How Erris paid for the Crown Jewels

In 1649 England did something unprecedented. After nearly a decade of civil war, they tried their King for High Treason and had him executed. Ten years later, they changed their mind, and decided to invite Charles I’s 30-year old son, also called Charles, back to England to reinstate the monarchy. Charles II returned to London, however, in the interim the English Crown Jewels had been almost entirely lost or destroyed during the Cromwellian Commonwealth. Therefore Charles II needed to commission new regalia on his return to England from exile in 1660.

The Royal Goldsmith Robert Vyner was tasked with supplying new Crown Jewels for Charles II’s coronation in 1661. The regalia made for Charles II’s coronation forms the central part of the Crown Jewels today, including the crown, the orb and the sceptre, all of which will be utilised at Chales III’s coronation this Saturday, May 6.

On completion of the new Crown Jewels, their productions were gathered and an aggregate bill submitted to the king. In 1661 the bill for new regalia came to the staggering sum of £12,184 7s 6d. The English crown coffers were empty following years of civil war, therefore, in order to pay Vyner, Charles II first took possession of an area of land on the outer fringes of his control. The lands of ‘the half Barony of Irrus’, the modern-day Barony of Erris, in north-west Mayo. These lands were immediately granted to Robert Vyner, as payment for this debt.

Sir James Shaen of Kilmore, County Roscommon and Surveyor General of Ireland, immediately purchased this vast estate of Erris from Vyner who had little interest in the far reaches of North Mayo. Sir James paid little attention to his new property, and when he died in 1695, he left it to his son, Sir Arthur Shaen.

Arthur was to show greater interest in his new acquisition, and seemed determined to turn Erris into an English colony. He forcefully evicted many native inhabitants on the Mullet Peninsula to make way for the settlers he introduced onto his estate, granting them favourable leases in perpetuity.

Shaen further implemented significant infrastructural works including the construction of a two-chamber iron furnace at Clooneen, north of Belmullet, and the cutting of a canal around 1715, at Belmullet, known thereafter as ‘Shaen's Cut’.

Shaen like Carter in later years, seen the importance of this juncture between land and sea and proposed building a settlement here. The canal functioned first as a ditch to drain the marsh then present between the bays, it was large enough for small boats to pass through from one bay to the other. However, little further development occurred, and by 1752 the canal was choked up and impassable.

In 1695 the Shaen estate of approximately 95,000 acres was inherited by the Bingham and Carter families through marriage with Arthur's two daughters and heiresses. The names Bingham and Carter were to dominate land ownership in the Erris region, and indeed much of Mayo, over the following 200 years.

In 1955, following the refusal of the Land Commission to purchase the estate, Martin McIntyre organised the people of Belmullet to finally buy the freehold of the town from a Mr Carter, a resident of London. Buying back the land forcefully taken to pay for Charles III’s Crown Jewels.