ADAM'S IRISH OLD MASTERS 14 MAY 2026

24 18 A PAIR OF 17TH CENTURY PAINTED ARMORIALS William Eustace of Cradoxtown Esq and Jane Daughter to Sir Nicholas White of Leixlip' and 'Sir Rowland Eustace Lord Portlester, Lord Deputy of Ireland, a Son and Heir and Lord Portlester's, Daughter Alison, Wife of the Earl of Kildare'. 56 x 45cm € 3,000 - 5,000 William Eustace was the eldest of seven children of Nicholas Eustace of Craddockstown (b. 1572) and Janet Talbot, daughter of Robert Talbot. The Eustaces had held the Craddockstown estate, south-east of Naas in Co. Kildare together with neighbouring lands at Philip- stown, Baltracey, Eadestown and part of Rathmore in an unbroken line since the fourteenth century, making them one of the oldest of the Pale gentry families in the county. William appears in the records as a juror of Co. Kildare in 1634, a role consistent with the minor gentry standing the family had maintained for several generations. His lands were forfeited in the aftermath of the 1641 Rebellion, in which many of the Catholic Old English of Kildare were implicated, but the forfeiture proved temporary, and the estate passed to his elder son, Christopher Eustace. William Eustace married Jane, daughter of Nicholas Whyte of Leixlip. The Whytes of Leixlip were a promi- nent Old English family whose seat, Leixlip Castle, had been acquired in 1567 by the celebrated Sir Nicholas White (c.1532–1592), lawyer, privy councillor and Mas- ter of the Rolls in Ireland from 1572 until his death in the Tower of London. A Waterford-born protégé of the 9th Earl of Ormond and a student tutor to the children of Sir William Cecil, Lord Burghley, the elder Sir Nicholas was knighted in 1584 and was regarded as one of Eliza- beth I’s most able and most controversial Irish ministers before his arrest for suspected complicity in Sir John Perrot’s alleged treason.