Edward Houston Caulfield (1808–83), the first of the family to be represented by papers in the collection, was great-great-grandson of William, 2nd Viscount Charlemont. Charlemont’s fifth son, the Revd Charles Caulfield had acquired the Drumcairn estates through marriage. Edward himself married Charlotte Geale, daughter of a prominent Dublin solicitor, but his career was coloured throughout by the precarious nature of his finances.

James Alfred (1830–1913), Edward’s eldest son and a captain in the Coldstream Guards who served in the Crimea, succeeded to the 8,000 acre family estates immediately on his majority In 1858 he married Annette Handcock (d.1888), daughter of Richard, 3rd Baron Castlemaine, a marriage which failed to bring the financial security which both parties had anticipated. By the 1880s the prolonged burden of debt on the estates prompted their disposal through the Landed Estates Court. In 1892 James became 7th Viscount Charlemont on the death of a distant cousin.

Archival history
The Caulfield family papers are part of the archives of the firm of Franks & Oulton, solicitors, 21 Lower Fitzwilliam Street, Dublin, acquired in 1971. The parent collection is being listed on the basis of individual client, usually landed families.