Colonel Thomas Prior; wife unidentified

Colonel Thomas Prior, the elder son of Captain Thomas Prior and Elizabeth Prior, inherited his father’s Irish estates. He raised a militia corps, commanding them as Colonel. Such a militia was needed as there was fierce resistance by the dispossessed Irish led by guerrillas known as Raparees. Colonel Prior was among those who, on at least one occasion, resisted demands to arrest prominent local Catholics. Yet he was also implicated in the (quite legal) offer of a 5 pounds reward for anyone who brought in a head of any Catholic priest who continued to offer the sacraments in Ireland. While only probable that it took place before Colonel Prior's death, it appears the head of the unfortunate priest was bought to the Prior home, Garrison House. Given such provocation and the widespread misery of the dispossessed Irish, it is no wonder that Colonel Prior was fatally wounded by rebels in 1700.¹⁾.

No one appears to notice that, in all the writings about him, there is no mention of Thomas Prior's wives other than, as noted by Fennelly, that his second wife was 'the daughter of a small farmer who was remarkably good looking'. Fennelly also notes the claim that this marriage was kept secret from his previous children. From his first marriage, Colonel Prior had Richard, Isabella, Ann, Thomas and Elizabeth. Burke's Landed Gentry mentions another daughter, Mary. From his second marriage, he had Robert and William Prior.²⁾ The Colonel inherited not only his father’s Irish property, but also an estate in the northern English county of Derbyshire on the death in 1704 of his sister Isabella Stubber and her husband.³⁾

Sources: John & John B. Burke, A Genealogical and Heraldic Dictionary of the Landed Gentry of Great Britain & Ireland: M to Z,London: Henry Colburn Publisher, 1846, p.1075; Family Bible, Burkes Landed? Gentry, Clarke; Teddy Fennelly, Thomas Prior. His Life, Times and Legacy, Ireland: Arderin Publishing, 2001, pp.3-4.