Did a childhood pact lead to a ghostly visit from beyond the grave?
An image of a ghost from 1899, created by double exposure. The Beresford ghost remains one of Ireland's best known cases of spectral visitations.
The National Archives UK
If there is one factor that can be said to have affected the course of Irish history above all others, it would have to be that of religion. The early Christian period on the island saw the establishment of influential monastic towns and settlements, many of which amassed such wealth that they would eventually attract envious interest from marauding Vikings. In the 12th-century, Pope Adrian IV--concerned that the Irish had regressed into a semi-pagan spiritual state--gave his blessing to the proposed conquest of Ireland by Henry II, which duly materialised in the Anglo-Norman invasion of 1169. And, of course, the profound divisions caused by the reformation have endured in Ireland long after they ceased to matter in the rest of Europe, mainly because the concerted British effort to supplant the native Irish population with colonists from England, Scotland and Wales was not entirely successful, and created two competing Irish identities: one Gaelic, Catholic and independent, the other fundamentally Anglocentric--Protestant, wary of the native culture it had tried to displace, and fiercely loyal to the crown.
The conflict between these two versions of "Irishness" has played out on a societal level in dramatic ways, most recently in the Troubles in Northern Ireland in the second half of the 20th-century. But the complex interplay between both has also had a profound--and often surprising--effect on individual figures. Theobald Wolfe Tone, Charles Stewart Parnell and Douglas Hyde were all born into the "Ascendancy"--the upper-class, Protestant ruling class of Ireland before independence--and yet all three played pivotal roles in Ireland's eventual break from the United Kingdom. The country's most celebrated poet, WB Yeats, was also of the Ascendancy; as part of the Gaelic Revival literary movement, however, he helped to mythologise an ancient, Gaelic past which did much to inspire the Republican revolutionaries in Ireland in the early 20th-century. He was helped in this by friends and fellow intellectuals such as John Millington Synge and Constance Markievicz--both born into similar circumstances.
Arguably, the significance of the theological distinction between Catholicism and Protestantism had begun to lessen by the time that all of these individuals lived and died, but at the time that their ancestors were cementing their power and influence in the country--in the case of the Ascendancy, through the granting of lands and titles previously held by the Gaelic aristocracy--theological differences were of grave importance. The 1600's in particular proved to be a particularly active period for religious conflicts, with the Thirty Years War raging in Europe, and the Cromwellian invasion and the later Jacobite wars laying waste to Ireland. And as these wars were fought, individuals and society in general continued to grapple with the implications of the reformation, and Protestant thinkers in particular developed ideas which would eventually blend with the some of the ideas associated with the looming Enlightenment.
One such notion that began to gain traction at the time was Deism, the belief that knowledge of God can be obtained through the exercise of reason alone. Deists contended that God was the architect of the universe, but was relatively indifferent to it, and that all ideas regarding divine revelation were misguided. The philosophy proved popular among early Protestants, largely because it dismissed phenomena such as miracles and saintly intervention--typically associated with Catholicism--as supernaturalism. One adherent to Deism was Hugh (Hugo) Hamilton, a Scots-Irish Protestant who commanded a brigade of British soldiers in the Swedish army during the Thirty Years War before assuming the lordship of Glenawly in County Fermanagh in 1660. A peer of Hamilton's, Sir Richard Power, also held Deist views; in 1673, Power became the 1st Earl of Tyrone, a title previously held by the chief of the Ulster O'Neill clan.
Protestant reformer John Calvin. Early Protestant thinkers rejected the more mystical traditions of Roman Catholicism, choosing instead to focus on Reason.
Both men decided to raise their children as Deists, and Hamilton's daughter Nichola and Power's son John grew up as close friends. Nichola Hamilton and John Power were both born in or around 1666, and were inseparable during adolescence. Both also had inquiring minds--especially concerning religious matters. They had good reason to; being born into a class that had, within a generation or two, forcibly uprooted and replaced the ancient Gaelic aristocracy of Ireland on religious grounds--even as the underclass that served them remained committed to the old faith--they were well-placed to witness the upheaval and destruction that religious conflict can wreak on society. As they grew into maturity together they started to have doubts about religion in general, however, and this led the two childhood friends to make a pact: whichever one of the pair died first was, if possible, to appear to the other at the moment of death and reveal to the other the truth about the afterlife.
Whether or not Nichola and John ever became more than just friends is not known, even if it is not entirely beyond the realm of possibility given how close they were, but eventually their lives took separate paths. John Power became the Earl of Tyrone after his father's death; he also married, but his wife died young, leaving him without heirs. He never remarried. Nichola became the Lady Beresford after her marriage to Sir Tristram Beresford, a Baronet and Member of Parliament for the county of Londonderry. The union was a happy one, and the Beresfords had five children together. But Lady Beresford and John Power continued their friendship, and Nichola's childhood companion was a frequent visitor to the Beresfords' home in Coleraine. John Power would meet four of the Beresford children before his death.
One morning in October, 1693, Lady Beresford descended the stairs from her rooms wearing a black ribbon around her wrist. Her curious husband inquired as to the reason, and Lady Beresford calmly informed him that her childhood friend John Power had died during the night. Sir Tristram's reaction to the news is lost to history, but he must surely have wondered how his wife could have known this; any doubts he might have had would have been short-lived, however, as later that morning the Earl's steward arrived at Coleraine with a letter confirming the death of John Power.
Location of the Barony of Coleraine in the county of Derry/Londonderry in what is now Northern Ireland. Nichola Hamilton would have moved here upon her marriage to Sir Tristram Beresford.
It was many years before Lady Beresford would relate what exactly had happened on that night, and what she did reveal has come down to us through her children. In 1713, Lady Beresford had already been widowed and remarried to General Richard Gorges of county Meath, with whom she had a further six children. She was celebrating her birthday with her large family when a clergyman arrived with documents. These were intended to clear up an error which might seem trivial--Lady Beresford was not 46 on that birthday, she was actually 47, and the clergyman wanted to clarify the matter for the family. When she heard the news, however, Lady Beresford's demeanour instantly changed. She hastily retired to her bedroom, and the birthday celebrations were brought to a sudden, unexpected end.
Over the coming days and weeks friends and family members pushed Lady Beresford for answers as to her strange behaviour, and gradually the details of that October night back in 1693 came out in what has become known as the case of the "Beresford ghost". Lady Beresford claimed that, on the night of his death, John Power had appeared to her in her chamber and stated that he had died. As proof of this, the apparition drew a curtain on the other side of the room closed with a motion of his hand. To convince her that he was in fact John Power, the apparition also signed his name in the Lady's pocket book. Finally, he grabbed her wrist; the apparition's grip was, according to Beresford, as cold and as heavy as marble.
The ghost also had information about the Lady's future. He informed her that she was pregnant with a son--the last child she would bear for Sir Tristram Beresford. He also told her that she would be widowed and would remarry; Sir Tristram died in 1701. The prediction that was troubling Lady Beresford when she related the tale was that her own death would occur at the age of 47. Some months after the clergyman had interrupted the birthday celebrations in order to reveal the Lady's actual age, this duly occurred; Lady Beresford died in 1713 while giving birth to her youngest daughter, Lucy. She was 47 years old, and not 46 as she had previously believed. Before her burial, the black ribbon that she had worn around her wrist for 20 years in memory of her departed friend John Power was finally removed. According to Beresford family lore, the skin underneath--where the ghost had placed his spectral fingers--was black and withered, the sinews and nerves shrunken.
One other revelation that the Beresford ghost made is peculiarly telling. John Power's spectral form was still mindful of the pact that had been made in childhood between Nichola and John, and Lady Beresford claimed that the ghost had cleared up an important theological matter. The Deism of their parents, apparently, had been misguided; the only true religion was that revealed by Jesus Christ. Whether that meant the Catholic or Protestant faith has never been clear, but it was a significant repudiation of the earlier Irish Protestant generation's impatience with supernaturalism. Could it have been an attempt, subconscious or otherwise, to try to narrow the gap between the newly-created Ascendancy and its overwhelmingly Catholic underclass, many of whom remained steeped in the quasi-mystical traditions and superstitions of the older version of Christianity? It would not amount to a permanent reconciliation, perhaps, but in acknowledging the possibility of spiritual experiences that transcended pure reason, the tale of the Beresford ghost at least allows for the inclusion of the supernatural in the Ascendancy's own self-mythologising. Such a seemingly minor nod to supernaturalism would have gone a long way in easing tensions between the Catholic population and their new Protestant rulers, much further than we can perhaps appreciate today.
A photograph of "Irish peasantry", taken in the 19th-century. The newly Protestant ruling class known as the Ascendancy assumed Ireland's aristocratic titles in the 1600's, and may have found it difficult to reconcile their beliefs with those of the native Irish.
Miscellaneous Items in High Demand, PPOC, Library of Congress / Public domain
But there was one last prediction that the Beresford ghost made that is worth considering. Having told Lady Beresford about her pregnancy, her impending widowhood and her eventual death, the ghost told her that her son would marry his--that is, John Power's--daughter. That was always a confusing point for Lady Beresford and the family members she related the tale to; John Power had died without heirs, and he had no daughter. The title of Earl of Tyrone had passed to John's brother James Power in 1693, and after James's death there were no more male Power children who could assume the title. But James Power had a daughter, Catherine Power, who could pass on the title through matrimony. If Catherine Power was John's "daughter" in the sense that she was his female heir, then the ghost's last prediction also came true: Marcus Beresford, with whom the Lady Beresford was pregnant on the night of the apparition, married Catherine Power in 1717. He was granted the title of Earl of Tyrone.
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