John William Plunkett, 17th Baron of Dunsany (31 August 1853 – 16 January 1899) was an

Anglo-Irish Anglo-Irish people () denotes an ethnic, social and religious grouping who are mostly the descendants and successors of the English Protestant Ascendancy in Ireland. They mostly belong to the Anglican Church of Ireland, which was the establis ...

Conservative Conservatism is a cultural, social, and political philosophy that seeks to promote and to preserve traditional institutions, practices, and values. The central tenets of conservatism may vary in relation to the culture and civilization i ...

politician and peer.

Early life and career

Plunkett was the second son of

Edward Plunkett, 16th Baron of Dunsany The title Baron of Dunsany or, more commonly, Lord Dunsany, is one of the oldest dignities in the Peerage of Ireland, one of just a handful of 13th- to 15th-century titles still extant, having had 21 holders, of the Plunkett name, to date. Other ...

(1808–1889), and Lady Anne Constance Dutton (1816–1858), daughter of

John Dutton, 2nd Baron Sherborne John Baron Dutton, 2nd Baron Sherborne (24 January 1779 – 18 October 1862), was a British peer. Background Sherborne was the son of James Dutton, 1st Baron Sherborne, of Sherborne, Gloucestershire, by his wife Elizabeth Coke (1753–1824), ...

and Mary Bilson-Legge (1780–1864), daughter of

Henry Bilson-Legge, 2nd Baron Stawell Henry Bilson-Legge, 2nd Baron Stawell (22 February 1757 – 25 August 1820) was a British peer and landowner, serving as a member of the House of Lords from 1780 until his death in 1820. Stawell was the only son of the statesman Henry Bilson-L ...

and Mary Curzon. His father pursued military interests, and wrote on the topic of a Channel Tunnel to France. His elder brother, Randal Edward Sherborne Plunkett, predeceased him. John William Plunkett received a Bachelor of Arts degree from

Trinity College Dublin , name_Latin = Collegium Sanctae et Individuae Trinitatis Reginae Elizabethae juxta Dublin , motto = ''Perpetuis futuris temporibus duraturam'' (Latin) , motto_lang = la , motto_English = It will last i ...

(1877). He studied at

Trinity College, Cambridge Trinity College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Founded in 1546 by Henry VIII, King Henry VIII, Trinity is one of the largest Cambridge colleges, with the largest financial endowment of any college at either Cambridge ...

(B.A., 1878; M.A., 1881). He was Lieutenant R.N. Artillery Volunteers and a

Conservative Party The Conservative Party is a name used by many political parties around the world. These political parties are generally right-wing though their exact ideologies can range from center-right to far-right. Political parties called The Conservative P ...

Member of Parliament A member of parliament (MP) is the representative in parliament of the people who live in their electoral district. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, this term refers only to members of the lower house since upper house members of ...

for the Thornbury (or Southern) division of Gloucestershire from 1886 to 1892. He proved his right to vote at the elections of Representative Peers (Ireland) 1890 and Representative Peers (Ireland) 1893–99.

Family

John William married on 3 April 1877, at

St George's, Hanover Square St George's, Hanover Square, is an Anglican church, the parish church of Mayfair in the City of Westminster, central London, built in the early eighteenth century as part of a project to build fifty new churches around London (the Queen Anne C ...

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

, his second cousin, Ernle Elizabeth Louisa Maria Grosvenor Burton (later Ernle-Erle-Drax), the only daughter and heir to Colonel Francis Augustus Plunkett Burton, Coldstream Guards, by Sarah Frances Elizabeth, younger daughter and coheir of John Samuel Wanley Sawbridge-Erle-Drax, of Charborough Park,

Dorset Dorset ( ; archaically: Dorsetshire , ) is a county in South West England on the English Channel coast. The ceremonial county comprises the unitary authority areas of Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole and Dorset (unitary authority), Dors ...

. Ernle Burton's paternal grandmother, Anna Maria Plunkett, wife of Admiral

James Ryder Burton Admiral (Royal Navy), Admiral James Ryder Burton, Royal Guelphic Order, KH (1795 -– 2 August 1876) was a British Royal Navy officer. He was the son of Edmund Burton, the Dean of Killala. He progressed on the Reserved List to the rank of Adm ...

, was a sister of her husband's paternal grandfather,

Edward Plunkett, 14th Baron Dunsany Edward Wadding Plunkett, 14th Baron Dunsany (7 April 1773 – 11 December 1848) was an Anglo-Irish peer. He was the son of Randall Plunkett, 13th Baron of Dunsany, and Margaret Mandeville, and he inherited his father's title of Baron of Dunsan ...

. In addition, Ernle, Lady Dunsany, was descended via her maternal line from James Drax, a young Englishman who, with a few hundred pounds, had sailed from the Port of London for Barbados in the late 1620s. There he had made a fortune developing sugar and slave-trading into a hugely profitable business. Just before the turn of the seventeenth century, the family returned to England and purchased an estate in Dorset. Lady Dunsany inherited Charborough Park in 1905. Her unusual Christian name,

Ernle Ernle was the surname of an English gentry or landed family descended from the lords of the manor of Earnley in Sussex who derived their surname from the name of the place where their estates lay. Origins Onomastic Onomasticians say that t ...

, was inherited from an ancestress, Elizabeth

(1697–1759), wife of Henry Drax, Esq., who was the daughter and eventual heiress of

Sir Edward Ernle, 3rd Baronet Sir Edward Ernle, 3rd Baronet (c. 1673 – 1729) of Charborough in Dorset, of Brimslade Park and Etchilhampton, both in Wiltshire, was an English Whig politician who sat in the English and British House of Commons between 1695 and 1729. He had m ...

, P.C., M.P., (1673–1729) of Maddington, Wiltshire, by his wife, Frances (d. 1728) only daughter and heir of Lieutenant General

Thomas Erle General Thomas Erle PC (1650 – 23 July 1720) of Charborough, Dorset, was a general in the English Army and, thereafter, the British Army. He was also a Whig politician who sat in the House of Commons of England and of Great Britain from 16 ...

(1650–1720), of Charborough House, the source of a further barrel of her surname. John William and Ernle Elizabeth had two sons, the author Edward John Moreton Drax, 18th Baron of Dunsany and Admiral Sir Reginald Aylmer Ranfurly Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax (Charborough Park was left to Reginald, who changed his name to include Drax, the family who had formerly owned it, as well as including references to the

and Erle families from which various of his mother's legacies to him came). Lady Dunsany was a cousin of

Sir Richard Burton Sir Richard Francis Burton (; 19 March 1821 – 20 October 1890) was a British explorer, writer, orientalist scholar,and soldier. He was famed for his travels and explorations in Asia, Africa, and the Americas, as well as his extraordinary kn ...

, the great traveller, scholar, writer, and translator of the ''

Arabian Nights ''One Thousand and One Nights'' ( ar, أَلْفُ لَيْلَةٍ وَلَيْلَةٌ, italic=yes, ) is a collection of Middle Eastern folk tales compiled in Arabic during the Islamic Golden Age. It is often known in English as the ''Arabian ...

''. Her son and heir, Edward, the noted author, may have inherited his imaginative streak partly from the Burton family.

Personal life

He lived at the family seat of

Dunsany Castle Dunsany Castle ( ga, Caisleán Dhún Samhnaí), Dunsany, County Meath, Ireland is a modernised Anglo-Norman castle, started c. 1180 / 1181 by Hugh de Lacy, who also commissioned the original Killeen Castle, nearby, and the famous Trim Castle ...

County Meath County Meath (; gle, Contae na Mí or simply ) is a county in the Eastern and Midland Region of Ireland, within the province of Leinster. It is bordered by Dublin to the southeast, Louth to the northeast, Kildare to the south, Offaly to the sou ...

, Ireland, and in London and Shoreham, Kent. He was an exceptional sportsman, and was reputed to have been the best marksman in England. He was deeply interested in mechanical things and developed his own X-Ray machine, which was in operation in Dunsany Castle before his death in 1899.Röntgen delivered his seminal paper on the subject in Berlin in 1895. The Dunsany version of the Röntgen ray machine was given to

Sevenoaks Sevenoaks is a town in Kent with a population of 29,506 situated south-east of London, England. Also classified as a civil parishes in England, civil parish, Sevenoaks is served by a commuter South Eastern Main Line, main line railway into Lon ...

Hospital in 1918. He had acquired the right to drive the Irish Mail Train and regularly took charge of the branch line train from Dublin to Drumree, near Dunsany. He was also responsible for having the first Irish telephone system installed in Dunsany Castle. The 17th

Baron of Dunsany The title Baron of Dunsany or, more commonly, Lord Dunsany, is one of the oldest dignities in the Peerage of Ireland, one of just a handful of 13th- to 15th-century titles still extant, having had 21 holders, of the Plunkett name, to date. Other ...

died, after a short illness, on 16 January 1899, at Dunsany Castle, aged forty-five years. His widow, from whom he was separated in his last years, and who, by Royal Licence of 20 December 1905, assumed the names of Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax, died at her residence, Dunstall Priory, Shoreham, near Sevenoaks, Kent, England, on 28 February 1916.

References

Sources

*''Source: "The Story of Dunsany Castle," by Malachy Lynch and Mary-Rose Carty, pp. 50-51''
ThePeerage.com

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Dunsany, John Plunkett, 17th Baron of 1853 births 1899 deaths 19th-century Anglo-Irish people Barons of Dunsany Plunkett, John William Plunkett, John William UK MPs who inherited peerages Alumni of Trinity College Dublin Alumni of Trinity College, Cambridge Royal Artillery officers Irish representative peers Ernle family