RICE OF MOUNTRICE

Reference code:

IE UCDAD S0006/21

6 boxes

Administrative history

The Mountrice estate was situated between Monasterevan and Rathangan in the parish of Lackagh, barony of West Offaly, County Kildare. In the early seventeenth century the lands formed part of the estate of James Fitzgerald, a Catholic landowner from whom they were confiscated in 1641. They were subsequently acquired by Sir Stephen Rice (1637ñ1715), a prominent Jacobite appointed Chief Baron of the Exchequer in Ireland in 1687, who held other land in Kerry and Tipperary.

Edward Rice, the eldest of Sir Stephen’s three sons, conformed to the established church to save his father’s estates, from which he allotted £7,000 to his only child, Mary. After Edward’s death in 1720, the estates passed firstly to his younger brother James, and then in 1733 to James’ elder son Stephen. The marriage settlement of Stephen Rice, drawn up in 1749, is the earliest document in the collection.

Stephen’s administration of his estates was less than prudent, particularly in the granting of perpetual leases, and marked the first stage in the dismemberment of the Rice family property. His only son, another Stephen, who held the estates from 1755 until his death in 1789, left the Mountrice estate to live in Antrim, and the house fell into disrepair. He was succeeded by Richard Stephen Rice who came into the estates at a very early age and died prematurely in 1806. His brother Joshua’s tenure was characterised by increasingly frantic attempts to make the estates solvent and to disencumber them. After the death of Stephen, Joshua’s eldest son, the Mountrice estate was divided between his three sisters. Hetty was the only sister who married and her son Stephen Richard Wrightson began the process under the Irish Land Act, 1903 which saw the estate sold to the Irish Land Commission and subsequently divided.

Franks & Oulton acted for the family from 1924, the family’s interests being represented previously by a succession of Dublin solicitors.

Archival history

The Rice of Mountrice 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.

Scope and content

Deeds and other instruments of title relating to the administration by successive members of the Rice family of the estate at Mountrice, county Kildare, including maps, correspondence with the family solicitors and case papers concerning the disputed validity of perpetual leases on portions of the estate. Papers of Hetty Wrightson, née Rice (d.1905), and her son Richard Stephen Wrightson (d.1914), subsequent owners of the estate including material relating to the acquisition of the estate by the Land Commission.

Access:

Available by appointment to holders of a UCDAD reader’s ticket