Trevor, Marcus (1618–1670), 1st Viscount Dungannon, army officer and royalist, was born 15 April 1618 at Rostrevor, Co. Down, the eldest son of Sir Edward Trevor's marriage (his second) to Rose, daughter of Henry Ussher (qv), archbishop of Armagh. Sir Edward was originally from Brynkynault in Denbighshire, north Wales, and had settled in Ireland at the turn of the seventeenth century. Marcus entered the Inner Temple in November 1634, but declined to pursue a legal career. Returning home, he married in August 1636 Frances, daughter and coheir of Sir Marmaduke Whitechurch of Loughbrickland, Co. Down. This match gained him an estate of some 1,000 acres in Cos. Louth, Armagh and Down. Reflecting his family's prominence among the local protestant gentry, he sat as MP for Downpatrick in 1640–41.
Military and dynastic turmoil in Ireland and Wales 1641–3
His father had acquired a 16,000-acre estate scattered across south and west Down mainly by providing loans secured on land, which he would later foreclose on, to the perpetually cash-strapped members of the Magennis family who had previously been the Gaelic sovereigns of the region. This process was accompanied by considerable sharp practice on the part of Sir Edward who ruthlessly and illegally exploited his position as a government official. Nonetheless, relations with the Magennises were for long outwardly amicable until the outbreak of the catholic rebellion in October 1641, when they violently attempted to recover what they regarded as their rightful property. Con Magennis and his partisans seized Sir Edward (who was later rescued by Scottish forces) at Newry on 23 October and sent his now former friend Marcus Trevor, now a member of the royal garrison at Downpatrick, a half-apologetic, half-threatening letter on 30 October. In December the government authorised Marcus to raise and command a troop of dragoons (mounted infantry) with which to resist the rebels. With the family estates lying in an effective no-mans-land, he probably based himself and his troop further south along the Ulster–Leinster border during 1642–3 as the conflict settled into a grim stalemate.
Events in Ireland were overshadowed in autumn 1642 by the outbreak of civil war in England. Trevor's family connections marked him out as a staunch royalist: his half brother Arthur was a prominent member of Prince Rupert's entourage and a close friend of James Butler (qv), earl of Ormond, who was the effective leader of the royalist party in Ireland. Marcus joined a detachment of protestant troops sent from Ireland in 1643 to assist royalist forces in north Wales and appears in an encounter with parliamentarians at Shropshire on 18 October. He served as a major in a regiment of horse.
Meanwhile Sir Edward had died in early 1643; his will, apparently drawn up in captivity in February 1642, seemed to give precedence in his inheritance to Marcus. This was unusual given that Marcus had two older half brothers John and Arthur. However, both John and Arthur, having developed significant private and political interests on the other side of the Irish Sea, showed neither the inclination nor aptitude for undertaking the perilous task of salvaging the Trevor estates in Down. Marcus was a different proposition and his father, who had probably glimpsed his precocious martial qualities, may have granted him the long-term custody of or a life interest in much of his property to encourage him to persevere in Ireland. But it is possible that Sir Edward may, as would be expected, have left most of his estates to his eldest son John and that after John's death in autumn 1643 Marcus and Arthur colluded in seizing the inheritance of their brother's young and son Edward, who had an intellectual disability.
Military service in Wales, England and Ireland 1643–8
Benefiting from his military service in Ireland, Marcus impressed in a series of skirmishes with parliamentarian forces in north Wales, which led to his promotion in early 1644 to the rank of colonel within Prince Rupert's regiment of horse, the elite corps of the royalist army. He fought as such at the battle of Marston Moor in July 1644 where, according to the grant of an earldom he received eighteen years later, he ‘personally incountred that Arch Rebell and Tyrant, Oliver Cromwell [qv], and wounded him with his sword’ (GEC, Peerage, iv, 535). Later that year Trevor acted as governor of Ruthin castle in north Wales before being assigned in 1645 to serve under the prince of Wales (the future Charles II) at Bristol.
By then he had established a reputation as a dashing and courageous cavalry officer. His bravado on the battlefield was complemented by canny self-promotion off it, and he made sure through his brother Arthur that the king and his chief advisers were informed of his military feats. During the course of 1645, the royalists were driven deeper into the west country. Penned into Cornwall in spring 1646, he sought terms on his own behalf and surrendered to the victorious parliamentarians at Oxford in late June 1646.
The parliamentarians dispatched him to Ireland to assist in crushing the still-ongoing catholic rebellion. By May 1647 Trevor was serving as a colonel in Co. Louth and he quickly proved his mettle by leading a series of raids on catholic-controlled territories in south Ulster. In July he was injured after being part of a small party ambushed by catholic forces at Balrothery in Co. Dublin, but recovered to fight with distinction on 8 August at the battle of Dungan's Hill in Co. Meath where the Leinster army of the confederate catholics was annihilated. In April 1648 the Dundalk-based parliamentarian commander George Monck (qv) made him governor of Carlingford, to the concern of many at Westminster who felt that his true loyalties lay with the king.
Royalist rebel 1649–50
These fears were well founded. By early 1649 Trevor was communicating with Ormond, who had recently returned to Ireland to rally the king's supporters. Employing Monck's treaty with General Owen Roe O'Neill (qv) of the catholic Ulster Army as a convenient pretext, he defected to the royalists in May 1649 and immediately participated in the successful royalist siege of Drogheda in June. In July he led a regiment of horse to Dundalk, where they scattered 800 men from O'Neill's army, who were returning from the town with munitions given to them by Monck. This defeat forced O'Neill to withdraw and made a successful defence of Dundalk impossible. Monck surrendered soon afterwards and Trevor became governor of the town in his stead.
Following Ormond's unsuccessful assault on Dublin in August, he was installed with his regiment at Ardee, Co. Louth, but was powerless to aid the ill-fated royalist garrison at Drogheda when Oliver Cromwell (qv) led his main field army against it in mid September. His cavalry than tracked a detachment of Cromwell's army under Colonel Robert Venables (qv) that proceeded north into Ulster and surprised it in a night-time assault at Dromore, Co. Down, on 26 September. However, the negligence of some of his captains enabled the parliamentarians to regroup and counter-attack at daybreak forcing him to fight a desperate rearguard action before escaping. On 1 November he was shot in the stomach in an engagement at Glascarrig, Co. Wexford, and carried badly wounded to Kilkenny. After a period of convalescence, he was made lieutenant general of the horse for the royalist army. However it was apparent that Cromwell had broken the back of the royalist resistance in Ireland: by March 1650 he was negotiating his surrender and after receiving assurances he submitted at Dublin in April. This was an inauspicious finale to his active military career, the main characteristics of which had been decisively shaped by his martial blooding in Ireland during 1641–43 where a chaotic, highly informal mode of warfare prevailed. An outstanding horseman, he excelled at leading his cavalry in executing surprise attacks on his opponents, giving them little or no time to prepare for the onslaught. But due to his lack of professional training he was less suited to large set piece battles, which required close coordination with the rest of the royalist army and tested the combatants resolve to the limit. His undoubted physical courage (he was wounded at least three times) could not compensate for his troops’ indiscipline when put under pressure, and in several instances they became discouraged and fled precipitately. The final campaigns against Cromwell's forces in Ireland in autumn 1649 exposed his limitations as a military leader as the initial advantage gained by catching his opponents unawares was thrown away by poor organisation (Dromore) and the inability of his men to overwhelm well-trained, battle-hardened infantry prepared to stand up to them (Glascarrig).
Relations with the Cromwells 1650–60
He appears to have secured reasonable terms and was permitted to retire to his family property in Down. However, the parliamentarians confiscated the estates he held in England and Wales, providing him with an annual income of £500. In Ireland, he was subject to constant harassment by military officials who imposed penal rates of taxation on his property in Down which had already been devastated by years of warfare and was still subject to raids by catholic guerillas. Moreover under the Act of Settlement (August 1652), he was liable to forfeit two-thirds of his Irish estates as a royalist officer.
Nonetheless he appears on balance to have escaped lightly. The most prominent civilian officials and landowners in Down were Sir George Rawdon (qv) and Arthur Hill (qv), both of whom had adhered to the parliamentarians in 1649 but were uncomfortable with the radical and military nature of the new regime. As a result, they were friendly with Trevor, and sympathising with his plight, did what they could for him. So too did the regicide John Jones (d. 1660), a leading figure in the government of Ireland during the interregnum, who was a relative of Trevor's by marriage and a near-neighbour of his family in north Wales. Despite the wide disparity between their political views, the two men were personally close. Jones's marriage in 1655 to Cromwell's sister further helped Trevor's cause.
During 1652–3, the remaining catholic soldiers in Ireland (mainly in Ulster) began surrendering in large numbers on condition that they would be shipped to the continent, and Trevor made himself useful to the government by undertaking to convey these men to their port of embarkation. He was sufficiently well-connected to become in 1653 a member of a powerful consortium largely comprising republican army officers and wealthy London merchants headed by Captain George Walters that contracted with the Spanish government to transport 5,000 Irish soldiers to Spain for enlistment in the royal army there.
In 1654, he went to London hoping to be allowed to keep his estates in return for paying a fine but was instead arrested in July for non-payment of a 19-year old debt he had inherited from his father. He was still in prison in December 1654 and was probably only released around 24 April 1655 when Cromwell decided that he could compound for his property and was described as having taken Trevor into his protection. Subsequently, Trevor befriended his arch-enemy's son Henry Cromwell (qv), governor of Ireland from 1656, who facilitated his attempts to purchase land debentures from Cromwellian soldiers. As a result, Trevor acquired a 2,000-acre estate at Ballysax, Co. Kildare. Henry Cromwell's personal favour and attempts to restore the traditional, landowner-dominated forms of government appear to have reconciled Trevor to the new regime.
Following the overthrow by army radicals of his brother Richard as lord protector in spring 1659, Henry Cromwell contemplated military resistance from Ireland and was encouraged in this by Trevor who may also have urged him to declare for Charles II. In the event Henry tamely surrendered his office in June. Immediately prior to doing so, he granted Trevor a valuable lease of land in counties Kildare and Louth, including all of the property of Dundalk corporation. At some point during the interregnum, Trevor also acquired a lease of the property of Carlingford corporation, probably also thanks to Henry Cromwell. His holdings at Dundalk, Carlingford and Ballysax all seem to have been granted to him in an irregular manner and without explicit approval from London.
As the republican regime began to unravel throughout Ireland, Scotland and England in the latter half of 1659, Trevor was in the thick of various royalist plots, which, however, amounted to little. He had prior knowledge of but played no role in the successful conservative coup in Ireland in December 1659. Lacking influence in either the army or (after Henry Cromwell's retirement) in the civil administration, he watched events impatiently from the political margins. Power in Ireland now rested with a clique of protestant army officers and landowners who had supported parliament during the 1640s but who were moving hesitantly towards an accommodation with the king due to their distaste for the radicalism of the republican authorities in London. Galled by the prospect of these longstanding enemies of the king winning the credit for the monarchy's restoration, he informed Ormond (Charles’s chief adviser on Irish affairs) in spring 1660 of his willingness to lead an uprising by genuine royalists if these negotiations failed. In the event the Restoration was peacefully (and for Trevor somewhat anti-climactically) effected that summer.
The Restoration notable
In late 1660, he was appointed to the Irish privy council, restored to his rank as colonel and given command of a troop of horse. He was also appointed chief ranger and master of the game for Ireland in August 1661. Earlier that year he was returned as MP for Co. Down. Like many protestant landowners, he was concerned that the king might overturn the landed status quo, and thereby deprive him of the gains he had made in the 1650s. He had already taken the precaution of securing a grant from the king in December 1660, vesting in him the full ownership of the properties he had been leased in the dying days of the republic. However, this grant contravened the provisions of the king's declaration of 30 November 1660 and was unlikely to withstand a legal challenge. Such a challenge was forthcoming from the Dundalk corporation, which had strenuously objected to the initial leasing of its property to him in 1659 and in a further act of defiance arrested his rent collector in 1661. The resentment borne by the Dundalk corporation towards its unwanted landlord was intensified by the fact that most of its members were former republicans settled in the town under Cromwell.
In summer 1661, the wholly protestant Irish house of commons, concerned that the king would restore catholic landowners expropriated by Cromwell, appointed him to act as its agent in London. He continued as a lobbyist on behalf of the protestant landed interest until April 1662, while also acting for the 1649 officers’ trust. He exploited his position at the centre of power to further his personal interests, petitioning that he be confirmed in his property at Carlingford and Dundalk in place of his army pay arrears. His request was initially granted in 1662 but was then thwarted in November by the lord chancellor of Ireland, Sir Maurice Eustace (qv).
This setback was an uncomfortable reminder of the uncertain private foundations upon which his public prominence rested. Aside from his disputed interregnum-era acquisitions, the only property he held was in the name either of his first wife (who had died in 1656) or of his nephew John, son of his deceased older half-brother John. Throughout the turbulent 1640s and 1650s, Marcus appears to have administered his father's former estates in Down but it seems to have been agreed that John would recover his inheritance upon his uncle's death. Hence, Marcus's eagerness to establish his own patrimony in Louth. Moreover, his desire to cut a dash as a leading landowner and public figure necessitated heavy personal expenditure particularly given the culture of lavish and conspicuous consumption that flourished among the post-Restoration nobility. These social pressures would have become more acute after his creation as Viscount Dungannon in August 1662.
He purchased a house at Oxmanstown Green in the most fashionable part of Dublin in 1661 and as a marker of his intent not to be dislodged from Dundalk he had by 1664 established a substantial dwelling in the centre of the town; he also maintained the family residence at Rostrevor. Putting further pressure on his finances was his passion for horses, which he bred for racing. His estate at Ballysax adjoined the Curragh and seems to have been acquired not for profit but to pursue his hobby. A regular attendee of race meetings, he won £200 on a wager at one such event in May 1663. Although a shrewd judge of horses, his willingness to gamble such a large sum hints at a certain liberality that may have worsened his financial predicament.
Succour came in the form of a propitious second marriage in May 1662 to Anne, widow of John Owen of Pembroke and daughter and heiress of John Lewis of Anglesea, by which he acquired a 5,000-acre estate in England and Wales. While staying in London in 1661–2, he had regularly visited his family in north Wales where he met and courted the wealthy heiress. He won Anne's hand despite the vehement opposition of her close friend the poet Katherine Phillips (qv). Phillips had previously handpicked an English suitor (who conveniently shared her literary interests) for Anne, which coloured her attitude towards Dungannon, although she grudgingly acknowledged that their union appeared a happy one. Once again his capacity to charm the people that mattered had won out.
Similarly he enjoyed the favour of Ormond, his former comrade-in-arms, who became viceroy of Ireland in 1662, and was a regular guest at the duke's castle in Kilkenny. This association proved invaluable as Dungannon struggled to repel strong legal challenges to his rather weak title to his holdings at Dundalk, Carlingford and Ballysax. Frantic lobbying by Ormond secured the insertion of a proviso in the Act of Explanation (1665) confirming Dungannon in his property at Dundalk and Carlingford. He was forced to yield Ballysax to its former catholic occupant for which he was compensated with 700 acres in Co. Meath, but he had finally consolidated his position as an independent proprietor.
Army chief in Ireland
He was appointed military governor of Ulster, with the exception of Co. Antrim, in April 1664, and marshal of the Irish army in August 1667. In recognition of his personal influence in Co. Down he was appointed lieutenant of the county in 1664. Concerns regarding the army's political loyalty had largely dissipated by the mid 1660s but the soldiery was disaffected over poor pay leading to regular lapses in discipline. Dungannon turned a blind eye to this and to his subordinates’ often heavy-handed treatment of civilians because the government simply lacked the means to provide adequately for its soldiers. This situation came to a head with the mutiny of the Carrickfergus garrison in 1666, which he helped to suppress. In 1668 when accusations were levelled against Ormond of negligence regarding the Carrickfergus mutiny and of illegally quartering soldiers, Dungannon accompanied the lord lieutenant to England in April to assist him in successfully countering these charges.
His governorship of Ulster, which remained an ethno-religious tinderbox, was an onerous undertaking. The province became particularly restless during 1665–66 when both catholic and protestant malcontents were encouraged by the outbreak of war, first with the Dutch Republic and then France. In dread of either a catholic or presbyterian revolt in Ulster, he spent 1665–6 anxiously directing repressive measures and investigations into a number of alleged conspiracies against the government. To counter a surge in tory raids he billeted royal forces upon Gaelic clans known to have assisted tories and encouraged the formation of local protestant militias. He had re-imposed order on Ulster by the start of 1667.
The royal forces could not suppress the ubiquitous tory menace but unlike other military officials Dungannon blanched at the expedient of permitting individual bands to go into exile with their plunder, preferring instead to seek to pit the various tory warlords against each other through intrigue. This strategy of divide and rule reflects the manner in which he ruled Ulster: firmly but subtly. Military opposition was ruthlessly crushed whenever possible but religious defiance of the established church was tolerated if conducted discreetly and apolitically. He usually ignored the activities of presbyterian ministers in his Co. Down bailiwick only ordering their arrest (and then but briefly) during periods of political uncertainty in 1663 and in 1665. In summer 1664 he did not let the exaggerated fears of local protestants panic him into unnecessary and potentially counter-productive repressive measures against catholics in Ulster.
During the late 1660s he fell deeper into financial straits: the governorship of Ulster was a drain on his income and he appears to have been one of many Irish landowners to have suffered from the English parliament's decision in 1667 to ban the importation of livestock from Ireland. The final year of his life was further overshadowed by the death of his only adult son Mark and by Ormond's removal from office, which boded ill for his dynastic and political futures respectively. In the event he died 3 January 1670 at Dundalk and was buried at Clondallon. The three sons from his first marriage having predeceased him, he was succeeded by Lewis, his eldest surviving son from his second marriage.
Conclusion
During his lifetime, he was most renowned for his military exploits on behalf of the king in the 1640s, for which he was accorded legendary status in Irish royalist circles. His superb horsemanship and conspicuous displays of valour verging on amateurish recklessness epitomised the romance of the Cavalier cause. This image he carefully cultivated and it served him well in banishing memories of the unevenness of his military career and his willingness to temporise with the king's enemies in the 1650s. It also obscured the extent to which his rise to prominence and subsequent durability owed more to guile than to martial prowess. Katherine Phillips (hardly an impartial judge) depicted him as an unsophisticated, boorish buffoon and clearly believed that he was unworthy of the position of social eminence that he had attained. But behind the bluff, affable exterior lurked a deceptively agile mind that enabled him both to survive and thrive amid the extraordinary vicissitudes that beset Ireland's colonial settlers during the mid seventeenth century. A political gadfly, he successively capitalised on the breakdown of government authority in 1641–2 to supplant more senior members of the Trevor dynasty, largely evaded the consequences of being on the losing side both in 1646 and 1650, laid the foundations for his private estate under the rule of his bitter enemy, and finally played a vital role in the juggling of mutually antagonistic ethnic and theological factions required to maintain the crown's still tenuous grip on a rancorous, discontented and divided island. Some of these individual successes can be ascribed to luck but, regarded in their totality, they suggest that Dungannon may indeed have been an indifferent administrator and overrated as a soldier but that he was a master politician.