The Earls of Fingall’s
Fingall Estate Papers (i.e. real property) consist of a large archive of manuscripts and ephemera (17th–20th century), documents incl. deeds, indentures, leases, wills, marriage settlements, incl. many on vellum. The Papers were purchased by the Fingal County Council and lodged in its Fingal Local Studies and Archives Department following an auction by Whyte’s Auctioneers on 6 February 1999 (item 373). However, the lands concerned did not actually extend into the modern Fingal, and the Earls’
Fingall Estate Papers contain no evidence of any ownership in Fingal. Practically all the properties and leases relate to County Meath (or Westmeath), understandably since the Plunketts were originally, as indicated above, Barons of Killeen in County Meath. They essentially have nothing to do with the territory of Fingal, and hence the lands
per se never justified the denomination of
Fingall as an Earldom and later peerage Barony (both now extinct) for the Plunketts of Killeen in Meath (as the
prescriptive barony of Fingal rested with the
Viscounts Gormanston by descent from
Walter de Lacy who obtained it in 1208). Rather, the evidence indicates that Lord Killeen negotiated and purchased the Earldom for £2,700 during a sojourn in London in 1628. ==Barons Killeen (c.1426)==