Castle Leslie
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History
The Leslies can trace their ancestry back to Atilla The Hun.
The first Leslie came from Scotland and was a Hungarian nobleman
Bartholomew Leslie who was the chamberlain and protector of Margaret
Queen Of Scotland. It is through him that the family motto Grip
Fast originated. While fleeing enemies Queen Margaret rode pillion
on the back of Bartholomew's horse. When fording a river the
queen fell off, Bartholomew through her the end of his belt and
told her to grip fast the buckle. He saved the Queen's life &
from that day forward she bestowed the motto Grip Fast on the
Leslies. The first Leslie to come to Ireland was Bishop John
Leslie who was Bishop of the Isles of Scotland. In June 1633
he was translated (it seems that only bishops and foreign languages
can be translated) to Raphoe in Donegal where he built Raphoe
Castle. At the age of 67 the Bishop married a young girl; Catherine
Cunningham. They had five children two of whom lived to adulthood.
Bishop John Leslie was known as the 'fighting bishop' and defeated
Cromwell's forces at the Battle Of Raphoe. On the Restoration
of Charles II, the Bishop then 90 rode from Chester to London
in twenty four hours. As a reward for his loyalty the King granted
him £2000. In 1665 Glaslough Castle and Demesne was sold
by Sir Thomas Ridgeway to the Bishop of Clogher John Leslie.
The Bishop died at the age of 100 in 1671. The original deed
to the Castle is in the family archives.
The Bishop's son John then
26 years of age inherited the estate but very little is known
of him he except that he never married and that he was Dean of
Dromore. His brother Charles succeeded him but being then seventy
one years of age he only enjoyed the estate for a few short months
and died the following year. Charles was a theologian with a
fury. Oliver Goldsmith mentions him as an arguer of some wit
and Dr. Samuel Johnson wrote of him that 'he was reasoner not
to be reasoned with'. Charles who was a non juror whose bitter
attacks on the penal laws and spirited defence of the Catholics
deeply offended King William. Today he would surely have been
an editor of 'Private Eye' or producer of 'Spitting Image'. All
this led to his arrest for high treason but he managed to give
his captors the slip and flee to France. When King Billy died,
George I pardoned him and said ''let the old man go home to Glaslough
to die'. He left three children Robert, Henry & Vinegar Jane.
Henry & Robert were great friends of Dean Swift who was a
regular visitor to the Castle on his way to Armagh. He wrote
many verses about the Leslie's not all of them complimentary.
Some of them went like this;
Robin (Robert) to a
beggar with curse
Will throw the last shilling in his purse
But when the Coachman comes for pay
That rogue must wait another day.
Or
Here I am In Castle
Leslie
With Rows And Rows Of Books Upon The Shelves
Written By The Leslies
All About Themselves.
Charles Powell Leslie I took over the estate in 1743. Charles
was a man of most remarkable common-sense and practical ideas.
He devoted himself to the improvement of farming methods in the
district. He was elected M.P. for Hillsborough in 1771 and M.
P. for Monaghan in 1776. In 1779 he became very active in the
great Volunteer movement and was colonel of the Trough Volunteers.
In 1783 Grattan's Parliament was established (under pressure
from 80,000 Volunteers). Charles represented the County Of Monaghan
and in his election speech of 1783 stated ''I desire a more equal
representation of the people and a tax upon our Absentee Landlords''.
They say that the Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields
of Eton. More likely was it won at Castle Leslie, when Charles
Powell Leslie decided to help his impoverished brother -in-law,
Lord Mornington, professor of Music at TCD to educate his son
Arthur. Had he not done so Arthur would never have grown up to
become the famous Duke Of Wellington and defeat Napoleon at Waterloo.
We would have passed the years since 1814 coping with EEC bureaucracy,
speaking compulsory French and enduring good cooking.. Charles
died with the Parliament he had honourably fought to maintain
in 1800 and was one of the few landlords to refuse Castlereagh's
bribe of a peerage to vote for the Act of Union with Britain
in 1800.
His son Charles II
Powell Leslie took over the estate but died shortly before the
years of the Great Hunger. He was a keen amateur architect designing
the present farm buildings and the fairy tale gate lodge which
looks down the lake to the castle. His widow Helen ran the estate
during the time of the famine. She was a very able lady and managed
to feed all the people on the estate. She had a famine wall built
around the estate to provide work (this was not to keep the Leslie's
in as some people have suggested) and set up soup kitchens to
provide food for the starving. She continued to run the estate
most capably until her son Charles Powell Leslie III came of
age. Charles Powell Leslie III simply loved big house parties
and wanted to entertain on the Grand scale. His taste in architecture
ran from 'Free Range Gothic' 'Early Taj Mahal' 'Late Rothschild'
'Bahnhof Baroque' and 'Jacobean Bloody'. Some of his plans included
a cut price copy of the French Chateau de Chambord at least six
times larger than the present house and a nine storied gothic
tower in the middle of the lake reachable only by Venetian gondolas.
Although Charles Powell Leslie III never married he achieved
a number of quite successful erections among them the Grain Merchant
Store in Glaslough village and the entrance lodges at the main
gates to the Castle. Sadly for Charles but fortunately for Leslie
family finances he choked on a fish bone before he could realise
any of his major architectural fantasies. He died in 1871 and
the building of a new castle was left to his brother John.
John Leslie (later
to become Sir John Leslie 1st Baronet of Glaslough). was a fine
painter of the Pre Raphelite school. It was he who at the insistence
of his pretty young wife Constance built the Castle. Constance
was the daughter of Minnie Seymour who was supposed to be George
IV's daughter by Mrs. Fitzherbert. You could say the family are
related to royalty on the wrong side of the banquet. While it
was being built she and here husband went on a Grand Tour and
collected much of the present furniture in the house. It has
a strong Italian influence with many pieces form the 16th and
17th century. As Sir John grew older Lady Constance could bear
the sight of him no more and designed an enormous floral table
ornament which effectively hid her husband from view at the dinner
table.. She called it ''un cache marie'' (hide husband). Following
their Golden Wedding in 1910 they moved to Manchester square
in London where Sir John died in 1916. On her death Lady Constance
was seen by servants walking around the Castle. She died in London
on the same day in 1925.
Finances took a dive
when on the advice of the Queen's financial advisor Sir Ernest
Cassell the Leslies invested their compenstion money from the
Wyndham Land Acts in Russian Railway Bonds. That was in 1917.
The rest is history. Sir John Leslie 2nd Baronet was the only
son of five children the other four being girls. He was a great
wit and raconteur but not quite so good a painter as his father.
He married the delightful Leonie Jerome whose stunning elder
sister Jenny married Lord Randolph Churchill. Both sisters were
brilliant pianists and pupils of Czerny. The Bechstein piano
in the Drawing Room was specially chosen for her by the famous
concert pianist Padeweski and is over 100 years old. There are
many of the Churchill's 'hand me downs' in the Castle as the
Leslies were considered the poor relations. Though Jennie was
the family beauty, Leonie enchanted young and old alike with
her wit. sympathy and sound advice until she died in 1943. On
her death bed she was constantly attended to by nurses around
the clock. On her last night while the nurse was dosing off an
elderly woman approached Leonie, spoke to her and left the room.
The nurse passed no remarks as she thought it was one of the
family. Leonie died peacefully in her sleep. After the funeral
everyone was sitting in the Dining Room when the nurse remarked
that the lady in the portrait to the left of the fireplace (Lady
Constance) was the one who had visited Leonie on her death bed.
Lady Constance had died in 1925. Sir John Leslie 2nd Baronet
died in 1944.
Sir Shane Leslie 3rd
Baronet, Irish Speaker, author, poet and ardent nationalist became
a Catholic and stood as Nationalist candidate for Derry in the
1910 election losing by a mere 59 votes to the Duke of Abercorn.
He then decided to leave the sinful world and retreat into a
monastery none of which went down very well with his Protestant
family., who were delighted when he met and married an American
beauty, Majorie Ide of Vermont and forgot all about the priesthood.
Majories father Henry Clay Ide was Chief Justice of Samoa, a
tropical paradise where he and his daughters became great friends
of fellow islander Robert Louis Stevenson. Ide was Governor General
of the Philippines and lived with his family in the Malacanan
Palace which is now apparently a museum for all Mrs. Marcos'
shoes. Finding the prosaic business of running an estate uncreative
and boring the poetic Sir Shane transferred the property to his
eldest son John Norman Leslie who became the 4th Baronet. Owing
to ill health from five years in a prisoner of war camp he made
the estate over to his sister Anita and lived the next 40 years
in Rome until his return home to Castle Leslie in 1994 where
he still lives.
Anita Leslie-King the
biographer had a distinguished war career. She joined the French
Army as an ambulance driver and at times actually drove her ambulance
behind enemy lines to rescue Frenchmen from the notorious prison
work camps for which General de Gaulle awarded her two Croixes
de Guerre. She married Bill King the famous submarine commander.
In the 1960's she moved to Oranmore in Galway and made over Glaslough
to her younger brother Desmond. Desmond, one of the few surviving
wartime Spitfire pilots, is also an author and composer of electronic
music. During the war he destroyed a number of aircraft, most
of which he was piloting at the time. In the 1950's he was the
first to realise that UFO's have always been with us and in his
world best seller 'Flying Saucers Have Landed' was the first
book to record human contact with an alien. In 1991 he handed
the Castle over to his five children and the Castle is now run
by his daughter Samantha.
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