly of Ratoath, Meath, buried in the same plot as Dr. O'Reilly and his brother and (possibly?) sister, James and Bridget O'Reilly.  She and her sister, Bridget Bonynge, were spinsters who lived at Ratoath, and evidently owned quite a bit of Dublin real estate.  Both died within days of one another at Ratoath in 1841, and were buried together in Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin, beneath a monument bearing their names and Dr. O'Reilly's.  The Prerogative Court, which proved Irish wills until the Principal Registry was established in 1858, did leave a surviving index of the wills recorded there, and shows that both Bridget and Catherine left wills.  Those originals would have been among the records destroyed by the Four Courts Fire in 1922, but a hefty portion of Catherine Bonynge's will survives, published with other Irish charitable bequests, among the Parliamentary session papers of 22 January-28 August 1846.  Unfortunately, whatever relationship existed between the Bonynge and O'Reilly families remains unanswered by this portion, though it is not outside the realm of possibility that Dr. O'Reilly may even be the unnamed executor.  Whatever questions it leaves unanswered aside, one thing it does provide us with is a small historical window into Dublin in the first half of the 19th century.  I have reproduced the surviving text in full and annotated it below: