1916-17.] 2 g 7 



The last place of call was Antrim Castle and grounds. The 

 castle was built on its present site in 1613 by Sir Hugh Clotworthy, 

 who came over to Ireland with Essex in 1573, and obtained the 

 grant of Antrim, &c, in 1605. He married Mary, the daughter 

 of Sir Roger Langford, of Carrickfergus. Their son, Sir John, 

 the fourth baronet, was created Viscount Massereene on 30th 

 November, 1660. Dying five years afterwards without male issue, 

 he was succeeded by Sir John Skeffington, the husband of his 

 only daughter Mary. Thus the family name became Skeffington, 

 but Clotworthy was still retained generation after generation as a 

 Christian name. The fifth Viscount was created earl in 1756, but 

 the earldom became extinct on the death of the eighth Viscount 

 and fourth Earl in 1816, as he left no son to succeed him. His 

 only daughter, Lady Harriet Skeffington, married the Right Hon. 

 Thomas Henry Foster, Viscount Ferrard (son of John, Baron Oriel, 

 the Speaker of the last Irish House of Commons, and of his wife, 

 Viscountess Ferrard.) Thus did the Viscountcies of Massereene 

 and of Ferrard become united in the person of Thomas Henry 

 Foster, who took the family name of Skeffington ; thus also did 

 the Speaker's chair of the last Irish House of Commons pass into 

 the custody of the Massereene family. The present is the twelfth 

 Viscount, who is on active service on behalf of his country in the 

 present terrible war. The fourth Viscount married Lady Catherine 

 Chichester, and the eighth married Lady Harriet Jocelyn, daughter 

 of the first Lord Roden. The marriage of the sixth Viscount was 

 rather romantic. He was for upwards of seventeen years a prisoner 

 in the Bastile, where he saw Marie Antoinette pass to the scaffold. 

 He married the daughter of the governor of that famous abode. 

 She was known as the "beautiful Lady Massereene." 



On the wall just inside the entrance gate is the figure of a 

 wolfhound. With its fate the house of Massereene is said to stand 

 or fall. The legend connected with it is this : — One day Lady 

 Mary, the wife of Sir Hugh Clotworthy, the builder of the castle, 

 was walking by Lough Neagh's shores, accompanied by her wolf 



