Governor of plateau state

Prominent Irish & British family in brewing, banking, and politics

For other uses, see Guinness (disambiguation).

The Guinness family is an extensive Irish family known for its achievements in brewing, banking, politics, and religious ministry.

The brewing branch is particularly well known among the general public for producing the dry stout beer Guinness, as founded by Arthur Guinness in ^[2] An Anglo-IrishProtestant family,^[3][4][5] beginning in the late 18th century, they became a part of what is known in Ireland as the Protestant Ascendancy.^[6][3]

The "banking line" Guinnesses all descend from Arthur's brother Samuel (–) who set up as a goldbeater in Dublin in ; his son Richard (–), a Dublin barrister; and Richard's son Robert Rundell Guinness who founded Guinness Mahon in ^[4]

The current head of the family is the Earl of Iveagh.

Another prominent branch, descended from the 1st Earl of Iveagh, is headed by Lord Moyne.

Origins

The Guinness family refers to the descendants of Richard Guinness (born c.&#;) of Celbridge, who married Elizabeth Read (–), the daughter of a farmer from Oughterard, County Kildare.^[3] Details of Richard's life and family background are scarce, with many legends and rumours, and as a result tracing ancestry beyond him has proven difficult.

On the subject Lord Moyne, writing in The Times in , wrote:

The origins of our family are hidden in the mists of a not very remote antiquity. The first Guinness of whom there is an undoubted record is Richard Guinness of Celbridge, county Kildare, who was born about and was living in Leixlip in Efforts to trace the origin of the family beyond him have met with no success; conjecture, supported by inconclusive pieces of evidence, have led principally in the direction of the Magennis family of county Down and of the Gennys family of Cornwall.^[7]

The traditional view is that the Guinnesses were descended from the Clan Magennis of Iveagh, prominent Irish-Gaelic nobility from County Down.

The Magennis family were Catholic Jacobites who, led by Bryan Magennis, 5th Viscount Iveagh, fought at the Battle of the Boyne in Members of the arriviste Guinness family, wishing for more impressive origins, have long claimed Magennis ancestry. Sir Bernard Burke corroborated this descent in his various genealogical works.^[8] The Rev.

Hosea Guinness was granted an altered version of their coat of arms;^[9] and Edward Cecil Guinness, head of the brewing line, chose for his title "Earl of Iveagh" (alluding to descent from the Viscounts Iveagh of the creation).^[3] A romantic and fanciful rumour existed that Richard Guinness was the illegitimate son of Viscount Magennis before he fled to the Continent.^[5]

However, in Patrick Guinness authored Arthur's Round: The Life and Times of Brewing Legend Arthur Guinness in which he largely disproves the apparent pretence of descent from Magennis of Iveagh.

Instead, based on DNA testing conducted by Trinity College Dublin, Patrick Guinness asserts descent from the Macartans, a lesser County Down clan under the Magennises. He further demonstrates that the ancestors of the Guinness family were not descended from the Macartan chiefs but in fact mere followers and tenants. According to him, the name derives from the townland of Guiness (Irish: Gion Ais)^[10] which in is recorded as property of Phelim Macartan.^[11][12][5]

There exists also a lesser-known, but equally fanciful view that the Guinnesses were a branch of the family of Gennys (also spelled Ginnis/Guinnis) of Tralee.^[13][14] The family were minor landed gentry of Cornish extraction, who came to Ireland from Cornwall during the Cromwellian conquest of the s.

The origin of the name in this case would be from St Gennys, near Padstow, with Guinness representing a corruption of the original surname and family branch in Kildare/Dublin. Parallel and contrasting the Magennis theory, one rumour was that Richard Guinness was the illegitimate son of an English (i.e. Williamite) soldier stranded in Ireland after the Boyne, and an Irish girl.^[5] According to the same sort of rumours, Richard was a groom who eloped with Elizabeth Read.^[5]

Henry Seymour Guinness, of the banking line, who was also the first to suggest "Owen Guinnis" as the father of Richard, was the main proponent of Cornish origins.^[3][15] Patrick Guinness dismisses the Cornwall origin on the basis that Henry Guinness's great-uncle was an MP for Barnstaple and bankrupted, and therefore bias and unreliable.^[11] He does however concur with the theory that Owen Guinnis was the father of Richard.^[11]

Prominent members

See also

References

Further reading

• Martelli, G. Man of his Time (London )
• Lynch P. & Vaizey J. Guinness's Brewery in the Irish Economy, – (Cambridge )
• Mullally, Frederic. The Silver Salver: The Story of the Guinness Family (Granada, )
• Aalen, F.

  H. A. The Iveagh Trust The first hundred years – (Dublin )

• Guinness, J. Requiem for a Family Business (Macmillan )
• S.
  Biography of william shakespeare Most Read "Irish? He is a member of the Guinness family. However, Guinness's tombstone in Oughterard, Ireland indicates that he passed away on January 23, , at the age of She is a direct descendant of the 18th century Irish brewer Arthur Guinness.

  Dennison and agh, Guinness – From incorporation to the Second World War (Cork University Press )

• Wilson, D. Dark and Light (Weidenfeld, London )
• Bryant, J. Kenwood: The Iveagh Bequest (English Heritage publication )
• Guinness, P. Arthur's Round (Peter Owen, London )
• Joyce, J.

  The Guinnesses (Poolbeg Press, Dublin )

• Bourke, Edward J. The Guinness Story: The Family, the Business and the Black Stuff (O'Brien Press, ). ISBN&#;
• Smith, R. Guinness Down Under; the famous brew and the family come to Australia and New Zealand (Eyeglass Press, Tauranga ). ISBN&#;

External links