Burnell family
The Burnell family were a Dublin family who were prominent in Irish public life and in the arts from the fourteenth to the seventeenth century. They acquired substantial estates in County Dublin, and married into the Anglo-Irish aristocracy. They produced several judges and politicians, a leading playwright, and one of the first female Irish poets. They were staunch Roman Catholics, who opposed the Penal Laws, and supported the Irish Confederacy in the 1640s. They forfeited most of their lands after the failure of the Confederate cause, and never recovered them. Family History. It is unclear when the  Burnells arrived in Ireland: there are several English families of the same name. One Philip Burnell is recorded from County Meath in 1306, when he was one of the defendants in a case of serious assault brought by four members of the Netterville family (who were later one of the most prominent landowning families in Meath) and was ordered to pay heavy damages. A Robert Burnell was Lord Mayor of Dublin in 1356-7, and the same or another Robert Burnell was Lord Mayor of Dublin in 1383-4. The first Burnell of whom much is known was Robert, who  was Lord of the Manor of Balgriffin in c.1388. He may well have been the son of the Robert Burnell whose widow Margaret married Richard Plunkett, Lord Chancellor of Ireland (died 1393), and may also have been the Robert Burnell who was Mayor of Dublin a few years earlier. He married Matilda Tyrrell, heiress of the Irish feudal barony of Castleknock. Castleknock later became the principal Burnell residence. He was a Baron of the Court of Exchequer (Ireland) and thus began a long family tradition of serving as members of the Irish judiciary, particularly on the Exchequer. His descendant John  Burnell was Chief Baron of the Irish Exchequer in the 1490s and another Burnell, Patrick, who died in 1491, was also a Baron of the Exchequer. At about the same time Sir Robert Burnell was Lord of the Manor of Balgriffin: he married Margaret Holywood, daughter and co-heiress of Sir Robert Holywood of Artane (Tartaine was the older spelling), who brought him substantial lands at Swords, north of Dublin. Their daughter Anne married William Preston, 2nd Viscount Gormanston.