APPENDIX (PAGE 4).

CLANDEBOYE-or more correctly Clan aodh buidhe, the Clan of Yellow Hugh-was divided into two, Lower Clandeboye and Upper. Lower Clandeboye was in the County of Antrim. Upper Clandeboye "reacheth from the Duffryn to Knockfergus," which would comprise the district now including Clandeboye, the residence of the late Lord Dufferin.

In the Letters Patent from James I. to James Hamilton, dated the third year of his reign (1605), the premises include "all those regions countries or territories of the Upper Clandeboye and the Great Ards in Clandeboye in the said County of Down in the Province of Ulster in his said Kingdom of Ireland and all other castles manors lands tenements and hereditaments in the said country of Clandeboye and the Great Ards of which Neale MacBrien Fertagh O'Neile or his father Brian otherwise Brian Fertagh O'Neile in the time of their lives was or were possessed of."

There were quite a number of castles in this district, but the most important one was that on the hill of Castlereagh, within three miles of Belfast. Sir Brian O'Neill was treacherously made a prisoner here by the Viceroy Essex, and carried off captive to Dublin, where he was executed.*

VOL. I.

And now the stranger's sons enjoy
The lovely woods of Clandeboye."

(From Sir Walter Scott's "Rokeby."
The speaker is Redmond O'Neill.)
D

18A

18B

CLANDEBOYE.

[APP.

The modern mansion of Clandeboye was originally a very small two-storied house, and at some time during the eighteenth century low wings were added to either side of it.

In 1800 James Lord Dufferin raised and enlarged it, and his wife laid out the grounds immediately round the house.

Frederick (the late) Lord Dufferin made further alterations to the building, changing the entrance, and adding several rooms. He also added to the interest of it by building into the walls of the hall a number of Egyptian inscriptions and carvings which he brought home after his first visit to that country. The house is full of these souvenirs of travel. Lord Dufferin had a very great love of landscape gardening, and with most unpromising materials to work upon, he succeeded in changing the whole character of Clandeboye.

When he succeeded to it, it was a small place, with trees growing up to the windows, excluding all view. Lord Dufferin cut openings in every direction, planted the adjacent hills, and built Helen's Tower on the top of one of them. He made a large lake within sight of the windows, and, at the time of the famine, a long avenue leading down to the sea, so that he provided himself with a cheerful and extensive view, very different from that he looked out upon as a young man.

Nor did he confine his improvements to his own place. From the time he succeeded to the property at the age of 16, he began to plant every available bit of the country, to enlarge the fields, and, wherever it was possible for him to exert any influence, to improve the architecture of houses and churches.

He lived to see the result of these labours; the aspect of the country which had grieved him so much in his youth was entirely changed before he died. From the top of Helen's Tower woods are to be seen in every direction; no stone walls, or small fields, or squalid cottages mar the landscape, and the prosperous appearance of the neighbourhood, and the increased beauty of the landscape, was certainly one of the great pleasures and satisfactions of his old age.

CHAPTER II.

ETON AND OXFORD.

As Mrs. Blackwood's two sisters, Lady Seymour and Mrs. Norton, were by this time rising to the zenith of their radiance in the London world, she passed easily into distinguished society, and soon won the friendship and admiration, by her grace beauty, and brightness, of such men as Sydney Smith, Lord Brougham, and Theodore Hook. Among the younger friends may be mentioned Mr. Disraeli, who has noted in a diary for 1832-3 the date of his first acquaintance with the three sisters.* In the mean time Captain Blackwood's marriage had been condoned, and the estrangement from his family had ended, so he brought his wife and son to make their first acquaintance with his parents at Clontarf in Ireland, where Hans Lord Dufferin was living in a house "where no two rooms had floors on a level, and consequently everybody was tumbling up and down steps all day, no doors or windows shut, and the sea breezes played freely over every sofa and

* "The only lady at Mrs. Norton's besides herself, was her sister Mrs. Blackwood, also very handsome and very Sheridanic. She told me she was nothing. 'You see Georgy's the beauty, and Carry's the wit, and I ought to be the good one, but then I am not.'"-Lord Beaconsfield's Correspondence with his Sister, 1832-1852, pp. 16, 17.

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