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Richard Prior
Richard Prior, Colonial Thomas Prior’s eldest son, inherited his father’s Irish lands and an estate in the northern English county of Derbyshire on the death in 1704 of his sister Isabella Stubber and her husband.1)
In 1685, the Catholic James II succeeded his more pragmatic brother Charles II and in 1689 passed an Act of Attainder. This Act not only reversed the land grants to Protestants such as the Priors, but condemned over 2,000 of them to defend themselves from the charge of high treason. Richard Prior and other Protestants choose to flee, forfeiting their land. Richard fled to Cambridge, to property there that he had inherited from his father as well as some 40 acres in Ely. In 1690, James II’s loyalist army was defeated at the Battle of the Boyne and the Act subsequently repealed. Richard continued to live in Cambridge and on his death the Irish estate passed to Thomas, his oldest surviving brother and the most famous of the family.2)