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Spring-Rice
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Smith indicates that the Spring family were originally from Lavenham in Suffolk and settled in Kerry during the reign of Elizabeth I. In the late 18th century Stephen Rice was agent to the Clive estates in county Kerry. In the early 19th century he bought the former Trenchard estate in the barony of Shanid. In 1785 his son Stephen Edward Rice of Mount Trenchard, county Limerick, married Catherine, only child and heir of Thomas Spring of Castlemaine, county Kerry. Their son Thomas Spring Rice was created 1st Lord Monteagle in 1839. He married a daughter of the 1st Earl of Limerick. The Monteagle estate was one of the principal lessors in the parish of Kiltallagh, barony of Trughanacmy, county Kerry at the time of Griffith's Valuation (formerly the Spring estate). Lord Monteagle's Limerick estate was concentrated in the barony of Shanid where he held land in the parishes of Kilmoylan, Robertstown and Shanagolden and also in the parishes of Clonagh, Connelloe Lower and Caherconlish and Carrigparson, barony of Clanwilliam. In the 1830s Lewis writes that the town and surrounding lands of Shanagolden were principally the property of the Right Honourable Thomas Spring Rice, Chancellor of the Exchequer. In the 1840s his agent was Stephen Edward Collis of Listowel, county Kerry. Some of his main tenants at the time of Griffith's Valuation were Faithy Ebzery, Patrick Griffin, Arthur Vincent and the Reverend Richard C. Langford. Stephen Edward Collis, Octavius Knox and Robert William Jameson were agents to the Spring Rices in the 19th century. Lord Monteagle's estate in county Limerick amounted to 6,445 acres and his county Kerry estate to over 2000 acres in the 1870s.
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