Laois Clans
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In the reign of Queen Mary I, two districts, Glenmaliere and Leix, were reduced to shire ground and given the name of the Queen's County with an assize town named after the Queen, Maryborough. Since Irish independence in 1922 the county was renamed, Laois, and Maryborough became Portlaoise. Until Tudor times the O'Mores, who had risen to power in the 13th century, held sway over the territory that became the Queen's County. Settler families were introduced to the county by the Tudor plantation schemes, the most prominent of whom came to be known, in imitation of the Seven Septs of Leix, the previously powerful Irish families, as the Seven Tribes of Leix, the families of Barrington, Bowen, Cosby, Hartpole, Hetherington, Hovenden or Ovington, and Ruish. Of these, one family, Cosby, is still seated on the lands acquired by their ancestor at Stradbally in the 16th century. The Hovendens were still on their ancestral estate at the beginning of this century, and descendants of the Barringtons, Bowens, and Hetheringtons are still in Ireland today although they are no longer in possession of the estates of their settler forebears in Co. Laois.
Of other Tudor settlers in the county, a few, such as the Pigott family and the Vicars family were, until recent years, in possession of the lands of their 16th century settler ancestors, but have since gone away. The Cootes from Norfolk came to Laois in the 17th century, and the Dawsons, later Earls of Portarlington, and the Veseys, later Viscounts De Vesci, came still later. In the 17th century a number of Quaker families of English origin settled in the county, particularly around Mountmellick and Mountrath, and towards the end of that century Huguenots, French Protestant refugees, settled in and around Portarlington.
Many of the old Irish families of the region have, however, survived there although the O'Mores, many of whom became Moore, were driven away and their name is no longer one of the commonest in the county. The commonest surname in Co. Laois today is, in fact, Dunne, followed by Delany, Conroy, Lalor or O'Lalor (sometimes now Lawlor) one of the Seven Septs of Leix, Phelan, Fitzpatrick, Ryan, O'Carroll and Carroll, Whelan, O'Byrne and Byrne, Kavanagh, Kennedy and O'Kennedy, Brennan, Kelly, and Murphy.
Source: Irish Family Names by Brian de Breffny
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