Did you know…Princess Diana was related to Nano Nagle?

Did you know that Nano Nagle is related to Prince William through two lines of decent to his mother’s family, the Spencers. Read on to find out more!

The Nagle Family had a vast and varied history long before the arrival of Honora Nagle in 1718. One very illustrious link is the connection between the Nano Nagle and those who are related to Lady Diana Spencer. It is not just on one side of the Nagle Family but two!

First to Nano’s Mother’s Side:

Elizabeth Poyntz married the Viscount of Thurles, Thomas Butler in 1608 to become the Lady Thurles. This was her first marriage and from it they had three sons and four daughters. Alas, it was a union that would end in tragedy with the untimely death of Butler in 1619.

Lady Thurles remarried after her first husband’s death and one her of son’s from that marriage , a George Mathew,  had a daughter, Frances Mary Mathew, who, in 1723, married John Ryan, a member of one of the few remaining landed Catholic families in County Tipperary at the time in the townland of Inch, in the civil parish of the same name, which he had built in 1720. Nano Nagle was another of her Mathew descendants, being a daughter of Garret Nagle and Anne Mathew.

It is through her first marriage that a line between Lady Elizabeth Poyntz and Princess Diana can be traced.  Lady Thurles’ daughter Mary Butler married George Hamilton, a descendant the 3^rd Duke of Abercorn, James Hamilton, whose daughter, Cynthia, married Albert Spencer, the 7^th Earl Spencer. This couple would go on to be the grandparents of one Lady Diana Spencer who was born in 1961 and would go on to marry Prince Charles of England in 1981.

Then to the Nagle Family of Ballygriffin – Nano’s home

Another link that could not be ignored while we searched through the Nagle and Spencer families was a connection between the Lombard family in Lombardstown, Mallow, Co. Cork. One of the well-known members of the family married David James Nagle from Ballygriffin in Mallow, Co. Cork. Later, they would have a granddaughter by the name of Honora “Nano” Nagle. Their great granddaughter married an Edmond Roche of Trabolgan whose son went on to become the first Baron of Fermoy and this man’s great granddaughter Frances Roche married John Spencer the 8^th Earl Spencer and in 1961 their daughter Diana was born, 20 years later she would go on to become the Princess of Wales.

Of course it’s not just the shared lineage that should encourage William and Kate to visit. Their sense of social justice and belief in the power of education to change lives is a shared value system with William’s relation, Nano Nagle.

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