The Barnewall surname is Norman in origin, derived from Bernevall, a locality in Normandy, and the family arrived in Ireland in the twelfth century as part of the Norman invasion that transformed the political landscape of the island. They settled in the Pale — the area of English jurisdiction surrounding Dublin — and established themselves in counties Dublin and Meath as one of the most substantial and durable of the Hiberno-Norman landowning families. The spelling Barnewall has remained stable since the medieval period, and the name is found in the historical record of the Pale from the thirteenth century onward without significant variant forms.
Few Norman families in Ireland maintained their position and their Catholic faith through the turbulence of the Reformation and the plantation era with the tenacity the Barnewalls demonstrated, and that tenacity ultimately cost them everything in the Cromwellian settlement.
Where Did the Barnewall Family Come From?
The Barnewalls settled principally in north County Dublin and south County Meath, in the fertile agricultural country immediately north of Dublin city. Their principal seat was at Turvey in north County Dublin, and they held extensive lands across the baronies of Nethercross and Balrothery. This was the heartland of the medieval Pale — prosperous, well-governed, and deeply embedded in the Anglo-Irish cultural world that produced the parliament, the church administration, and the legal institutions of medieval Ireland. The Barnewalls participated fully in this world, serving as sheriffs, members of parliament, and holders of great offices of state across the medieval centuries.
What Made the Barnewall Family Distinctive?
The Barnewalls held the hereditary office of Chief Butler of Ireland — a great ceremonial position at the heart of Anglo-Irish court life that combined symbolic authority with real administrative significance. The office connected the family to the highest levels of medieval governance in Ireland and distinguished them from the many Norman families who held land without attaining comparable institutional standing. Their combination of territorial wealth, legal participation, and ceremonial office made the Barnewalls one of the defining families of the medieval Pale.
As Old English Catholics they occupied the particular position of the Hiberno-Norman aristocracy in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries — caught between loyalty to the English crown and loyalty to the Catholic faith that the Reformation had made incompatible with full participation in the new Protestant state. The Barnewalls refused to abandon their faith, and that refusal defined their subsequent history.
Who Was Nicholas Barnewall and Why Does He Matter?
Nicholas Barnewall was created 1st Viscount Kingsland in 1646 in recognition of his royalist service and his family's long contribution to Anglo-Irish governance. His viscountcy was granted at a moment when the Catholic royalist cause in Ireland was facing its final crisis — the Cromwellian invasion of 1649 followed, and the Act for the Settlement of Ireland in 1652 confiscated the estates of Catholic landowners across the country regardless of their royalist loyalty. The Barnewall lands in Dublin and Meath were among those forfeited, and the family's centuries of Pale prominence were brought to an abrupt end by the revolutionary settlement that Cromwell's victory imposed. Nicholas Barnewall's viscountcy survived as a title but the territorial power that had sustained the family since the twelfth century was gone, and the Barnewall name in Ireland entered the post-Cromwellian period stripped of its landed foundation.
Where Are Barnewall Families Found Today?
The Barnewall name is rare in modern Ireland, a reflection of the family's small size and the catastrophic impact of the Cromwellian confiscations on their continuation as a landed presence in the country. Those family members who survived the confiscations and remained in Ireland did so as a diminished community, and subsequent emigration over the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries further reduced the domestic count. The name is found in the historical record of Dublin and Meath with great frequency but in the living population with considerably less. Descendants of the family are found in Britain, Australia, and North America, and the Barnewall name appears in genealogical literature as one of the great names of the medieval Pale whose story ended with the seventeenth century's religious and political upheaval.
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