Page:The English Reports v1 1900.pdf/786

Sir Edward Tyrrell, bart. having been out-lawed after his death, on account of the Irish rebellion in 1688, Robert Edgworth, esq. who married Catherine, the only child and heir of Sir Edward, applied to the parliament of England in 1702, for an act to oblige the trustees for Irish forfeitures to reconvey the estate, thentofore the estate of the said Sir Edward, to the said Robert and Catherine, and her heirs; but when a bill for that purpose was allowed to be brought in, instead of having the estate to be conveyed to Robert and Catherine, and the heirs of Catherine, it was contrived to have it conveyed to them and their heirs; though in all other cases where estates were claimed in right of the wife, the conveyance was to the husband and wife, and her heirs.

This artifice and other matters having, after the death of Catherine, occasioned various disputes between the said Robert, who married a second wife, and the appellant his eldest son by Catherine; Packington Edgworth, the appellant's younger brother, taking advantage thereof, did, after the death of Robert, by most unwarrantable and illegal practices, strip the appellant of his inheritance.

Packington Edgworth having died unmarried on the 26th of June 1759, possessed of the manor and lands of Longwood, in the counties of Meath and Kildare, in Ireland, which were part of the appellant's birth-right of which he was deprived; and having left no issue, save some illegitimate children by different women, the appellant, as the oldest brother and heir at law of Packington, and also as heir at law of Robert his father and Catherine his mother, on the 13th of July 1759, entered into the said manor and took possession thereof, and of the demesne lands of which Packington Edgworth died in actual possession, and put his horses to graze thereon: and John Tyrrell, gent. the then seneschal of the manor, having voluntarily surrendered his office, the appellant appointed his second son Newcomen Edgworth, in the place of John Tyrrell; and Newcomen Edgworth thereupon held a court for the manor, at which the said John Tyrrell assisted, and all the te-[28]-nants of the manor attended at such court, and freely attorned to the appellant, and swore fealty to him, as lord of the manor; and no kind of opposition was given to the appellant by any person whatsoever.

Upon the death of Packington one Edward Farrell, on behalf of Mary Moore, the mother of the respondents, who was a Papist, and had for some time lived or cohabited with Packington Edgworth, caused the doors and lower windows of the mansion-house of the said manor to be barricaded and nailed down, and procured a great number of fire arms, and other weapons, by means of other Papists in the neighbourhood, and got a great number of dissolute people of the same persuasion and several bailiffs, setters, and others of bad repute from Dublin, armed with cutlasses, pistols, guns, and blunderbusses, into the house, who received their provision by a basket and rope at the window of the middle story, and threatened the lives of all who dared to approach the house, and forcibly, with strong hand and armed power, detained the house from the appellant, on pretence that the said Mary was the widow of Packington, and refused to deliver up the possession thereof, unless the appellant would come into terms with Mary, and settle a provision on her; though in truth she never was his wife, or married to the said Packington.

The appellant having refused to enter into any treaty with the said Mary or her