(6) Manor of Aghivillan and Brochus (2,000 acres).
Granted to John Heron July 23 (??? ) and omitted by Carew. We have no knowledge of events on the lands comprising the above two proportions previous to 1619. In that year Pynnar found that two small bawns of earth with a pallazado upon them and a ditch about them had been built and near to each a number of houses inhabited with English tenants, 13 families in all able to make 26 men with arms.
John Heron died August 1, 1616, and was succeeded by his brother Sir Edward Heron, who joined with his younger brother William in selling the lands to John Dillon March 25, 1620, (Inquisitions of Ulster, Armagh, 5 Car. I), at which time a mansion house of stone and lime 60 feet by 20 feet had been. erected in the townland of Ballenraye by John Dillon and the assigns of John Heron.
The Survey of 1622 shows “Sir John Dillon” (1) in occupation and states – there was then only “one convenient dwelling house of timber rough cast with lime wherein himself and wife with their family do now inhabit” and that there was “no bawne about it.” Leaseholders and cottagers on the lands then totalled 42, but none confirmed in their holdings; 18 Irish families were resident on the two proportions.
By 1630 these lands had passed either by purchase or forfeiture to a “Mr Waldron” who figures in a Muster Roll attributed to that year.(2) There were then 45 tenants on the property capable of bearing arms. That is the earliest reference we have to Waldron’s connection with the manor. He is said to have been of the same stock as Sir Richard Waldron who received a grant in 1610 of 1,000 acres in Co. Cavan.
From a Subsidy Roll of 1634 we learn that John Waldron was then in occupation. Two years later, May 20, 1636, we find that he and his son William had been “admitted into the number of Planters in Ireland.”(3) Besides William above he had a son George of whom later and a daughter Elizabeth who married John Obins of the Manor of Ballevoran and was left a widow by his death April 15, 1635.
John Waldron sometime during the reign of Charles I acquired half of the adjoining Manor of Shanagoolan.(4) He seems to have been dead before 1641. A deposition relative to affairs in that neighbourhood made September 3, 1642, by Mrs. Jane Grace mentions Mr. Waldron and his brothers whose Christian names she “knew not.” Mrs. C. Stanhawe, relict of his neighbour Henry Stanhawe, in her account of July 23, 1642, records “a guard of 100 men on Mr. Waldron’s house,” the “Mr.” in this case being the son William.
A “Mr. Waldron, gent.” figures in the Poll Tax or Census of 1659, presumably William above. From other sources we know that William must have died previous to 1676 but that George was still alive in 1678(5)
William married and had a son William who must have died young, and a daughter Elizabeth who married Gilbert Thacker of Repton in Derbyshire, by whom she had a daughter Jane Thacker, the ultimate heir to the Waldron estate in Co. Armagh.
Jane Thacker was a considerable heiress, having inherited a large fortune from her father as well. She married firstly the Honble. Charles Wottop alias Stanhope, son of Philip, 2nd Earl of Chesterfield, and following his death in 1703 she married secondly Thomas Stanhope of Elvaston, Derbyshire, of the branch of the Stanhopes now represented by the Earl of Harrington. He predeceased her in 1735. She died 1744. There were no children by either marriage so the Armagh property was sold by her trustees, in 1706, to Arthur Brownlow of Lurgan who, by his will dated September 29, 1710, bequeathed it with his Manor of Brownlowsderry and other lands in theseveral counties of Armagh and Monaghan to his son William, thus increasing the, Brownlow lands by another 2,000 acres. One of the parties to, the sale was a Francis Stonard Waldron of Knole Hill, Essex, probably a descendant of the John Waldron of 1630, but of whom we have no further information.
from from “County Armagh In 1622 A Plantation Survey”
Edited byT. G. F. PATERSON, M.A., M.R.I.A. published in Seanchás Ardmhaca