The Edgeworth Family - Early history.
The first Edgeworths to come to Ireland in 1585 were Edward and Francis, natives of Edgeworth or Edgware a town in Middlesex near..London. Edward the elder became bishop of Down and Connor while his brother Francis entered the law in Dublin and was appointed to the office of Clerk of the Crown and Hanaper. In 1619 he was granted some 600 acres of land near Mostrim by King James I. His third wife was Jane Tuite daughter of Sir John Tuite of Sonnagh in Westmeath. Their son John was brought up in England. and is returned with his wife to live at the castle of Crannelagh (Cranley). He was absent when the rebellion broke out in 1641, when his strife and three year old son also John were saved from death and smuggled to Dublin by a ruse by Edmond MacBrian Ferrall a servant of the household. He also saved the castle from destruction by fire. This son settled later in Lissard. He was somewhat of a gambler and spendthrift but in 1670 bought the lands of Mostrim now Edgeworthstown though it was many years later that it became the home of the head. of the family when his son Francis came to live there at the end of the century of the death of his father Sir John, who although knighted in 1671 by the Duke of York later took the Williamite side at the revolution. In the meantime he had left Lissard to live at Kilshrewley, but much of his life was spent in the Army and in England. One of his sons Henry later came back to live in the old house at Lissard.
Sir Johns grandson Richard was left a penniless orphan at the age of' eight and was brought up by his half sister in Packenham Hall in Westmeath. At the age of 18 in 1719 on the death of his half sisters husband, Edward Packenham, he had take over the estate and paid off the debts of his father and grandfather and recovered losses incurred by the malpractices of his uncles Robert and Ambrose. He it was who built the house in the 1720's we know to-day. It was built around an earlier house presumably that occupied, about 1697 by his father Francis. He was the author of the Black Book of Edgeworthstown an estate record which tells us so much about the locality at that time.