Royal Bloods United

King Edward I
was ancestor
to both
Hubert McLaughlin
and his wife
Frederica

THE VERY REVEREND HUBERT McLAUGHLIN, M.A. (1805-82) began his clerical career as domestic chaplain to Edward, 2nd Baron Crofton (1806-89), Representative Peer for Ireland and Lord-in-Waiting to Queen Victoria.

In 1835 Hubert married Lord Crofton's youngest sister, the Honorable Frederica Crofton. The couple are pictured at the top of the page when both were in their sixties. The portrait of Hubert below left is from a decade earlier.

Hubert and Frederica were first blessed with a daughter, Louisa, then, on New Year's Day 1838, with a son, Edward. Both were born in Nice, which was at that time part of the Italian Kingdom of Sardinia. Hubert was the Church of England chaplain in Nice — nice job! But now he abandoned the post, perhaps fearing that his heir would be wafted up to Heaven by the Riviera's notorious malarial miasma.

So Hubert became Rector of Burford, Salop (pronounced Shropshire). The rectorship was divided into three portions. Hubert had the first, which was united with the private curacies of Boraston and Nash, entitling him to live in the Rectory at Boraston (population 176 in 1861) pictured below right.

Fortunately the rectory was big enough in 1851 to accommodate not only Hubert and  Frederica, but also their seven sons, four daughters, one governess (a clergyman's daughter) and seven servants. A decade previously the household had included Hubert's brother Thomas (b. 1802), and Frederia's grand-nephew Adolphus Chichester (1825-55) the son of Lady Augusta Paget by Arthur Chichester, 1st Baron Templemore.

The family used to ride the half mile from the Rectory to Boraston Church (described as "tolerable" in J. M. Wilson's 1870 Imperial Gazetteer). They kept the horses in the stables that can be seen on the right of the picture.

At the front of the house there is a sunken lawn which was used for tennis: still there is the huge old roller which used to be dragged up and down the lawn by a horse wearing leather shoes so that its hooves would not damage the lawn. These days the occupant operates a business from the Old Rectory: its main activity is selling wicker coffins.

Hubert became a Very Reverend Rural Dean in 1843. He was appointed Prebendary of Hunderton in 1857, giving him a choir stall in Hereford Cathedral and an additional benefice.

Hubert wrote a sixpenny Tract on Church Extension, 1851, and Biographical Sketches of Ancient Irish Saints, 1874, 240pp. price 4s.6d. The book ends with a list of subscribers that includes two dukes and a dozen other lords and ladies. Hubert was also a composer of religious anthems, mostly published in 1850, including The 122nd Psalm, as sung at the English Chapel at Nice.

Hubert thought he had both English and Irish royal blood. His father Thomas McLaughlin, claiming an ancestry of god-fearing catholic cattle-rustling horse-thieving Irish Kings, had married Elizabeth Butler, whose family of god-fearing protestant land-grabbing invaders was descended from Edward I, as was Frederica's family. But DNA testing shows that our family has been mistaken in believing that we are descended from the High Kings of Ireland, as detailed on a later page.

Thomas's marriage enabled him to practice law within the Pale, a region in a radius of 20 miles around Dublin fortified against the terrorists whose country the English were occupying. But between 1695 and 1704 the Irish Parliament, influenced by the insecurity of Protestants after two major rebellions in the previous century, had passed laws to "Prevent the Further Growth of Popery." These Penal Laws created a privileged elite, the Protestant Ascendancy. They outlawed the Catholic educational system, and priests who did not conform could be branded on the face or castrated. Catholics were forbidden to own property worth more than £5 and they could not practice law. So Thomas converted to the Church of England and married into the Ascendancy. Not till 1792 was there an Act allowing Catholics to marry Protestants and to practice at the bar.

Hubert's uncle, William Butler, had a grandson of the same name who repeatedly swindled his mother, as reported in The Irish Jurist .

There was also a granddaughter Maria Butler who, at the age of 23, married the one-eyed 57-year-old John Butler who had been the Roman Catholic Bishop of Cork for her entire lifetime. John had inherited the title of Lord Dunboyne and wanted an heir to continue the line. He resigned Holy Orders after in order to marry. But the Pope refused him permission, so John became a protestant.

Alas, Maria's only child died at birth. Writing to the Pope in 1800 Lord Dunboyne asked forgiveness for his apostasy and declared: "With my spouse I have had no cohabitation, except at table, for more than five years." Months later he died, whereupon Maria married her former sweetheart, John Hubert Mooore, a barrister. Widowed again in 1822, she lived on until 1860. For the full story click here.

© 2006 G. Harry McLaughlin.
Reproduction or transmission, in whole or in part, for other than personal use is prohibited without advance permission from Dr. G. H. McLaughlin.