The Bernards: and kinship to the Earls of Bandon
Through Catherine Bernard, my line runs into the family that became the Earls of Bandon. Her father, Francis Bernard of Castle Mahon (d. 1659) (my 9× great-grandfather), was the English settler who bought Castle Mahon, later renamed Castle Bernard, in 1639. His son and heir defended the castle against the Jacobites in 1690; from him the senior line ran on to Francis Bernard, created Earl of Bandon in 1800.
Their great house outside the town, Castle Bernard, outlasted the old order only just: in June 1921, at the height of the War of Independence, the IRA burned it to its walls and carried off the elderly 4th Earl, holding him hostage for weeks.
The Earls of Bandon and I share the same ancestor, Francis Bernard of Castle Mahon. I through his daughter Catherine, the Earls through his son Francis. The same Bernard fork reaches further than that: Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada, descends from that senior Bernard line too (his West-Cork descent is well aired). So the Bernard cousinhood links me both to the Earls of Bandon and, more distantly, to a Canadian Prime Minister.
Francis Bernard’s own origins are, in Kingsley’s words, “unusually obscure.” The leading guess is kinship with the Barnards of Margaretting in Essex, whose arms his match, but it is not proven, and the line above him remains open.