NameUnknown BEATY, 8G Grandfather
Misc. Notes
There are many people called Beatty or Beattie in Ireland - an approximate estimate puts the number at four thousand. Eighty per cent of these are in northeast Ulster and are the descendants of Scottish settlers of the seventeenth century. The remainder are of native Gaelic-Irish origin and located much further south.
Dealing with the Ulster families first, the spelling "Beatty" is most commonly found in counties Armagh and Tyrone while "Beattie" is the preferred form in counties Antrim and Down. While most modern histories of the Scottish family so called dismiss them as a minor member of the Clan MacBeth, in fact it is more likely that they were ultimately not of Scottish, but of Saxon English origin. The name is derived from Batty, Bate or Baty, a diminutive form of the personal name Bartholomew. Ancestors of the Scottish Border Beatties were Saxon refugees of the Norman Conquest, escaping from London or Northumberland in the eleventh century. In 1070, Princess Margaret (of the English House of Alfred) and her Saxon followers fled England from the onslaught of the Conquest. Their ships were driven north to Scotland and into the Firth of Forth where she was taken to the court of the king of Scotland, Malcolm III, who was living in his new palace in Dunfermline. Margaret married Malcolm and her followers settled in the Dumfriesshire area. The Beatties became one of the Border "Riding Clans" or Reivers.
For over 350 years up to the end of the 16th century what are now Northumberland, Cumbria, The Scottish Borders, Dumfries and Galloway rang to the clash of steel and the thunder of hooves. Robbery and blackmail were everyday professions, raiding, arson, kidnapping, murder and extortion an accepted part of the social system. While the monarchs of England and Scotland ruled the comparatively secure hearts of their kingdoms, the narrow hill land between was dominated by the lance and the sword. The tribal leaders from their towers, the broken men and outlaws of the mosses, the ordinary peasants of the valleys, in their own phrase, 'shook loose the Border'. They continued to shake it as long as it was political reality, practising systematic robbery and destruction on each other. History has christened them the Border Reivers. They gave the words "blackmail" and "bereaved" to the English language. The stamp of the Reivers is still to be seen on the Border Lands - in it's architecture, culture and people. From the secretive fortified towns and farms to names that once struck fear into men's hearts - Armstrongs, Grahams, Kerrs, Nixons, Robsons, Beatties - the legacy of the Reivers remains.
In 1455, the Beatties aided Red Douglas in the overthrow of Black Douglas at the battle of Arkinhom. As a reward King James II made several grants of land to the Beatties for their services to the Crown. This firmly established the family around Langholm and the Eskdale area. In 1504, Adam Batie was hanged by the criminal court at Dumfries for being part of the "king's rebels of Eskdale". In 1537 King James V stripped the Beatties of Eskdale of their lands and granted these to Robert Lord Maxwell. When Maxwell summoned the Beatties to acknowledge him as their feudal superior, the Beatties declared the royal grant was unjust. As the Beatties were mustering against him Ronald Beattie, the chief, gave Maxwell a fast, white mare to flee on. Maxwell shortly sold the lands to Scott, Warden of the Middle Marches. Scott and his men seized the Beattie possessions and divided up the Beattie estates. Maxwell, however, appealed to Scott to reward Ronald Beattie for saving Maxwell's life. As a result, Beattie was given the perpetual tenant-right of Watcarrick, one mile south of Eskdalemuir. Sir Walter Scott states that the Beattie descendants continued to occupy Watcarrick into the nineteenth century. Nonetheless, many of the family were dispersed following the events of 1537 and sought refuge in the north of Scotland, Ireland and Galloway. In 1544, Beatties and other Border clans came under the English. 116 Beatties were noted under the leadership of a Sander Beattie. In 1547 and 1548, under English leadership, the Lennoxes, Armstrongs, Beatties and Littles sacked and burned the town of Annan. In 1585, the Maxwells, Armstrongs, Scotts, Beatties and Littles attacked the Johnstone castle of Lockwood. In 1598, more Beatties were dispersed and the clan was effectively broken up. Some went to Northumberland in England from where they had migrated five hundred years earlier while others went to Ireland. In 1603, James VI finally broke the power of the Reivers although in 1618, the list of "last of the Border blackguards" included the family name of Beattie.
Many of the family settled in the northern counties of Ireland after their dispersal and during the Plantation of Ulster. They are especially strong in Fermanagh where the name was ranked fifteenth in the list of most common surnames in that county in 1962. Betty is not uncommon as a variant in that county where MacCaffrey is recorded as having been used synonymously with those surnames as recently as 1890.
In the rest of the Ireland, families of the name may be of the same origin or alternatively belong to families formerly called Betagh (also spelled Betaghe, Beatagh, Bettagh etc.) This early form of the name is now almost extinct, though the birth registration returns for 1890 show that it was then still to be found synonymous with Beatty, around Athlone. The variant Beytagh has been noted in a Dublin will of 1839.
Betagh is one of the not very numerous class of Gaelic Irish surnames derived from an occupation - biadhtach is a word (formed from biadh, food) denoting a public victualler. It was originally used in a complimentary sense, conveying the idea of hospitality as well as function, but in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, when the Anglo-Norman power was at its zenith, the betaghs, or betagii as they were called in the official Latin of the time, were persons of very inferior status who were described as comparable to the villeins in feudal England. This, of course, applies only to the half of the country under effective Anglo-Norman rule, counties Dublin, Louth, Meath, Kildare, Kilkenny, Carlow, Wexford, part of Connacht and all Munster except Clare. The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries saw the reconquest by hibernicized Norman lords and Gaelic chiefs of the greater part of this territory and by 1500 the "English Pale" had shrunk to a small area in Counties Louth, Meath, Kildare and Dublin. The rest, including practically all Ulster, was still Gaelic and unconquered.
It is unlikely that the word was at all widely adopted as a surname. At the period referred to references to it in official records are almost all to persons of some standing such as jurors and sureties in counties. Kildare and Meath, and there is only noted one Betagh in the contemporary lists of hibernici, felons and outlaws. Betagh had certainly become a name of consequence in Meath by the sixteenth century, for between 1570 and 1598 Betagh of Walterstown, Betagh of Rathalron, Betagh of Dunamore and Betagh of Moynalty all appear as gentlemen of that county, while William Betagh was chief serjeant of the adjoining county Cavan and Thomas Betagh was one of the gentlemen entrusted with the task of taking a muster of the inhabitants of Cavan in 1587.
Betagh occurs there and in neighbouring Monaghan in the Inquisitions of the next generation. Thomas Betagh of Laurencetown and William Betagh of Ballicashe, on the Meath-Cavan border, were transplanted to Co. Roscommon. Six of the name (Betagh or Bytagh) appear in the lists of outlawed Jacobites, 1689 to 1702. Five places called Betaghstown - three in Meath, one in Westmeath and one in Kildare - are further evidence of their standing. Implying that the Betaghs were of Norman origin Woulfe mentions the fact that in early Hiberno-Norman records their personal names were Norman; this, however, is of little significance since in a list of outlaws in 1305 in which one Maurice Betagh appears, such forenames as Geoffrey, Henry, Nicholas, Richard, Simon and Thomas are as frequent with the many O's and Mac's cited as with men of Norman surnames.
In modern times Father Thomas Betagh, S.J. (1769- 1811), who was born at Kells, Co. Meath, was notable for his activity in the revival of Catholic education at the end of the penal period. Thomas Edward Beatty (1801- 1872), P.R.C.S.I., whose mother was a Betagh, was of a Cavan family. Admiral David Beatty, Earl Beatty (1871-1936), famous as a naval commander in the First World War, came of a well-known family in Co. Wexford.
Heraldry
Beattie or Beatty of Scotland and Ulster: Argent a pale Sable surmounted of a sword Azure hilt and pommel Or between two keys wards outward of the third in fess, in chief two mascles Gules and another in base of the fourth. Crest: A star issuing from a crescent Or. Motto: lumen coeleste sequamur [let us follow the heavenly light].
Ref: B78/20 Betagh or Beatty (Ireland) Arms: Argent on a chevron between three estoiles Sable a mullet of the field, a chief Gules. Crest: A camel's head erased Argent bridled Gules.
Spouses
ChildrenJohn (ca1620-1681)