ABSTRACT
Despite the fraught political circumstances prevailing when she created her will in January 1650, Honora O’Brien Wingfield, of Smithstown, County Clare, seems to have been sanguine as she anticipated the end to her long life. 1 She designated a grandson, Conor O’Brien of Leamanah, as the heir to Smithstown and her other lands, and set out a series of bequests. Each of her four daughters was remembered with gifts of clothing and jewelry. Seven other grandchildren were mentioned, the girls being given clothing and/or jewels, and the boys horses, though one granddaughter received a flock of sheep and Honora’s ‘pacing nag’. While her husband, Richard Wingfield, and eldest son, Edward (both already dead), were probably Protestants, it is clear from her will that Honora was a Catholic. She left bequests to two Catholic priests, two others witnessed her will, and she left her daughter Ellinor ‘an amber pair of [rosary] beads’. Honora also owned a fair quantity of other jewelry. There was a big gold ring and three others set with diamond, ‘Turkey’ (turquoise), and amethyst stones, respectively. She had already given her daughter Mary a quantity of ‘jewels’. Among the clothing bequeathed were a black silk gown, a broadcloth gown and cloak, and nine ‘gownaghs’. She left livestock to seven women and two men who were probably servants, and she granted Donough O’Hickie a forty-shilling annuity, to ‘cherish and maintaine’ one of her grandchildren. Any ‘cattle, horses, corn and household stuff’ not otherwise disposed of were to go to her heir. Honora signed with a mark—she may have been too weak to write or may never have learned. Two of the seven witnesses also used marks.
