Jeremy Taylor at Portmore (quack)

In 1658 Edward, 3rd Baron and 1st Earl of Conway, came over to Lisburn, and soon after he induced the author of "Liberty of Prophesying" to accept a lectureship at Lisburn, and from that time he lived alternatively at Lisburn and Portmore. A very handsome cottage was erected for him and as lecturer to the loyalists Taylor settled down there, and his wife and family were delighted with their new home and all its picturesque beauties near the banks of Lough Neagh. It is pretty well known that it was greatly through Lord Conway's influence with Charles the Second that the See of Down and Connor was conferred on Jeremy Taylor. In addition to the pretty residence at Portmore, Lord Conway had fitted up for the Bishop at Maghraleave an exceedingly charming residence. That cottage is still to be seen there, and the study in which the prelate composed some of his later works -- that sacred spot, with its oaken panelings and peculiar look-out; but how few, even of the people of our town, have visited that sacred locality!

-  Recollections of Hugh McCall

“Induced”: Dr Taylor was among Conway’s more famous guests. There is a long back story (including entries in the diary of John Evelyn, again not the most reliable source) of how Taylor accepted – after, it is alleged, at first resisting – Conway’s offer of a residence with income from chaplaincy, leisure for writing, and safety from legal pursuit.

The writing included some of Ductor Dubitantium (on “the Rule of Conscience”). Even many modern readers with little time or mental room for seventeenth-century divines will see from a few paragraphs that Taylor’s prose has something peculiar: saturated with scriptural tropes and gentle, rhythmical, rhetorical phrasing, but not quite in the styles of the King James translations, nor with the trademark cadences of Thomas Browne. Alexander Gordon’s DNB article referred to the rich literary products of his retirement, unsurpassed for nobility of tone as well as for the marvellous and varied beauty of the pictorial vesture of his thought but said of the markedly unsuccessful negotiations with dissenters

The presbyterian settlers in the north of Ireland, of Scottish birth or descent, true to the monarchical terms of their solemn covenant, had synodically protested against the trial and execution of Charles I…Taylor's policy confirmed the presbyterians in rebellion against his authority; intending the reverse, he did more than any man to establish the loyal presbyterians of the north of Ireland as a separate ecclesiastical body.

The 1891 Lisburn Standard excerpt above states that Ralph Briggs the Conway retainer had some responsibility for the preparations made for Dr Taylor’s stay. But the reference to the “pretty cottage” argues against a wing or a suite of rooms in Portmore castle. Such a suite, or a nearby or attached cottage or lodge, does seem likelier as a distinguished visitor’s residence than a new building on a very small island; what “Portmore” means in this context is much debated. For example, Gordon wrote for the DNB: His residence was near Conway's splendid mansion at Portmore; he had also a study (‘amœnissimus recessus’) on Sallagh Island in Portmore Lough (Lough Beg). Edmund Gosse wrote: The legend that Taylor wrote on Ram’s Island, far out in Lough Neagh, is preposterous. All we can safely say is, that he and his family occupied a suite of rooms, from 1658 to 1660, in one of the wings of Portmore…

In any case, I have found no further evidence that Ralph (or any other Briggs) had some responsibility for the preparations made for Dr Taylor’s stay, whether they involved a handsome villa, a handsome cottage, a pretty cottage, an arbour, a summer residence, or a suite. Nor have I found contemporary evidence of such construction or refurbishment led by George Rawdon, who is more likely in the literature to be Conway’s unnamed “agent”. Conway archives are in scattered places including Kew, Warwickshire and Ireland, and a note of such expenses, or the instructions to what we would today call Rawdon’s project manager, may turn up. 

The duck decoy at Portmore

Before his death in Lisburn in August 1667, Taylor would have noticed the recently built “duck decoy” on the loughside. Perhaps he sampled the duck. Several books and articles mention the decoy, but readers may become increasingly puzzled about its location and size; indeed some authors have added misunderstandings to their early references – which are usually transcriptions of the correspondence of George Rawdon and colleagues, often taken from the Calendar of State Papers (Ireland) or CSP(I).

Below are short extracts from four secondary references – all distinguished and helpful, but needing more work. I see no Briggs involved.

Arthur Stringer (1714)

Original copies of The Experienced Huntsman are rare. This 1977 reprint edited by James Fairley includes an illustration by Raymond Piper:

“This is based on a contemporary representation of the estates of Viscount Conway, now in the Belfast Public Records Office (no. D427/4) and, for the sake of clarity, much of the detail has been omitted. Original lettering is shown in standard type, additional words in bold italics”

Fairley and Piper clearly mark the “Decoy”, well south of Tunny Island. They also mark, between Tunny Island and Feumore, a curved waterway connecting the two lochs; this later provided part of the “Tunny Cut” as discussed below.

PRONI holds under this reference D427/4 a map of Conway estates dated 1729:

The map shows this shaded square on the west shore of Portmore Lough directly opposite the main Portmore buildings. In the word interpreted by Piper as “Decoy”, the letter “e” is uncertain. Inland from this square are bogs and woods, and then “Derry Olah”. Today this area holds part of the RSPB reserve (including some ponds), the RSPB buildings and car park, the Portmore Equestrian Centre, and Derryola Bridge.

The Portmore church was on the east shore, a little to the south:

The Ordnance Survey map (first edition, 1830s, well after the demolition of the castle) shows Portmore House with the church ruins and nearby osier beds:

The same map shows the Tunny Cut with nearby drainage and osier beds, but no sign of a decoy:

The Cut, reworked in the eighteenth century, ran in the 1830s and runs today very straight before entering Portmore Lough. But the 1729 map and Piper’s copy show the older waterway that curves somewhat to the east and may have its “mouth” 150-200 m from today’s Cut.

We might prefer to have all the detail that was “omitted”, because the original writing has faded and the fragile 1729 map is not easy to study, but Piper’s drawing was deliberately faithful to it, not to modern maps or photographs. Shorelines and water depths change over 300 years, and modern aerial photographs show a water area considerably smaller than in the 19th century O.S. surveys. So the drawing is a recognisable but only approximate version of what we see today:

The relevant area between the Equestrian Centre and the lough is about 450-500 metres due south of the south end of the Tunny Cut; the 1729 map does not appear to be drawn very accurately to scale, with the decoy shown even further than this from “Coy Meadow”. But the match is reasonable, once we note as above that the old waterway curves away from the very straight Cut, and so the meadow on its northern side is that much further from RSPB.

The modern aerial views show clearly the water edge and an annulus (typically 30-80 m wide) of boggy land between the water and the older boundary of the 1830s map.

A name “Coy Meadow” might be given to a field which had a view of the nearby decoy – the more plausibly if, at that time, the annulus was under water and not filled with obstructions such as reeds and bushes. This would be an easy explanation but it is not conclusive. The 1665 letters are explicit that a decoy was intended by the Dutch engineer Martin Johnson near the “Tunny” or “Tunney”, and that one was then built “at” it:

between the Tunny mouth and your meadow in the park. – George Rawdon, 12 April 1665 (reporting the outcome of discussions and site visits with Johnson and other staff).

I am weary of Dublin and long to be at home. I shall at once go to the Tunny and see the deer and the decoy, which are both well forward. – George Rawdon, 14 June 1665.

I shall have to pay sums for the works here and for the decoy at the Tunny. – Adam Leathes, 30 September 1665.

Still, “Tunny” (or Tonaigh) can mean not just the waterway but its surrounds, and we cannot infer that the decoy was exactly beside today’s “Tunny Cut”. If we suppose that “Tunny” could include in the 1660s some land south of the southern mouth – well distant from “Tunny Island” – then it is possible to reconcile these 1665 letters with a single decoy built on the shoreline (near today’s Equestrian Centre / RSPB). But a single decoy built on “Coy Meadow” is contradicted by the 1729 map. 

William Thompson (1851)

We could identify ‘coy meadows with the 1729 “Coy Meadow”, but (from what was said above) there is a problem if “there was a decoy there” means at Coy Meadow rather than within sight.

Ralph Payne-Gallwey (1886)

Thompson writes of Lough Beg (“little loch” or “little lake”), in County Down, connected with Lough Neagh. Unfortunately there are two lakes called Lough Beg connected with Lough Neagh, one on the Londonderry / Antrim border and one at Portmore. Both hold bird reserves and are obvious sites for decoys, but the latter – also known as Portmore Lough, wholly in County Antrim, and a “little loch” (in the sense of the Rawdon letters) compared with the “great loch” of Lough Neagh immediately to the west – is our interest here. Payne-Gallwey, apart from quoting Thompson about  Coy Meadows “on the margin of Lough Beg”, does not help us to locate the decoy; he identifies the wrong Lough Beg and places it more or less correctly “14 miles NW. of the town of Antrim”.

Vandra Costello

Interested readers should consult Vandra Costello’s 2002 informative article [1]; she trawls the Rawdon letters and CSP(I) for mentions of decoys and associated landowners and employees. She discusses the proposed locations of the Portmore decoy and quotes the reports by Rawdon and the Dutch expert “Martin Johnson” (Martin Jansen van Hehninge). Some key extracts are:

Costello’s presentation, perhaps unavoidably, does not settle how many distinct potential sites are mentioned in these letters, or exactly where the decoy was built. It may help to note that:

• The CSP(I) references above are: 41, Johnson to Conway, 12 April 1665; 42 and 46, Rawdon to Conway, 12 April 1665;  44, Hartnall to Rawdon, 29 May 1665, “Written very badly and with ignorant spelling”. There are other State Papers entries of interest, and Costello could not reasonably print them all. Today (2024) the Calendars are free downloads; scans of the original archives are behind a paywall. 

• Ivy-rich gables of the ruined “old church” stand beside the Portmore graves, near the shore south of the Castle site.

•  “Therefore I have found out another place in my lord’s park between the little lock and the great lock and the park house, upon the meadow that lies near the lock”: the little lock (loch) is Lough Beg (Portmore Lough) and the great lock is Lough Neagh 

• “The decoy, completed in October [1665], was constructed at another site within the two lakes”: Costello is repeating what has just been quoted, and her “another site within the two lakes” is the place that was “found out”, not a third site.

• “We viewed the little lough both by water and land”: they viewed Portmore Lough.

• “and at last agreed in deciding that the best and most private place for it was between the Tunny mouth and your meadow in the park. On that side the fowl do most haunt, being sheltered from the north wind”: this is the crux, and we might interpret it as placing the decoy south of the Tunny mouth (not north in Feumore), very near the shore, and thus adjoining the region where the watery shoreline and bogs yield to more definitely dry parkland or meadow. The words are ambiguous until we know the layout of mouth and meadow – were both “in the park”? 

• “He [Martin Johnson] saw the other possible spots, the other side of the old church and the great lough side”: the “great lough side” refers to the Lough Neagh shore further west (which would be a third site), and we might interpret “the other side of the old church” as the previously mentioned “ground by the old church” (much nearer than the RSPB site to the church, indeed unsuitably near because of the “noise”).

• “He [Johnson] speaks of three or four acres for a pond, and his pipes that must be digged, and the earth taken away to raise banks and walks about it”. Costello then comments “The decoy pond at Portmore, at 4 acres, was a [sic] particularly large. Payne-Gallwey suggested that decoys should be between 1 and 3 acres”. This conclusion about the pond area is reasonable, but I do not think it is inevitable:

• “We are to give them 13 shillings for a square perch and there will be 160 perch to be deged three foot deep besides the skoupes and the pipes; and Mr. Johnos [Johnson?] intends to make a moat about the pond 12 foot broad”: I tentatively suggest that the artificial pond, dug manually to a depth of around three feet throughout, occupied only these “160 perches” estimated in summer 1665. One acre[1] equals 160 [square] perches. The entire “decoy” – containing this pond, and its scoops and pipes, and various trenches and woods and access lanes and earth banks – would be considerably larger (3-4 acres), but much of the extra 2-3 acres would not need deep digging. With elastic seventeenth-century syntax Johnson’s “three or four acres” might cover the pond, the pipes, the earth and the rest; but in any case we have the statement about “160 perch to be deged”.

• Rawdon writes in April 1665 “This place is over against the priest’s house, close by the little loughside”: again this is strongly in favour of a site on the shore of Portmore Lough, not Lough Neagh, although (so far as I know) “park house” and “priest’s house” still need clarification. "Over against" means facing or opposite, as when Pepys writes in 1662 But that which pleased me best was that [Barbara Villiers, Lady Castlemaine] stood over against us upon a piece of White Hall, where I glutted myself with looking on her. The pictures below suggest a possible but far from certain interpretation: Taylor, a "priest", might retire to a "house" on Sallagh Island, which at that time of higher water levels was an island - a little way into the lough, facing or "over against" the suggested decoy site west of the Navvies Drain. 

• John Hartnall writes in May 1665 “We have sat the pond to deg by the great…We have ten men casting up a large highway from the dry ground down to the decoy, which is set out 16 foot broad”. This highway and “the new ditch made though the wood” seem two examples where traces may survive. Unfortunately the usual and obvious transcription, “We have set the pond to dig by the great lake”, favours construction beside Lough Neagh not Lough Beg.

In summary, the site “Coy meadow” on the 1729 map is probably a short boggy walk north of today’s southern “Tunny mouth”; parts of it may be under water or further inland than expected; and it is distinct from, although within a few hundred metres of, today’s RSPB site and the 1729 “decoy”. It may be ’coy meadows mentioned by Thompson.

Both “Coy meadow” and “decoy” on the 1729 map fit some of the text of the 1660s letters – between the great lough and the little lough, but much nearer the little, and with some shelter from winds blowing across the great lough from the north and northwest.

The RSPB maintain an impressive bird reserve at Portmore but have kept no information about decoys beyond the brief remarks and sketch on their display board. Because of the changes over 300 years we should be cautious, but today’s inland RSPB ponds (which have some curiously curved additions or trenches) lie very near where the decoy is marked on the 1729 map. 

Proposed sites for the decoy

Today's RSPB site:

The artificial "hide" is at upper left near the shore. The positions shown on the 1729 Conway estate map and the current RSPB display board are similar though not identical, and both lie within or just beside today's nature reserve:

"Laloo" is an old name for the church site. RSPB show a quill-and-ink symbol at "Sallow island" in honour of Taylor. 

Acknowledgements

I thank Kevin Kane of RSPB Portmore. Ciaran Toal and James Frazer of the Irish Linen Centre & Lisburn Museum kindly discussed the Conway estate evidence and showed the Stringer reprint. The staff of PRONI were most helpful in finding and displaying the D427/4 map.

Notes and references

[1] V Costello, “Dutch Influences in Seventeenth-Century Ireland: The Duck Decoy”, Garden History, vol. 30, no. 2 (Winter 2002), pp. 177-190. 

[2] There were several definitions of “acre” for Irish land. “The Irish acre or plantation acre measured one Irish chain by one Irish furlong, or 4 Irish perches by 40, or 7840 square yards: approximately 0.66 hectares or 1.62 statute acres” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_measure). Fortunately it does not matter here whether the Conway / Rawdon documents consistently used Irish plantation acreage; a one-acre pond is clearly smaller than a pond estimated (in any of the common conventions) as 3-4 acres. Note again that the 29 May 1665 letter quoted here (from John Hartnall to George Rawdon) says, precisely, “13 shillings for a square perch and there will be 160 perch”.