Loughmore

Loughmoe Castle was the seat of the Purcell family, who were Barons of Loughmoe. Construction of the castle began in 1328, the year that the family were granted the title of Barons of Loughmoe. Until the 1980s it was possible to climb the spiral stair in the right-hand tower. The monument is now in the care of the Office of Public Works.

The title Baron of Loughmoe is an Irish feudal barony, and was possibly raised to a Jacobite peerage in 1690 while King James II of England was in exile. The feudal title was first granted to Richard Purcell in 1328 by James Butler, 1st Earl of Ormond as palatine Lord of Tipperary. Irish and Scottish feudal titles, particularly those granted by palatine lords, are acknowledged as genuine hereditaments by the arms granting bodies of Ireland, Scotland, and England, but were never formally recognised by the British Crown.

Referring to the Purcells of Loughmoe specifically, the medieval Irish genealogist Dubhaltach Mac Fhirbhisigh wrote that Purcell genealogy begins with Charlemagne, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire.

In 1858 in Loughmore, two local men, Daniel and William Cormack, were executed for the murder of John Ellis, a land agent from Kilrush, near Templemore, County Tipperary. Ellis was hated for evicting tenants on behalf of the landlords who employed him. One night as he returned along the lane to his isolated home, his way was blocked by uprooted bushes and branches. He was shot by a hidden assailant and died an hour later.

The police had no doubt that this was a political murder, because £90 in Ellis’s wallet was left untouched. The brothers William and Daniel Cormack were arrested and convicted at Nenagh Assizes in March 1858, largely, it was felt at the time, on the evidence of an informer – “a villainous character” – who was widely believed to have been part of the murder plot. The judge was the notoriously corrupt and harsh William Keogh.

The common belief was that a local landlord had shot Ellis in a crime of passion involving Ellis' sister, and that the Cormack brothers had been framed for murder; 2,357 people signed a petition attesting to the brothers' innocence

The brothers were hanged on Thursday, May 11, 1858 outside Nenagh Prison.

Daniel Cormack addressed the crowd at the public execution from the scaffold, saying: “Lord have mercy on me, for you know, Jesus, that I neither had hand, act, nor part in that for which I am about to die. Good people, pray for me.” According to a contemporary report, “the brother having made the same awful declaration, both were in the next moment launched into eternity”.

Years later a tenant named Michael Gleeson, who had been evicted by Ellis, confessed to the murder.[4]

In 1910 a committee was formed in Loughmore to exhume the brothers and rebury them in the churchyard. Daniel's and William's remains were ceremonially removed from Nenagh Gaol and brought back to Loughmore with two hearses drawn by plumed horses, followed by huge crowds. After the procession arrived in the village, the Cormack brothers were buried in a mausoleum in the churchyard where people still go to see the original oak coffins and the inscription proclaiming their innocence.

On one side of the mausoleum is inscribed:

Mausoleum in Loughmore Churchyard in memory of McCormack Brothers

By the Irish Race in memory of the brothers DANIEL and WILLIAM CORMACK who for the murder of a land agent named ELLIS were hanged at NENAGH after solemn protestation by each on the scaffold of absolute and entire innocence of that crime, the 11th day of May 1858. The tragedy of the brothers occurred through false testimony procured through GOLD and terror, the action in their trial of JUDGE KEOGH, a man who considered personally, politically, religiously and officially was one of the monsters of mankind, and the verdict of a prejudiced, partisan packed perjured jury. Clear proof of the innocence of the brothers afforded by ARCHBISHOP LEAHY to the VICEROY of the day but he nevertheless gratified the appetite of a bigoted, exterminating and ascendancy caste by a judicial murder of the kind which lives bitterly and perpetually in a nation’s remembrance. Corpora sanctorum in pace sepulta sunt: et vivent nomina eorum in aeternum R.I.P. [Which translates as: The bodies of the saints are buried in peace; and their names live for evermore. R.I.P.]

Inscribed on the other side:

In commemoration of the removal of the remains of the CORMACK BROTHERS from the jailyard at NENAGH to this mausoleum on May 11, 1910. In the morning a solemn REQUIEM OFFICE and HIGH MASS were celebrated in the Parish Church, Nenagh, Canon McMahon presiding, and an immense number of Killaloe priests being in the choir. The funeral cortege which contained MR JOHN DILLON, M.P., MR J. HACKETT, M.P., and many others of high name and inspiring example, was by magnitude, representativeness and observance unprecedented in IRELAND. At Loughmore, the pastor preached a funeral oration and assisted by priests from IRELAND, ENGLAND, AMERICA and AUSTRALIA, officiated at the placing of the remains here to rest in peace and honour until the day of their vindication by Jesus Christ before the whole human race in the Valley of Josophat. Visi sunt oculis insipientium mori illi autem sunt in pace. [Which translates as: "In the sight of the unwise they seem to die, but they are in peace". Taken, with some modifications, from the Book of Wisdom, chapter 3, verses 2-3]