William Ponsonby, 1st Viscount Duncannon

William Ponsonby, 1st Viscount Duncannon (1659 – 17 November 1724), was an Anglo-Irish peer.

Background

He was born in 1659, the third son of Sir John Ponsonby (c. 1608/9 – 1678) of Bessborough in County Kilkenny, a colonel of Horse in the Commonwealth service, and the third son by Sir John's second wife Elizabeth, widow of Richard Wingfield and of Edward Trevor, and daughter of Henry Folliott, 1st Baron Folliott.

He had two full siblings, Henry and Elizabeth, and two halfbrothers. Folliott Wingfield, 1st Viscount Powerscourt, was his older halfbrother on his mother's side. He also had an older halfbrother, John, on his father's side.

Bessborough, formerly known as Kildalton, had been confiscated from Edmund Dalton, whose family had held it since the 13th century, for his part in the Irish Rebellion of 1641. It was granted to Sir John Ponsonby who renamed it after his second wife Elizabeth (Bess).

Early life

William Ponsonby matriculated as a fellow-commoner at Trinity College, Dublin, on 14 November 1677, at the age of eighteen. He succeeded his elder brother Sir Henry Ponsonby (eldest son of Sir John and Elizabeth) during the reign of King William III, and served as a colonel in the Army.

Political career

Ponsonby sat in the Irish House of Commons for Kilkenny County from 1692 to 1693, from 1695 to 1699 and from 1703 to 1721; he was appointed a member of the Irish Privy Council on 11 November 1715. On 11 September 1721 he was created Baron Bessborough, of Bessborough, County Kilkenny, in the Peerage of Ireland, and took his seat in the Irish House of Lords on 23 September. He was further created Viscount Duncannon, of the fort of Duncannon, county Wexford, on 28 February 1723.

Family

Ponsonby married Mary, daughter of the Hon. Randle Moore and granddaughter of Charles Moore, 2nd Viscount Drogheda, by whom he had nine children, three sons and six daughters. She died age 51 on 26 May 1713, and he died on 17 November 1724, when he was succeeded by his eldest son Brabazon. Lord Duncannon and his wife are buried in the church at Fiddown.

gollark: It uses two steps: BPE (ish) and asymmetric numeral systems (brokenly).

gollark: As far as I know, the only person who is likely to have actually worked out how my compressor works is Olive, but I assure you that it's moderately weird.

gollark: That and the giant binary blobs.

gollark: LyricLy claims that it was obviously mine because of the formatting and use of numpy. This is wrong and ridiculous. The real reason it was obviously mine is that it does the usual gollark thing of just implementing a weird algorithm and not doing much else.

gollark: They scheduled it for 24 hours, bee.

References

G. E. C., ed. Vicary Gibbs, The Complete Peerage, volume II (London, 1912) pp. 169–70.

Parliament of Ireland
Preceded by John Grace Robert Walsh	Member of Parliament for Kilkenny County 1692–1721 With: Richard Coote 1692–1693 Agmondisham Cuffe 1695–1699 Sir Henry Wemys 1703–1715 William Flower 1715–1721	Succeeded by William Flower Patrick Wemyss
Peerage of Ireland
New creation	Baron Bessborough 1721–1724	Succeeded by Brabazon Ponsonby
New creation	Viscount Duncannon 1723–1724	Succeeded by Brabazon Ponsonby

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.