{"id":390,"date":"2026-08-04T15:06:13","date_gmt":"2026-08-04T15:06:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lawvpractice.ie\/?p=390"},"modified":"2026-08-11T10:24:52","modified_gmt":"2026-08-11T10:24:52","slug":"courtroom-drama-how-a-star-of-the-restoration-london-stage-ended-up-in-dublin-in-1700","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lawvpractice.ie\/index.php\/2026\/08\/04\/courtroom-drama-how-a-star-of-the-restoration-london-stage-ended-up-in-dublin-in-1700\/","title":{"rendered":"Courtroom drama: how did a star of the Restoration London stage end up in Dublin in 1700?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Monday, 2 September 1700. The curtains draw back, the players assemble; up above, the gallery is populated by whispering silhouettes, interested and disinterested by turn. A rush of activity announces the arrival of the supporting cast. Eight men enter with efficiency, are seated and bend their bewigged heads forward to inspect the ledgers placed on the desk in front of them. Outside, the sound of carriages and carts clacking along Dublin’s cobblestoned streets is intercut by the singsong patter of street hawkers\u2019 selling their wares. Inside, a hush descends. The star attraction enters the room: Elizabeth Boutell, a small middle-aged woman in neat but expensive dress, ventures forward into the spotlight<\/em>. But what is Boutell – a onetime star of the London stage<\/em> – doing in an Irish courtroom?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Born Elizabeth Davenport in the early 1650s, Boutell was one of the first professional actresses in England, after Charles II ended the tradition of boys and young men playing \u2018girl\u2019 parts on the public stage.[1]<\/a> She made her stage debut in 1663 and seven years later, in 1670, she joined the King\u2019s Company – one of two theatrical outfits granted the right to mount productions in Restoration London. By then, she had married Barnaby Boutell, an officer in the English Army.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the decade that followed, Boutell became a bonafide<\/em> star, originating roles in a number of celebrated Restoration plays, including John Dryden\u2019s The Conquest of Granada<\/em> (alongside Nell Gwynn), Marriage \u00e0 la Mode <\/em>and All for Love<\/em>. Her most famous role came in Nathaniel Lee\u2019s The Rival Queens<\/em>\u2019, and she also starred as Margery Pinchwife in The Country Wife<\/em>; an outrageously bawdy Restoration comedy by William Wycherley.[2]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Title page for the first performance of Dryden’s Marriage \u00e0-la-Mode <\/em>(1673).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Boutell appeared in several productions at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. ‘Drury Lane Theatre’ by Edward Dayes (1795). Image credit: The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens. Gilbert Davis Collection<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Boutell was best known for her ability to play virtuous heroines and for \u2018breeches parts\u2019, in which women donned male clothing. \u2018Breeches parts\u2019 were considered scandalous because the wearing of short trousers (breeches) exposed a woman\u2019s legs, while the tight fit of male clothing revealed the outline of her body. The licentiousness of Restoration drama was often condemned by outraged moralists, who abhorred actresses as sexually available and promiscuous women and equated them with prostitutes. The line between sexual visibility\/availability and sex work was often blurred in the Restoration period, and not only by puritanical observers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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‘An Actress at her Toilet, or Miss Brazen just Breecht’, by John Collet (1779).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Actresses were also frequently depicted as \u2018whores\u2019 in Restoration lampoons, and Boutell \u2013 who was known for \u2018exposing\u2019 her body on stage \u2013 was a popular target. One satirist described her as \u2018the chestnut-maned Boutell, whom all the Towne fucks.\u2019[3]<\/a> Another cast her as \u2018that whore \u2026 poor Armstrong\u2019s life betrayed\/ And passed upon Maccarty for a maid.\u2019[4]<\/a> The \u2018Maccarty\u2019 who was allegedly duped into believing that Boutell was \u2018a maid\u2019 (meaning virtuous as opposed to virginal, given that the actress was married) was the Irish nobleman, Justin McCarthy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While Boutell\u2019s sexual activity was the subject of significant public scrutiny, however, actual documentary evidence of her life is scant, so it is not possible to arrive at the \u2018truth\u2019 of that or other matters. She disappeared from the stage between 1678 and 1688, and it is believed that she moved to the Continent, either to accommodate her husband\u2019s military career or to take up residence in a French convent. She returned to the London stage in 1688, dividing her time between England and Holland in the 1690s, before retiring permanently in 1697. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A depiction of the Chichester House, the old Irish parliament building – a Tudor-style timber-framed structure which was demolished in the 1720s to make way for a new parliament building (now Bank of Ireland on College Green). Image credit: National Library of Ireland.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Boutell’s presence in a Dublin courtroom in 1700 had no apparent hint of \u2018scandal\u2019 about it; appearances, however, may have been deceptive. Approaching 50, she lived a materially comfortable life and appeared at the Court of Claims at Chichester House (the old Irish parliament building on College Green) to claim the benefit of a \u00a3200 mortgage on lands in County Cork.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Court of Claims was presided over by the board of trustees for the Irish forfeitures, a statutory body appointed by the Act of Resumption \u2013 legislation passed by the English parliament in 1700, to nullify William III\u2019s grants of Irish land to military generals and personal favourites. That land had been forfeited by the (largely Catholic) supporters of James II, following their defeat in the War of the Two Kings in 1691. Significantly, the Act of Resumption allowed anyone with a legitimate title to all or part of an estate that predated William and Queen Mary II\u2019s accession to the throne in February 1689 to submit a claim. Along with her husband Barnaby, Elizabeth Boutell claimed as administrators to her father, Christopher Davenport, and her sister, Frances Chamberlain (n\u00e9e Davenport).[5]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Excerpt from A list of the claims <\/em>(Dublin, 1701), comprising details of the Boutells claim. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The couple submitted that Christopher Davenport purchased the lands of Monanimy, Cappagh, Commons and Carrigacunna in the Barony of Fermoy, County Cork, from Justin McCarthy \u2013 Elizabeth\u2019s alleged paramour<\/em> \u2013 in January 1688. Interestingly, this was the same year that the Irish nobleman was named as Boutell\u2019s lover in a satirical verse. The third son of the first earl of Clancarthy, McCarthy was himself created Viscount Mountcashel in the Jacobite peerage in 1689, before being outlawed for his support of James II in the Irish war. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

While in London in 1688, McCarthy agreed in a deed of mortgage to \u2018grant bargain and sell\u2019 the lands in Cork to Davenport \u2013 who was an attorney of New Inn (one of the Inns of Chancery) \u2013 subject to a condition of redemption on payment of \u00a3200 and an annual interest of 6 per cent<\/em>.[6]<\/a> Davenport and McCarthy\u2019s signing of the deed was witnessed by Elizabeth, alongside one Edward Price. The mortgage was Elizabeth\u2019s inheritance, but the common law legal doctrine of coverture meant that she was legally compelled to submit a claim with her husband, Barnaby.[7]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The lands of Monanimy, Commons, Cappagh and Carrigacunna in the Barony of Fermoy, which were comprised in the mortgage agreed between Justin McCarthy and Elizabeth Boutell’s father, Christopher Davenport, in 1688.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Justin McCarthy, 1st Viscount Mountcashel (Jacobite peerage), the alleged lover of Elizabeth Boutell and the mortgagor of lands in County Cork.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A complication arose for the Boutells, however, when evidence was put forward indicating that McCarthy only had a life interest in the lands and thus had no right to sell them. Elizabeth Boutell appeared in front of the trustees for the forfeited estates and swore that she had seen the mortgage money paid to Justin McCarthy and that she had not seen him make any payment for redemption.[8]<\/a> The trustees sent a summons to the Sheriff of County Cork to depose witnesses in order to ascertain whether Justin McCarthy had the right to alienate the lands in Fermoy.[9]<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eventually, the court of claims found in favour of the Boutells. On 23 September, Boutell and her agent, Richard Darling, met with William Spry, the Master of References for the forfeiture trustees. Spry confirmed that the Boutells were owned \u00a3200 principal money and six years interest amounting to \u00a3150. He deducted \u00a330, or two and a half years\u2019 interest, however, to account for the war in Ireland between 1689 and 1691.[10]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Elizabeth Boutell left Ireland in triumph, and it appears that she closed out her days on the Continent, living in the Dutch Republic. She outlived her husband by around four years, dying in 1715 and leaving an estate worth \u00a3800, a not inconsiderable sum.[11]<\/a> The complete story of her connection to Justin McCarthy may never be known, but they were connected \u2013 in verse and in deed.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

[1]<\/a> See Elizabeth Howe, The first English actresses: women and drama, 1660-1700 <\/em>(Cambridge, 1992).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[2]<\/a> See Kirsten Pullen, Actresses and whores: on stage and in society <\/em>(Cambridge, 2005), pp 22-54.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[3]<\/a> Quoted in Howe, first English actresses<\/em>, p. 35.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[4]<\/a> Quoted in Pullen, Actresses and whores<\/em>, p. 44.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[5]<\/a> See Claim No. 195 in A list of the claims as they are entred with the trustees at Chichester-House on College Green Dublin, on or before the tenth of August, 1700 <\/em>(Dublin, 1701).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[6]<\/a> PRONI, Annesley Mss (Papers of the Forfeiture Trustees), xvii, f. 6b.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[7]<\/a> Indeed, in March 1698, Barnaby submitted a petition to the English parliament in his name alone, seeking a saving in a bill for vacating all grants of estates and other interests forfeited in Ireland. See House of Commons Journal Volume 12: 4 March 1698′, in Journal of the House of Commons: Volume 12, 1697-1699<\/em> (London, 1803), British History Online<\/em> https:\/\/www.british-history.ac.uk\/commons-jrnl\/vol12\/pp142-143 [accessed 4 August 2026].<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[8]<\/a> PRONI, Annesley Mss (Papers of the Forfeiture Trustees), viii, f. 180.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[9]<\/a> PRONI, Annesley Mss (Papers of the Forfeiture Trustees), viii, f. 180.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[10]<\/a> PRONI, Annesley Mss (Papers of the Forfeiture Trustees), xvii, f. 6b.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

[11]<\/a> Pullen, Actresses and whores<\/em>, pp 45-6.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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