John Cruys

Sir John Cruys or Cruise (died 1407) was a prominent Irish military commander, diplomat and judge of the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. He was one of the most substantial landowners in County Dublin and County Meath and built Merrion Castle near Dublin City in the 1360s. His marriage to the heiress of the powerful Verdon family of Clonmore brought him in addition substantial lands in County Louth. He sat in the Irish Parliament and was a member of the King's Council. He was a highly regarded public servant, but also a determined and acquisitive man of business, who fought a ten-year battle to establish his wife's right to her inheritance. where one Robert de Cruys (died 1292) held the lands in the time of King Edward I. Simon held a number of official positions, including Chief Serjeant of Leinster The John Cruys who was a merchant in Dublin in the early 1400s is not known to have been a relative of Sir John.

Merrion Castle and other Cruys holdings Ruins of Merrion Castle, painted by Gabriel Beranger, eighteenth century. Cruys built Merrion in the 1360s.

In 1366 John Bathe of Rathfeigh, County Meath (a member of another prominent Anglo-Irish family, who were later based at Drumcondra, Dublin) granted to John Cruys the lands of Thorncastle, i.e. modern-day Mount Merrion and Booterstown, and the fisheries attached (which are mentioned in an earlier Crown grant of 1299 to William le Deveneys) and other lands at Donnybrook and Ballymun in Dublin. On his lands at Thorncastle, Cruys built Merrion Castle (although there are references to an earlier structure on the site), which became his principal dwelling. There is a reference to his being dispossessed of his lands there in the early 1390s, apparently due to the hostile action of Irish clans from County Wicklow. In 1414 his son Thomas was forgiven repayment of the arrears.

Career In 1376 he was sent to England with Maurice FitzGerald, 4th Earl of Kildare, on important diplomatic business, including a report to the English Crown on the state of Irish affairs, and was paid £20 for his expenses of the journey.

During the turbulent Lord Lieutenancy of Sir William de Windsor (1369–1376), Cruys was a close ally of Windsor. After Windsor's recall in disgrace in 1376, Cruys was out of favour for a time: according to a petition which he co-signed in 1379, the petitioners pleaded that they had been threatened with prosecution and forfeiture of their lands. However, any check to his career was short-lived.

In 1380 he was summoned to the session of the Irish Parliament which met at Baltinglass. In that year he acknowledged that he was indebted to the Crown in the sum of £25.

The Verdon inheritance In 1386 the King's Escheator was ordered to convey to Cruys and his wife Matilda Verdon the lands of Clonmore (now Togher) and Mansfieldtown in County Louth. In 1394 he was summoned to the Great Council of Ireland. He died the following year, although he was apparently still alive in April, when the Crown forgave the debts which he incurred as Sheriff and Escheator. Another daughter married James Fitzwilliam, Chief Baron of the Irish Exchequer, by whom she had at least one son, Phillip. James the year before Sir John's death appears to have attempted to seize the Merrion lands, possibly to forestall entry by Sir John's son Thomas, for which offence he was quickly pardoned. Later the same year he granted to William de Preston certain rents from his lands at Dundalk, Duleek and Kells, County Meath. He had leave to visit England in 1421. In 1423 he received another pardon for numerous acts of trespass on estates including Dundalk, Duleek and Kells, which, though they had belonged to his father, required a royal licence for him to enter, apparently because the Gyffard family were in possession of part of them. The pardon vested all these lands in him. He died in the autumn of 1424, leaving two sons, Edward, the eldest son and heir, who was still a minor, and Christopher. Sir Walter Lucy was granted all of Thomas Cruys's estates, until Edward came of age. Edward seems to have died before 1432, when a younger son of Sir Thomas, Christopher, held the Cruys estates in Meath. In 1419 the Cruys lands at Rathmore, County Meath, were granted to John Wych, although the Cruys family is known to have held Rathmore a generation later. It then passed into the Plunket family by marriage.

John's widow Matilda was still alive in 1415, when she exercised her family's right of advowson to appoint the priest to the local church at Clonmore.