John McClintock, 1st Baron Rathdonnell

John McClintock was created 1st Baron Rathdonnell in 1868, in recognition of his services to the Protestant and Conservative causes. Lord Downshire had recommended him for a peerage in 1852.

In 1868, Gladstone drove the Tories from office; this was also the year that the Lefroys of Carriglass turned down the offer of a peerage. It was to be the second last title given out in the Irish peerage. John McClintock’s election expenses for the 1852 election came to £3500. He married Anne Lefroy and they lived between Drumcar, Co. Louth, and their London house at 80 Chester Square. He was an uncle to the Artic explorer Sir Leopold McClintock and to his eventual heir, Thomas Kane McClintock Bunbury, 2nd Baron Rathdonnell, President of the Royal Dublin Society. A great-nephew CEC Lefroy recalled the 1st Baron and his wife as follows:

In the year 1877, Uncle John was a gentle, very sensitive, lovable old man of nearly 80. His heart’s desire has always been for peace and quiet. Of very talkative people he would say, “they would bother a rookery”. He was a Conservative to the backbone; a lover of old days and old ways. The social, political and moral changes, which he perceived to be taking place in the World (even then), disturbed him greatly. “Shocking”. “Shocking. “Shocking”. Were the words which frequently fell from his lips. To me he seemed to take very kindly from the first. For two summers before he died (in May 1879) I spent my holidays at Drumcar. I can well imagine his evident pleasure in tipping me with a half-a-sovereign when he said good bye to me, for what he plainly felt would be the last time of seeing me- and such it proved.

Aunt Anne Rathdonnell had been very handsome in her youth and bore herself with much grace and dignity (also authority) in her old age. She was widely known in County Louth as “Queen Anne”. She certainly ruled her domain in a queenly manner. As the eldest member of her family she had always played a great part in its life, for she possessed remarkable will-power and strength of mind. In earlier years she and Uncle John had traveled much on the Continent and had spent several winters in Italy and had moved among intellectual and cultured people. It was her energy and deep political convictions which got Uncle John into Parliament for Count Louth and in the end secured the peerage for him. A constant student of Prophecy, she was convinced at the time of my arrival in England (1877) that Russia was certainly the “Great Beast” of the Book of Revelations. What would she have thought of the World and its liability to fearful changes if she had lived through the Great War and witnessed the upheavals of the Russian Revolution, the emergence of tyrannical Fascism in Germany and Italy and the horrors of the Spanish civil war now proceeding? After Uncle John’s death she gave a home for ten years to our sisters Annie and Freda. It was a home with great ideals of life and its responsibilities. The conversation, whether of past, present or future, was always pitched high; always worth listening to. Deeply religious, ready for merriment and hearty laughter; a buoyant, courageous, hopeful nature. All through life she was in touch with interesting people. I remember meeting several times in Chester Square the Hon. Frederica Plunket, famous then as the first woman to climb the Matterhorn, and her sister the Ho. Kate Plunket, now equally famous for having lived 112 years.

It must be gratefully recorded that during her ten years of widowhood Aunt Rathdonnell saved no less than £80,000, which she distributed very widely among various nephews and nieces, a wonderful boon and blessing to them all.

External link

• A history of the McClinktock family (http://www.lisnavagh.com/About/BriefHistory.html)